The Welcoming Prayer is described as “a method of consenting to God’s presence and action in our physical and emotional reactions” [emphasis added]. The prayer boldly asks us to “feel and sink into” our emotions and our body-based reactions to those emotions. This can be challenging when our prayer practice allows fear, shame, trauma, and the other wounds of life to surface, yet these wounds need to be brought to the surface to allow the Divine Physician to heal them. Notice, though, that we do not seek only to allow the emotions or the physical responses to them. Rather, by faith we recognize that God is “over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:6) – including the emotions and responses themselves! Indeed, the Welcoming Prayer makes clear that what we are really consenting to in gladly receiving whatever the moment offers is the Divine Indwelling in the midst of anything and everything else that arises. The recognition of Holy Presence in all that we welcome (or choose not to welcome) is what makes the practice a true prayer. It is also what allows us to be courageous, expansive, and inclusive in our welcoming, because we know that no matter what comes up, comes along, or comes out, our all-loving God is accompanying it to love it, and us, into health and wholeness!