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Main Index
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is, but you don't know. That's why you are pouring your heart out. It is waiting for the unknown to take possession of you. This is faith, this is trust.
The skeptical mind wants first to be certain whether there is a God: "Then I will pray." Rilke is right:
"Oh, but I knew this mowing how far I am from those greedy ones who, before praying, ask whether God exists."
"We will pray only if God exists" -- then you will never pray, because you will never know without praying that God exists. You have made an impossible condition for praying. It is not to be fulfilled. You have to pray. Don't ask the question whether God exists or not. God is irrelevant at this point. At this point, make prayer possible.
Prayer is a song of the heart addressed to the unknown. Maybe he is, maybe he is not, but that is not the point. One is joyous in pouring one's heart out. It is a joy unto itself. Whether God exists or not is secondary. Prayer is primary. And when prayer is primary, it reveals God, it opens your eyes. It CREATES God. Suddenly the world becomes afire when you are afire. When your heart IS aflame, suddenly you see the whole world aflame with the divine, with the unknown, with the mysterious.
"If he no longer or does not yet exist, what difference does it make?"
This is beautiful. This is how a really religious person thinks.
"My prayer, that will bring him into being..."
Prayer will become the womb. I will give birth to God through my prayer. This is the Sufi approach. Rile is almost reflecting the very heart of Sufism. But this is how lovers have always felt, and the poets and the mystics.
"If he no longer or does not yet exist, what difference does it make? My prayer, that will bring him into being, for it is entirely a creative thing as it lifts towards the heavens. And if the God that it projects out of itself does not persist at all, so much the better: we will do it over and it will be less shabby in eternity."
We will go on doing it, we will go on creating God. In fact, it is not creation: it is revelation. But for the person who prays, and for whom God is revealed for the first time, it LOOKS
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