Heschel’s Wonder-9/20/21

Prayer Begins Where Expression Ends

In a sense, prayer begins where expression ends. The words that reach our lips are often but waves of an overflowing stream touching the shore. We often seek and miss, struggle and fail to adjust our unique feelings to the patterns of texts. The soul can only intimate its persistent striving, the riddle of its unhappiness, the strain of living twixt hope and fear. Where is the tree that can utter fully the silent passion of the soul? Words can only open the door, and we can only weep on the threshold of our incommunicable thirst after the incomprehensible.

Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism