Anam Cara

Graced Vision Sees Between Things

Prayer reveals a hidden world. The way we see things is heavily conditioned. The eye always moves to the object. In a landscape, the eye is drawn at once to a stone, a tree, a field, a wave, or a face. The eye has great affection for things. Only infants or adults lost in thought gaze lingeringly into the middle distance. These are moments when we literally look at nothing. This perennially neglected nothing is precious space, because it provides the medium and the trail of connection between all the separate, different things and persons. The artist Anish Kapoor, reflecting on his fascinating exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, said, “The void is not silent. I have always thought of it more and more as a transitional space, an in-between space. It’s very much to do with time. I have always been interested as an artist in how one can somehow look again for that very first moment of creativity where everything is possible and nothing has actually happened. It’s a space of becoming.” This middle distance is not empty; it is a vital but invisible bridge between things. Distance is necessary to sight: bring a thing too close and it blurs to invisibility. If our vision were graced and we could really see between things, we could be surprised at the secret veins of connection which join all that is separate in the one embrace. We are a family of the one presence. This is the concealed belonging which prayer helps to unveil.

It is so important that prayer happens in the world, every day and every night. It is consoling to remember that there are old and feeble nuns in forgotten convents who live out their days by creating little boats of prayer to ferry nourishment to a hungry world. There are also monks in monasteries in cities and in lonesome mountains whose wonderful chorus of prayer keeps life civilized and somehow still balanced. In our precarious and darkening world, we would have destroyed everything long ago were it not for the light and shelter of prayer. Prayer is the presence that holds harmony in the midst of chaos. Every time you pray, you add to the light and harmony of creation. If you do not pray, if you do not believe in prayer, then you are living off the prayers of other people. Each day, when we wake to move out into the world, and each night, when we gather ourselves in sleep, we should gently send the light of prayer from our hearts. It is important that some light of prayer emanate from each individual. Prayer is the most beautiful poem of longing. Martin Buber said, “Prayer is not in time but time is in prayer.” Prayer is eternity and, therefore, time inhabits prayer.