"A prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned Godward"
About this Quote
Brooks strips prayer of its stained-glass mystique and hands it back as something almost embarrassingly human: a wish with direction. The rhetorical move is sly. By calling prayer "merely a wish", he deflates religious performance, the pious vocabulary, the implied spiritual hierarchy. Prayer isn’t a specialized technique reserved for the devout; it’s desire. Then he pivots with "turned Godward", restoring seriousness without reclaiming theatrics. The line suggests that what changes a wish into a prayer is not eloquence or certainty, but orientation - an inward swivel of attention toward the divine.
The subtext is pastoral and democratic. Brooks, a major American Episcopal preacher in a century of industrial churn and doctrinal sparring, seems less interested in policing correct belief than in keeping the channel open between ordinary longing and God. This is a Protestant-inflected sensibility: suspicion of mediation, emphasis on the directness of the relationship, impatience with ritual as a substitute for sincerity. It also reads as a quiet rebuke to the era's moralizing religiosity - prayer as proof of righteousness - and to the opposite temptation, a modern cynicism that treats prayer as superstition. He reframes it as psychology with a horizon: the same engine that produces wishing can produce communion.
That word "simplest" matters. Brooks isn’t exhausting prayer; he’s clearing the throat. Complex theology can come later. First, admit what you want. Then dare to aim it at God.
The subtext is pastoral and democratic. Brooks, a major American Episcopal preacher in a century of industrial churn and doctrinal sparring, seems less interested in policing correct belief than in keeping the channel open between ordinary longing and God. This is a Protestant-inflected sensibility: suspicion of mediation, emphasis on the directness of the relationship, impatience with ritual as a substitute for sincerity. It also reads as a quiet rebuke to the era's moralizing religiosity - prayer as proof of righteousness - and to the opposite temptation, a modern cynicism that treats prayer as superstition. He reframes it as psychology with a horizon: the same engine that produces wishing can produce communion.
That word "simplest" matters. Brooks isn’t exhausting prayer; he’s clearing the throat. Complex theology can come later. First, admit what you want. Then dare to aim it at God.
Quote Details
| Topic | Prayer |
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