What Is a Prayer

When the prayer is formed from the broken heart

Because it's with the ego you wish to part

No words from the mouth or mind

Can reveal what’s hidden behind

It’s the silent cry beneath the breath

The plea that lives between life and death

Where the soul admits it cannot stand

And reaches out with trembling hand

For the Creator does not hear the tongue

Not the songs so cleverly sung

He hears the shatter, the crack, the tear

The place where pride dissolves to prayer

When the heart breaks open wide

When the self has nowhere left to hide

Then the upper light begins to flow

For only then can we truly let go

A broken heart is the door we cross

Where we finally accept our helpless loss

And in that collapse, that humbled fall

We feel Him answering us all.

Heaven Quiet Embrace

If the right attracts and the left repels,

The right is heaven, the left is hell.

But both are threads the One hand weaves,

The push that breaks, the pull that breathes.

The right says, "Come, My love, return,"

The left says, "Burn until you learn."

Two forces striking one same heart,

One to mend and one to part.

For heaven isn’t joy alone,

It’s the place where we let go of “my own.”

And hell’s not fire or endless night,

It’s the shame of being far from the Light.

So I stand between the two that tear—

One lifts with love, one strips me bare.

And only when both live in me

Can the heart break open and finally see.

Heaven is bestowal, a quiet embrace.

Hell is the fury of self I must face.

But both are the steps on the same narrow stair—

And I climb, with my brothers, in one single prayer.