Agape for groups

After finishing a rough draft of the book, I continue commenting on each chapter by now turning to chapter 6.

This chapter, of course, is about the 6th Step in the 7-step agape prayer practice. It is an expansion of what I said for individuals. Now I turned to groups.

Here are a few excerpts from this chapter:
Choices of groups might be a church, school, family, study class, neighborhood or housing complex. Pray to experience how agape is manifested among them. When I say pray for the well-being of that group, I mean in the same way that you prayed for a person in Steps 2-5. Prayerfully hold with your attention a group you choose, and visualize participating with this group in the spiritual flowing of agape. Then let agape flow into that moment of prayer. As you hold the group in prayer, you may pray the words, “Let agape flow among …”

And remember, being in ‘agape contact’ isn’t effected in any way by distance or time. Practice this exercise until you are able to experience the power of agape flowing into the center of this group’s life and work.

You might want to expand to other groups by using similar categories to the ones in those previous steps; for example, expand from the spiritually meaningful group to consider a group of friends, then expand to a group of strangers, and finally expand to a group of people from a culture or nation considered to be enemies of your own culture or nation.

As the Agape Prayer Practice develops for you, it helps to constantly keep realizing that these steps are only possible because agape does not originate with you, but is actually the way the divine Presence is made manifest to all that God creates. So you are merely following God’s agape into the interactions of a group.