Properly understood and applied, prayer is the most potent instrument of action.
The wish to pray is prayer.
As we grow in the way of prayer, we begin to know that true prayer is an aware openness to the working of Love, that we may play our part in transmitting the divine love to all whom we meet in the daily round. Prayer is universal in scope, for God has no favorites. The way of communicative silence is the most effective way of knowing God and serving our brothers and sisters... I have little doubt that we will appreciate the silence when the body is dead and the soul passes forth into new surroundings for fresh adventures.
Even when we bring the most difficult situations into prayer, the pain and resistance are in the situations, not in the prayer itself, as prayer is always true to itself. It discloses its own nature — that of a door a passageway to the Great Life of God. Prayer does not hold dismay, even though whatever we pray about may, for prayer move us off the place where we find ourselves and ushers us along — closer, at least — to the place we long to be.
Prayer is action you take in order to realize yourself fully with your neighbor and with God. It is the fulfillment of the great commandment to love God and neighbor. It opens the gate to heaven; heaven is the complete recognition of your potential to be who you really are, uniting you in pain and joy with God and with the whole world. Embracing your own alienation and brokenness with honesty and openness is the foundation of prayer; prayer can be choked off by self-will. Prayer is anything you think, say, do, or feel that opens you up and out to love.
Prayer and meditation are as necessary for the life of the spirit as fresh air, food, and sunlight are for the body. If we think of prayer as talking to God, with or without words, our own or those of others, then we can think of meditation as listening to God — an attitude of open, silent receptiveness.