Nine of Cups - " A Pure Thought Placed Into Your Heart

For the past two days nines of come up in my daily draw. Here the Nine of Cups, referred to as the " Wish Card. "

Children we are full of wishes and expect them to come true. Many children it seems might not have the luxury of hopeful wishes because their lives are full of suffering and heartache in one way or another.
Wishes for me translate into hope and in a world so of strife, there is always hope, we must have hope, if not for ourselves, then for our children. I believe deeply that there is always 'hope for the hopeless'

I can say that wishing for me is a kind of prayer. But many of us are for what ever reason, sometimes disconnected in someway from prayer. We feel will cannot pray, or don't understand it. There is a poverty of the spirit, and a spiritual dryness, or a misconception of what prayer is..

There was a desperate time in my life when I was unable to pray, though I very much wanted to. A spiritual mentor who was trying to comfort me, said that my desire to pray was a prayer. In so many words in his own prayer, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton says that the desire to pray is prayer itself.

Today I read a definition of prayer that I really love. " The definition of prayer is having  is a pure thought placed into your heart for God to find. "

I expect that whether you call it wishing or prayer it is the intention and what we carry in our heart of hearts that is important.
This prayer of Thomas Merton is a prayer of hope, and the desire for trust.

 "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."