No Extraordinary Power: Prayer, Stillnes and Activism

The answer to prayer may be quite simply, "What are you going to do about it?" Faced with something they believe must be changed, people can find themselves able to accomplish the unexpected. In dangerous times when so much is at risk or destroyed, the power of ordinary people can "reconstitute the world", as the poet Adrienne Rich has put it. And yet this is apparently beyond our own resources. Helen Steven asks: Do we have access through prayer and action to some kind of "extra-ordinary" power beyond ourselves, or is our power for action well within the experience of everyone, with only our deeper spiritual nature to make it "extra-ordinary"? People do experience an enabling power, which many would attribute to God or the Spirit working within them ...Where does that "still, small voice" come from, tugging at the heartstrings, annoyingly imperative and brooking no refusal? Drawing from her experience as a peace activist, and from the support she has found in her life from being a Quaker and a member of the Iona Community, Helen Steven sets out to find how prayer can work to achieve the unexpected within ourselves and in the world.