A member of the human community

Prayer does not make us less aware of the circumstances of life. It makes us even more aware than we ever were before. Why? Because now we see the world as God sees the world. We hear the cry of the poor as God hears the cry of the poor. We are less wrapped up in ourselves, more aware of the needs of others, not more self-centered than ever.
 
When we are really wrapped up in the awareness of the presence of God in ourselves, we come to understand that it is of the nature of God who is everywhere to be present to all of us as well as to ourselves. We begin to see ourselves more and more as a member of the human community rather than as a unique and freestanding individual. We know now in a way we have never realized before that we are not a world unto ourselves.
 
The acuity of the heart of God comes with the awareness of the presence of God. Once God takes over the heart, there is no one—no child of God in any tradition anywhere—who does not have claim to our heart as well as to the heart of God. We become our brother’s keeper, our sister’s best support. Our own hearts, like God’s, begin to beat with a heart for the entire human race.
 
To use religion or prayer or contemplation or the search for God as an excuse for ignoring the needs of the world is blasphemy. It denies the very God it purports to preach. It practices the idolatry of the self and calls it union with God. It makes immersion in prayer more important than the fruits of prayer.
 
Such unabashed confusion of prayer makes a farce of prayer itself.
 
Those who truly seek God become more sensitive to the rest of the world because they become daily more like the God they love, the Spirit that energizes them. They carry for all to see the urgings of the God who impels them and draws them out of themselves at the same time.
 
        —from The Breath of the Soul (Twenty-Third Publications), by Joan Chittister