Amidst the Unknown Prayer Builds an Inner Shelter

Wonder at the unknown also calls forth prayer. The unknown is our closest companion; it walks beside us every step of our journey. The unknown is also the place where each of us has come from. From ancient times, prayer is one of the ways that humans have attempted to befriend the unknown. Prayer helps us to build an inner shelter here. Nature is the kind surface, the intimate face of a great unknown. It is uncanny to behold how boldly we walk upon the earth as if we are its owners. We strut along, deaf to the silence in the vast night of the unknown that lives below the ground. Above the slim band of air which forms the sky around our planet is the other endless night. Wonder makes the unknown interesting, attractive, and miraculous. A sense of wonder helps awaken the hidden affinity and kinship which the unknown has with us. Ancient peoples were always conscious of the world underneath. Special sacred places could be doorways into that numinous region. Odysseus and Aenaeas, the two mystical voyagers of classical antiquity, knew where to go in order to enter the world underneath. In Celtic mythology, this is where the Tuatha de Dannan secretly lived. They were residents at the roots of the earth. They controlled all fertility and growth. Offerings and libations were regularly made to them. In ancient culture, nature always had an elemental divinity which demanded respect and reverence. While holding its reserve, the unknown revealed dimensions of its numinosity. Places can be numinous, but so can people.