“If I thought I might be wrong,” he answered, “I wouldn’t be doing the thing I was doing.” They argued it a bit. “But,” he went on, “I have no set formula for prayer, nor a definite time.”
Virginia said: “I have always prayed. When I was little I got in the habit of saying a silly little German prayer, so that I could not go to sleep without saying something. So when the little prayer seemed too silly to me, I began saying each evening the stanza of a poem.”
“What poem?” I asked.
“The last stanza of the ‘Chambered Nautilus.’ I could not go to sleep unless I said it.”
She recited it for us.
Marian said: “It depends on what you mean by prayer. I never learned to say any, nor ever wanted to, but I do have a prayer-feeling.”
We all agreed that the prayer which asked for something definite was folly. I said prayer was getting into oneness with the vast Self around and behind us, and drawing strength from that which was ours for the asking, which was ourself.
Marian said it was getting into harmony with the world.
We thought every one had that feeling of vastness, of oneness with God, at times. Virginia said she got it especially when she was by the sea.
“I feel it most,” said Marian, “when I am out of doors, and feel my close relation with nature.”