There is no prayer or inner life without reality. Prayer is rooted in reality.
"Well, you see, prayer is basically response," he said. "In prayer we are continually responding to the questions of who we are and who God is. We're working with reality here -- the reality of our own identity and freedom and its relationship to God." ...
Prayer helps you find your identity, your true self united with God. In this identity, you find your freedom; and in this freedom, you are able to respond to reality.
"The interior life is what happens to you when you come alive in contact with reality," he says. "You do not come in contact with God except through reality. The interior life is the capacity to respond. Prayer is not praying five or six times a day. It is an expression of who we are."
- from "Hidden in the Same Mystery - Thomas Merton and Loretto" pp. 56-57, an essay by Sr. Mary Luke Tobin, Merton on Prayer: Start Where You Are
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