Decades of work as a political activist have convinced me that peace begins as an inside job. My work to achieve nuclear disarmament may at first seem like a purely external, public pursuit, but in fact it has taught me much about the power of a prayerful inner life and the centrality of love and prayer to success. Since I speak as a full-time political activist rather than as a religious leader, readers need not fear that my goal is proselytization for one religion or another when I say that the transformative power of prayer is crucial to our personal growth and political struggle for global peace.
The evidence of real prayer is whether it opens the heart to love, regardless of whether we pray quietly, out loud, within a tradition, out of a tradition, facing the east, the west, up or down. If it’s prayer, it opens the...
