Word: prayerful
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...have traditionally, and rightly, admired: tenacity, energy, competitiveness, hustle--something, in other words, to be contained and harnessed by etiquette and social censure rather than eradicated outright. Until then, alas, anyone braving the streets and highways of America would be well advised to employ a technique older than therapy: prayer...
...down in tireless supplication, she strives toward ecstasy. On and on she circles to the soft crooning of "Mariam, Mariam, Mariam," bending and rising in private communion; the heavy stone never wavers. Suddenly she halts and smiles with such sweetness that the Virgin must surely have answered her prayer...
...Westerners know this kind of faith--idiosyncratic individual devotion at its most physical. There are no glittering ceremonies or grand processions, no public professions, no dramatic visions, only 10,000 acts of private veneration, prayer, supplication. What the stranger sees is the collective reverence of the like-minded in direct contact with the spiritual, and the awesome testament of comfort received, etched on their faces...
...cathedral compound fills with the billowing white gabi, or shawls, that envelop men and women alike, serving as turban, blanket, veil. At their own rhythm, people go about the business of worship. Men read from leatherbound lives of the saints; women ululate softly as they lean on tall prayer rests. Everyone will keep the vigil through the night. As darkness falls, shrouded bundles occupy every empty space on the hard, stony ground, huddling around the dim golden flicker of tiny candles...
...unusually open and practical mind. If I had to single out one sovereign quality in him, it would be alertness, whether he's reminding me of a sentence he delivered to me seven years before or picking out a friend's face in the middle of a jam-packed prayer hall...