01463 – Training & Expanding One’s Soul
Underhill, Evelyn

It isn’t a bit surprising that you find the Psalms and even your own attempts to develop personal prayer an ‘exercise’ rather than an ‘experience.’ One has to make up one’s mind to submit to training, including the drudgery of training; nor is one’s spiritual state ever to be measured in terms of feeling and conscious experience.

This is where the corporate religious life comes in as such a support. You will find concentration difficult, and prayer and the things of the spirit will often seem unreal. Nevertheless, if persevered in, all those things will gradually train and expand your soul, as certainly as gymnastics train the body.”

from Letters; August 26, 1929

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