Prayer is where we articulate the truth of how it is with us, sometimes “with sighs too deep for words.” And articulation is essential to realization. Saying is hearing, seeing, knowing, perhaps for the first time. Making prayer the essence of knowing/doing/being. Prayer brings us forth and makes us known to ourselves. We rob prayer of its vitality, of its life, of its capacity to heal and restore our souls, bind up, make well and encourage us for the task at hand when we reduce it to a list of needs and blessings. The spiritual task is to wake up, grow up, square up to the truth of how things are with us, to get up and do what is called for in each situation as it arises, and in so doing, bringing ourselves–our gifts, our genius, our daemon, our art, forth in doing what needs to be done in the here, now of our living.