"The beginning of prayer is praise.
The power of worship is song.
To worship is to join the cosmos in praising God. . . .
Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive,
unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin
the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods.
The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement,
seeking to overthrow the forcest hat continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision."
("On Prayer," pp. 257-267, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Susannah Heschel, ed. [Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996]).
And you wonder why I think Abraham Joshua Heschel is one of the great spiritual teachers of the 20th Century?
I bought this book while with Bob and Becky in Vermont, and the essays are amongst the finest examples I know of Jewish spirituality, passed through the bloodstream of a modern day prophet, and gifted to his generation and ours as wisdom that has, as the title says, Moral grandeur and Spiritual Audacity.
Can you think of a better description of prayer as subversion, as God's questioning of our cultural values, and of the role and mission of those who dare say they are followers of Jesus, lovers of God and bearers of the Spirit?
"Ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods". Now there's a mission statement worth putting on sleepy church agendas!
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