When the Heart is Really Alive or On Becoming a Fool

"Of course you see a pigeon," rejoined the raven, "for there is the pigeon! I see a prayer on its way.--I wonder now what heart is that dove's mother! Some one may have come awake in my cemetery!"

"How can a pigeon be a prayer?" I said. I understand, of course, how it should be a fit symbol or likeness for one; but a live pigeon to come out of a heart!"

"It MUST puzzle you! It cannot fail to do so!"

"A prayer is a thought, a thing spiritual," I pursued.

"Very true! But if you understood any world beside your own, you would understand your own much better.-- When a heart is really alive, then it is able to think live things. There is one heart all whose thoughts are strong happy creatures, and whose very dreams are lives. When some pray, they lift heavy thoughts from the ground, only to drop them on it again; others send up their prayers in living shapes, this or that, the nearest likeness to each. All live things were thoughts to begin with, and are fit therefore to be used by those that think. When one says to the great Thinker:-- "Here is one of my thoughts: I am thinking it now!" that is a prayer-- a word to the big heart from one of its own little hearts.-- Look there is another!"

This time the raven pointed his beak downward-- to something at the foot of a block of granite. I looked and saw a little flower. I had never seen one like it before, and cannot utter the feeling it woke in me by its gracious, trusting form, its colour and its odour as of a new world that was yet the old. I can only say that it suggested an anemone, was of a pale rose hue and had a golden heart.

"That is a prayer-flower," said the raven.

"I never saw such a flower before!" I rejoined.

"There is no other such. Not one prayer-flower is ever quite like another," he returned.

"How do you know it is a prayer-flower?" I asked.

"By the expression of it," he answered. "More than that I cannot tell you. If you know it, you know it; if you do not, you do not."

"Could you not teach me to know a prayer-flower when I see it?" I said.

"I could not. But if I could what better would you be? you would not know it of YOURself and ITself! Why know the name of a thing when the thing itself you do not know? Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise!"

But I did see that the flower was different from any flower I had ever seen before; therefore I knew I must be seeing the shadow of the prayer in it; and a great awe came over me to think of the heart listening to the flower."

-- From Lilith: A Romance by George Macdonald