Each activity of daily life in which we stretch ourselves on behalf of others is a prayer in action.

A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the natural forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain...This is the way it is with the Spiritual Disciplines - they are a way of sowing to the Spirit... By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done.

Prayer is the human response to the perpetual outpouring of love by which God lays siege to every soul.

Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.

It is an occupational hazard of devout folk to become stuffy bores. This should not be. Of all people, we should be the most free, alive, interesting.

Without the cross the Discipline of Confession would be merely therapeutic. But it is so much more. It involves an objective [a better word would have been "metaphysical"] change in our relationship with God and a subjective change in us. It is a means of healing and transforming the inner spirit.

In the same way that a small child cannot draw a bad picture so a child of God cannot offer a bad prayer.