a living
silence and disrupt the life that is gathering underneath. But I have on
occasion spoken in the hope of breaking a dead silence. Spoken words
should arise by common consent. The silence should accept them. The
invisible life should sanction them. The members of the meeting should
welcome them and be unable to mark exactly when the message began and
when it ends. The message should form with the silence a seamless whole.

If the message be a genuine one, the longer I restrain it the better
shaped it becomes in my mind and the stronger the impulse to express it.
A force gathers behind it. Presently, however, I must either voice it or
put it from my mind completely, lest it dominate my consciousness
overlong and rule out the other concerns which should engage us in a
meeting for worship. It is good when a message possesses us. Our
meetings need compelling utterances. But it is not good when a message
obsesses us to the exclusion of all else. This is a danger which
articulate people, particularly those like myself who have much dealing
with words, must avoid. We miss our chance if we do not use the meeting
for worship as an opportunity to dwell in the depths of life far below
the level of words, rising to the surface only when we are forced to by
an upthrust of the spirit which seeks to unite the surface with the
depths and gather those assembled into a quickened sense of creative
wholeness--each in all and all in God.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

WHAT MOVES US TO PRAY AND WORSHIP? Sometimes we are moved by a quickened
sense of a sacred Presence. Prayer and worship are our spontaneous
responses as we awaken to God's unutterable radiance and wonder.
Sometimes we are moved by a realization that, left to ourselves, we are
inadequate, that apart from God we are insufficient. Realizing that our
knowledge is insufficient, we turn to God's light and wisdom. And there
are those who pray and worship as a conscious means of growing up to God
and becoming firmly established in His kingdom.

WHY DO NOT MORE PEOPLE PRAY? Why do not all of us worship more often?
Many lack a quickened sense of a sacred Presence. Though aware of
material things, they are inert to the things of the spirit. They wait
to be spiritually awakened. Most of us persist in feeling that we are
self-sufficient. We feel we are adequate for all ordinary affairs, and
it is only when we find ourselves in overpowering situations that we
recognize we are n