henri nouwen on prayer

Henri Nouwen on why it's so hard to pray:

Prayer is the act by which we divest ourselves of all false belongings and become free to belong to God and God alone. This explains why, although we often feel a real desire to pray, we experience at the same time a strong resistance. We want to move closer to God, the source and goal of our existence, but at the same time we realize that the closer we come to God the stronger will be his demand to let go of the many “safe” structures we have built around ourselves. Prayer is such a radical act because it requires us to criticize our whole way of being in the world, to lay down our old selves and accept our new self, which is Christ.

Amen, Henri.