A few good words from Mary Oliver about prayer.
Praying
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
Mary Oliver
by my friend, Strahan. An insight into the true nature of our intimacy with God.
prayer is seeing the one who sees us
Oct 13, 2025
Prayer is vulnerability,
a willingness to live in
naked abandonment,
and in agendaless gaze,
never turning back.
This person is a divine radical.
They are totally unafraid to be seen, and have given up all fear of rejection and control. They are utterly free. Truly and totally.
Why? Because they have nothing left to lose. They have already bared all before God and been found not wanting, but embraced by perfect love. They have learned in prayer that they are accepted, and not to be afraid.
This person is untouchable by the world because they have found a home where they are never rejected, never turned away, or left alone. They are stable, immovable now. They have been “filled with the fullness of God”1 so much so that they burn with enough love to give away endlessly to all they meet.
They’re not self-protective. They, like Christ, are able to be seen as they are before the world unclothed in pretence or inhibited by shame because they have come to see their weakness as the very power through which God is more clearly seen and love more tangibly experienced.
This kind of peace is miraculous. Truly, it is. No self-help books can get us there, no affirmations are enough. Just telling ourselves we’re loved can get us some way, but not in the deep places where we know how broken we truly are. For that we need God himself, doing surgery in the deep self.
No, we must gaze eyes open and unashamed into the very burning heart of Love Himself and have Him tell us we’re wanted, we’re healed, we’re enough. This Truth is relational, personal, real. God is not a set of wishful affirmations, He is the Person for whom we were made.
We may not reach such perfection in this life, but we can grow exponentially in it. Daily living more and more from love rather than for it. Slowly relenting our insecurities and discovering confidence. Gradually becoming more like the God we see and know.
Don’t be afraid. If there’s reason to worry God will reject you in your brokenness then what was the cross for? Did God go to all this work simply to keep you at arms length? Do you think Christ himself would endure torture, humiliation and death just so you could continue to wonder whether you’re wanted, loved, and accepted?
Of course not! Don’t forget that it is God who loved us first, who made the first vulnerable move2.
Why not open up, be poor with God, and let him see all of you. Why not refuse to divert your eyes, gaze into his love, his pursuing desire of you, let it affect you, fill you, transform you. It is enough for God to see you each day like this to make you an entirely new person. One who is alive, and totally free, no longer afraid.
Then you too may pray the ancient prayer, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”3
It’s always with “unveiled faces” that we’re invited to “contemplate the Lord’s glory” in communion. Anything less steals from God what he desires most: our naked abandonment to his presence.
Amen.
Ephesians 3:19
We love because he first loved us.” – 1 John 4:19
Genesis 16:13
A beautiful short Sunday-poem. Using just a few words, Joseph Massey creates an exquisite image of prayer in an empty church. Do sit with it for a moment.
In an empty church
in the middle of the day
dark but for stained glass
flooded with sun, a prayer
held in the breath in my hands.
You can find his latest bestselling book of poems here.
April 7, 2001
The Blue Journal
“The most common word for worship in the New Testament comes sixty-six times. It could be translated ‘I come toward to kiss.'” (David Watson)
Blue Journal December 17, 2000
“If you desire to know how these things come about, ask grace, not instruction; desire, not understanding; the groaning of prayer, not diligent reading; the Spouse, not the teacher; God, not man; darkness, not clarity, not light, but the fire that totally inflames and carries us into God by ecstatic unctions and burning affections.” (St. Bonaventure)
“So when we prayed and have a multitude of distractions like troublesome flies, as long as they displease us and we do what lies in our power to turn from them faithfully, our prayer doesn’t stop being good and acceptable to God. We may be sure of this.” (St. Jane Frances de Chantal)
“The highest form of prayer is to the goodness of God . . . . God only desires that our soul cling to him with all of its strength, in particular, that it clings to his goodness. For of all the things our minds can think about God, it is thinking upon his goodness that pleases him more and brings the most profit to our soul.” (Julian of Norwich)
“I was close to giving up on prayer altogether. Instead, I started to pray for laughter.” These words of Amy Julia Becker remind us that sometimes that is the perfect prayer to pray. Read her guest post on Ann Voskamp’s blog here. Good to read even if you don’t feel like giving up on prayer . . . ’cause some day you surely could.
This photo will make you laugh–if nothing else. Me as a child. 🙂
“A friend visited India. In a chapel in Calcutta, she met Mother Teresa. ‘How am I to know what I am to do with my life?’ The woman of Calcutta answered: ‘You must do that which does not interrupt your conversation with God?'”
Witnesses to Hope 