I Pray Because…

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I pray because I am happy, not because I am unhappy. I did not turn to God in unhappiness, in grief, in despair – to get consolation, to get something from God. I was praying because I wanted to thank God. No matter how dull the day, how long the walk seemed, if I felt sluggish at the beginning of the walk, the words I had been saying insinuated themselves into my heart before I had finished, so that on the trip back I neither prayed nor thought, but was filled with exaltation… my very experience as a radical, my whole make-up, led me to want to associate myself with others, with the masses, in loving and praising God.


DOROTHY DAY The Long Loneliness, (Harper, 1952)

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