A Footnote to All Prayers

“The One whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou
And dream of Phaedian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images of folklore dream,
And all in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed, unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all are idolators crying unheard
To a deaf idol if Thou take them at Thy word.
Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in Thy great,
Unspoken speech our limping metaphor translate.”

-C.S. Lewis

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