The ultimate worship is not the giving of something, but the giving of myself. This I learned as a child, in the teaching of Jesus giving himself for the world. Yet, how shall I give myself, unless I learn by giving somethings? At times, I simply feel the need, or better desire, to give something, for that something incarnates Love. That, too, I learned as a child and in the little Baptist church my family attended. I learned of the Incarnation of the Word, or Christ, becoming Jesus living, giving himself among and with us and for us. Other faiths teach this in other ways, I have since learned, but there is really only one worship and one giving, even as we are one Self, one Being, in one Grace, always. Fidelity to the way given us to worship is fidelity to the way of Love loving through the particularity of that way, of that tradition.

*Brian K. Wilcox

In Prayer, I usually do not relate with "God" as personal or impersonal. I am just being. In quietness arises senses of personal and impersonal. The sense of the vast impersonal can dance in and out with the intimate personal. "God" is neither of these. Both the sense of "God" as "person" and "God" as "not-person" is manifestation of the one Presence. So, will arise from the sense of the impersonal in my Prayer, "Thank You for Your love." This happens often. Now, where does that come from? The same place as the sense of that beyond gratitude and love. Meister Eckhart, the great Dominican mystic, said it well: "God deliver me from God." In the Quiet, different expressions of Life, of Grace, come and go, without our trying to make Grace fit ideas of or expectations of Grace, or "God." For while "God" is more than I can think or feel, "God" is that beyond and expressing in that I think and feel. So, in some sense, whatever is, is the dance of God, what the Hindus aptly call Maya - illusion, yet the illusion itself is "God" playing in, as, and through creation - which includes us. Few persons can accept this play in Prayer, for the "I" wants to have control of "God" as it thinks "God" to be. That is okay, finally. Grace is equally present in all forms of Prayer, even as all Prayer is the play of Love. There is no one way to pray, even as there is no one way for "God" to be "God."

*You can contact Brian at briankwilcox@yahoo.com. Please keep in mind, when reading from this site, that teachings cover an extended period of years and, therefore, reflect changes over that time.