Towards God and People

There are two movements which must be plainly present in every complete spiritual life.  The energy of its prayer must be directed on the one hand towards God, and on the other towards people.  The first movement embraces the whole range of spiritual communion between the soul and God: in it we turn towards Divine Reality in adoration, bathing, so to speak, our souls in the Eternal Light.  In the second we return, with the added peace and energy thus gained, to the natural world; there to do spiritual work for and with God for others.

Thus prayer, like the whole of our inner life, swings between the unseen and the seen.  Now both these movements are of course necessary in all Christians, but the point is that the second will only be well done where the first has the central place.  The deepening of the soul’s unseen attachments must precede, in order that it may safeguard the outward swing towards the world.

– from Concerning the Inner Life (1926), by Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941)