Email: Keeping God in the picture [SD]

I do pray internally and externally all the time; I just [no longer] make a big deal of it. Prayer is part of life, not something you step out of the stream of life to do (even if you think you are not doing so, but are). The implication that many make when a person has faced difficulty for some time is that he must have something wrong with him (that the many would like to adjust). It is a common mistake in spiritual discussion to "try to fix the other's problems" as opposed to just being present and listening as a [compassionate] fellow human (as the cross-denominational, Stephen-Ministry-like, Benedictine-inspired Community of Hope outreach training teaches).

Without God, we are not nothing... We are something... Just less than we are with God [(which is a lot)]. (Again, the fundamentalist all-or-nothing thinking that is useful for pointing out the boundaries of the horizon but not for describing the realities of human life.)