Just clearing out my ebox when I came across this article from the DailyOM on a book being released on Prayer by Mother Theresa. I felt that this would be the place to share it.
Prayer as defined by Mother Theresa ~ Take what speaks to you and leave the rest ~
Love you All,
Julia
Everything Starts from Prayer (Book)
by Mother Theresa
Everything Starts from Prayer: Mother Teresa's Meditations on Spiritual Life for People of All Faiths. This is a book for everybody, one doesn't need to have a specific faith or even be religious to benefit from this book by Mother Teresa. This is one of those books that is nice to keep handy and just open to any page to feel uplifted. This book has an energy to it, no doubt from Mother Teresa herself, it is almost as if you can feel your heart expanding. A portion of the author's royalties and the publisher's income will be donated to charity.
Excerpt:
I The Need to Pray. Everything starts from prayer. Without asking God for love, we cannot possess love and still less are we able to give it to others. Just as people today are speaking so much about the poor but they do not know the poor, we too cannot talk so much about prayer and yet not know how to pray.
You may be exhausted with work, you may even kill yourself, but unless your work is interwoven with love, it is useless. To work without love is slavery.
People throughout the world may look different or have a different religion, education, or position, but they are all the same. They are the people to be loved. They are all hungry for love.
In most modern rooms you see an electrical light that can be turned on by a switch. But, if there is no connection with the main power house, then there can be no light. Faith and prayer is the connection with God, and when that is there, is service.
We have to possess before we can give. He who has the mission of giving to others must grow first in the knowledge of God. He must be full of that knowledge.
To be able to give, you must have.
Love to be true has to begin with God in prayer. If we pray, we will be able to love, and if we love, we will be able to serve.
Whatever religion we are, we must pray together. Children need to learn to pray and they need to have their parents pray with them.
It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your own home for this is where our love for each other must start.
In one of the houses our sisters visited, a woman had been dead a long time before anyone knew it, and then they found out only because her corpse had begun to rot. Her neighbors didn’t even know her name.
There is much suffering in the world — very much. And this material suffering is suffering from hunger, suffering from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases, but I still think the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, just having no one.
here are different kinds of poverty. In India some people live and die in hunger.
But in the West you have another kind of poverty, spiritual poverty. This is far worse. People do not believe in God, do not pray. People do not care for each other. You have the poverty of people who are dissatisfied with what they have, who do not know how to suffer, who give in to despair. This poverty of heart is often more difficult to relieve and to defeat.
remember some time ago I visited a very wonderful home for old people. There were about forty there and they had everything, but they were all looking toward the door. There was not a smile on their faces, and I asked the sister in charge of them, “Sister, why are these people not smiling? Why are they looking towards the door?” And she, very beautifully, had to answer and give the truth: “It’s the same every day. They are longing for someone to come and visit them.” This is great poverty.
When things become our masters, we are very poor.
Reprinted with permission of White Cloud Press
Copyright © 1998 by Anthony Stern. All rights reserved.
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