"If I pray for a close friend today but do not send him a postcard to tell him I am thinking about him, how is that prayer supposed to touch him? If I pray for world peace, but do not, inside of myself, forgive those who have hurt me, how can God bring about peace on this planet? Our prayer needs our flesh to back it up.

"There is in Ingmar Bergman's movie The Serpent's Egg a scene that powerfully illustrates this. It runs along these lines: A priest has just finished presiding at the Eucharist and is in the sacristy taking off his vestments when a woman enters. Middle-aged, needy, lonely in her marriage, and suffering terribly from religious scruples, she begins to sob and protest that she is unlovable: 'I'm so alone, Father, nobody loves me! God is so far away! I don't think he could love me anyway. Not the way I am! Everything is so dark for me!' At first, the priest is more irritated than compassionate, but at one point he says to the woman: 'Kneel down and I will bless you. God seems far away. He cannot touch you right now, I know that, but I am going to put my hands on your head and touch you — to let you know that you are not alone, not unlovable, not in the darkness. God is here and God does love you. When I touch you, God will touch you.' This is someone who is praying as a Christian, someone who is giving incarnational flesh, skin, to his prayer."