Prayer

“When I started praying, I would go to the church and talk to God. I talked to him for many years, and then suddenly I realized that this was useless. How can you talk before God? One has to be silent. What is there to be said? And what can I say which will help God to know more? So I stopped talking, I became silent.

Then after many years I realized that even silence wouldn’t do. So I started listening. First I was talking, then I was not talking, and then I was listening.

When this listening happened, then for the first time prayer happened.”

— Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher

Blossom

“I said to the almond tree, ‘Sister, speak to me of God.’
And the almond tree blossomed.”
-- Nikos Kazantzakis

Being last

Jesus said: “Blessed are those who are the last in this world because they shall be the first in my kingdom of God”.

but… careful, if you are trying to be the last, you are not the last. If you are trying, you will be missing the whole point.

To be the last - not by effort, not by striving, not by following some prescribed rules and practices, not by comparing, not by ambition, not by competition - but just by simple understanding that “whatsoever I am, I am; there is no need to be anybody else, I’m blissful in my own being”.