Law is written in the noon – and appears as a sovereign activity that extends itself across a bright and open landscape. Prayer is set in the hours after midnight and drawn from a place constrained by darkness. Law consists of statements on the possibility for social change made by those seeking to advance it. Prayer consists of statements on the impossibility of social change, made by those wishing to accede to it. Wherever law may be written, there the sovereign act of writing becomes a burden and constraint upon the writer. But, for the already defeated, and as final refuge, recourse to prayer is the source of a not negligible release. Where law is possible, a pact with the established order must be joined – and the world is thus narrowed by the hope for realisable achievement. But a midnight landscape is drawn out of prayer which has placed suffering at the centre of its concentric, emanating, circles.
