Part 17

“Yes,” answered Ruth; “then you feel how little all this is, and the vast, big life above it all.”

“You don’t mean, Ruth,” I asked “that you feel the crowd to be a little thing?”

“Oh, no,” she answered. “I feel it in the crowd.”

Henry said: “To be among people always arouses that feeling of sympathy.”

There are many ways of praying, I said; to speak certain words that aroused in us the prayer-feeling was a good way; but that the words were only to awaken the feeling in us, and were worth nothing by themselves. If one could feel the prayer without any words whatever, it would be just as well. Florence thought it very hard not to get to repeat words by rote. Henry said he always made a particular effort to think of the meaning of the words as he said them.

“I don’t believe,” said Virginia, “that it is so much thought as feeling. I don’t always think of the meaning of those words when I say them, but I get from them the feeling that I must have, to go to sleep.”

“And now,” I went on, “it seems especially important to get into this frame of mind just before we go to sleep. For during sleep it seems as if the bigger self were working for us. And as we go to sleep, so shall we be next day. I think that if, as you fall asleep, you ask—your vast self—for strength, for the power to do whatever you know you must do next day, and to solve whatever problems you have to solve, and then get the deep sense of prayer, you usually awaken with the strength you need, and your problems solved. Is it not so?”

Virginia said she always found that if she wanted to learn something, she had only to read it over to herself at night, without learning it, and in the morning, when she awoke, she knew it. Ruth said she found it so; that she always felt next day according to the way she had fallen asleep at night. They had various opinions. Marian said it did not matter how she fell asleep at night; if things went well in the morning, the whole day went well; if ill, then the day went ill. She loves the power of each new day. Alfred said he thought that our brains worked for us in sleep, because then the mind was free from all obstructing thoughts.

I repeated for them a little prayer I had written for a baby:

“Great Lord of life, who lives in me, And lives in all I know, With happy thoughts I go to sleep; And while I sleep I grow.

“I hope to wake this coming morn More strong, and brave and bright; While you shall stay, both night and day, With all I love to-night.”

They said it did not seem babyish to them. Henry, especially, liked it, and several of them wished to copy it.

I said one might have the “prayer-feeling,” the sense of the whole, so constantly that one would not need to pray, that one’s whole life might be a prayer.

The children objected to this, because they thought it would be impossible now, in our imperfect condition. Virginia said: “A person who lived that way would be a perfect saint.” Henry thought it would make one cold and unsympathetic.

“How is that possible,” I asked, “when it would be a state of constant sympathy and understanding of life?”

“No,” said Ruth; “such a person would be too much above us. I don’t think one could live so, at present. It would imply a perfection physical and mental that we have not yet reached.”

Florence said she not only thought such a state possible, but she believed there were people who lived in this way now, and that she knew such people.

Some one suggested that they must be unspeakably happy.

“No,” answered Florence; “not necessarily happy, at all.”

I said that I thought such a life would be a state of happiness.

They all agreed; Florence, too, after a moment.

Marian and Henry said they had never met people without limitations. Florence insisted she had; whereupon Marian called her a hero-worshiper. I said people’s limitations were where they failed to understand, and that we none of us understood everything. The sense of oneness would not imply, however, either perfection or apartness or superiority. One might feel everything in this way, whenever one thought of it.

Henry answered: “But how often is one not occupied? Little things distract us constantly.”

Marian said: “It means having always the sense of oneness, sympathy and understanding, and always acting, thinking and judging according to that.”

“Yes,” said I, “and there is another thing that seems to me a prayer. Every creative action; that is, everything we do which brings us into relation with the world, is a prayer because it is an expression of oneness.”

Marian said: “It seems as if there were two kinds of prayer, one strength-giving and one strength-getting.”

I don’t know how we came upon the subject of circles. I said that the smallest things, as well as the largest, were prone to express themselves in a universal way, that every drop of water naturally formed itself into a sphere.

“Yes,” said Marian; “and the circle seems to stand for all life.”