In ancient times, coins were formed through a process of melting valuable metals in an intense heat of over fifteen hundred degrees and pouring the resulting liquid into molds to form round “blanks.” Each blank was then sandwiched between a pair of dies with engraved designs.

A coin is “minted” when the blank is struck, or hit with a hammer, forcibly imprinting a different design on each side to create heads and tails (or obverse and reverse, to use more official coin language). While the process is highly automated today, minting of coins still involves striking metal through force to create a two-sided currency.

Prayer is like a two-sided coin, minted in the heat and pressure of life and spent in the bent-knee of practice.

Elisa Morgan