Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer.

This line is spoken by Anne Shirley in L. M. Montgomery’s novel *Anne of Green Gables* (1908), early in Anne’s life at Green Gables. Still adjusting to her new home and to the expectations of Marilla Cuthbert, Anne resists conventional, formulaic prayer—especially the idea that prayer must be performed in a prescribed posture and with set words. Her remark reflects both her imaginative temperament and her instinctive spirituality: she associates genuine prayer with solitude, nature, and an inward feeling rather than outward ritual. The moment helps characterize Anne as sincere but unconventional, and it also sets up a recurring tension between Anne’s romantic sensibility and the community’s stricter notions of propriety.

The speaker challenges the idea that prayer must follow prescribed postures or institutional forms. Instead, prayer is imagined as an inward, wordless response to solitude and the natural world—an experience of awe that rises spontaneously when one feels small beneath an immense sky. The passage contrasts rote, socially enforced piety (“kneel down”) with a more personal spirituality grounded in perception, emotion, and reverence. It suggests that authentic devotion may be less about correct ritual and more about attentiveness: letting beauty, silence, and vastness draw out humility and gratitude. In Montgomery’s work, this aligns with a recurring theme that imagination and nature can be conduits for moral and spiritual feeling.