You have the prayer now.

What follows prepares the ground for it. In my own years the prayer became steady, without effort, and it watered the ground with protection. But the ground has to be there first. Each reading sets down one part of it: why the prayer stands at the center, where in the body it is held, how long to stay with it. By the end of this passage you will have said it yourself.

One thing about who is speaking. I am not a teacher and I say so plainly. I am a witness: a physician who met an Elder, kept faithful notes for twenty years in silence, and am only now permitted to share a part of what I received. The authority in these pages is his, never mine.

The Fellow Traveler will be here when you want company. Not before then.