Anam Cara

Prayer Changes Space

Another beautiful thing about prayer is the way it changes space. Physical space is full of distance. It is distance that separates people and things. Even between two people who love each other and live with each other, the short distance between their bodies is the colossal distance between two different worlds. The magical thing about prayer is that it creates spiritual space. This alters physical distance. In spiritual space there is no distance. A prayer offered for someone in New Zealand reaches her as swiftly as the prayer offered for someone right beside you. Prayer suffuses distance and changes it. Prayer carries the cry of the heart innocently and immediately over great and vast distances. William Stafford evokes this in his poem “An Afternoon in the Stacks.” He describes the aftermath of reading a book. The act of reading becomes a wild symbiosis of the reader’s longing and the wise configuration of words. Stafford knows that the reverberation of this intimacy will continue: “…the rumour of it will haunt all that follows in my life / A candle flame in Tibet leans when I move.” In spiritual space, the trail of intimacy can traverse any distance and still retain the intensity and belonging.