Prayer Can Be ... Gratitude

One of the components of my life for which I feel great gratitude.

—

On Sunday, I was in two gatherings at church where the concept of gratitude entered in.

The first was a gathering to learn about the healing work of God, led by an older Australian gentleman who has given his life to the ministry of healing in the church. He shared that gratitude is important to healing in the sense that if we don’t recognize what God has already done in our life (gratitude), it makes it harder to be open to what he can do (healing). 

Later in the day, our assistant rector spoke along similar lines at the contemplative eucharist service. He said that gratitude creates an opening in us for God. It helps us see, and then we have a greater capacity to see more. 

I know some people who keep a daily gratitude journal, just looking out upon their lives and writing in that journal each day the things for which they have to give thanks.

For myself, I find that practicing the review of the day increases gratitude in my life in a very natural way and in significant measure. When I begin to see on a regular basis that God is present and working in my life in so many ways that I might not have seen in the moment they happened, that increases my posture of gratitude toward God and toward life. 

How might gratitude become a form of prayer for you?

Prayer Can Be ... A Review of the Day

I’ve written on two different occasions about something called the prayer of examen. It’s a simple, daily practice of taking 10-15 minutes at the end of each day to review the events of the day and look for evidences of God.

Sometimes we’re aware of God’s presence with us in the day, and sometimes we’re not. The prayer of examen, or review of the day, gives us a chance to acknowledge God and to find God in places previously unseen. 

When I practice a review of the day, a wide variety of moments can be called to mind:

• Being saved from a potential car crash
• The chance to participate in the eucharist at church
• A text from a friend or loved one
• An email that deeply touched me
• That moment at the end of the day when all four of us — Kirk, me, Solomon, and Diva — pile on the bed to snuggle and make each other laugh
• Remembering to pay a bill coming due
• The chance to sit in quiet on my couch for a half hour, just reading and praying
• Beautiful weather

These are evidences of God’s goodness toward me. Ways God provided for soul and body. Ways I was opened to love and grace. 

It is a chance to notice and give thanks.

Could a review of the day be helpful to you?

Prayer Can Be ... "Please"

The last few days, into the wee hours of the night and morning, I’ve been transcribing interviews with individuals living deep inside the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Christians. Jews. Muslims. 

Scholars. Farmers. Refugees. 

Government officials. Bedouin natives.  

They tell a story that will absolutely break your heart.

There is so much of this conflict I’m not sure many of us really know. We hear the news headlines and sound bytes, but we rarely hear the stories. We rarely hear of day-to-day life for everyday people living there. We rarely hear the narrative arc, as both sides tell it, of this small but always simmering and often explosive corner of our delicate world. 

When I hear the stories of land lost, houses demolished, families separated, roads blocked, curfews instated, IDs revoked, and barbed wire and walls put up, my heart cries out with one plea: 

“Please.”

When I hear of displacement, dispossession, and oppression, my heart cries out: 

“Please.” 

When I hear of the despair, the suicide attempts, the lost grip on the value of one’s own life, my heart cries:

“Please.”

When I hear of nonviolent resistance, of peace petitions, of generous concessions met with violence or silence, my heart cries out: 

“Please.” 

When I see the international response of apathy or ignorance or pigeon-holing or blind-eyeing, I cry out in sadness: 

“Please.” 

These are cries of prayer for peace. For resolution. For mercy. For wisdom to know my part. For pain at the hardness of hearts. For pain at this whole wide world’s suffering soul. 

What makes your heart cry, “Please”?

Prayer Can Be ... Writing

Writing is prayer for me. 

When I write here each day for you, it’s an act of prayer to discern what ought to be shared and the best way in which to share it. 

But also, when I write privately, the entries I compose on my typewriter are prayer. I feed sheets of paper through the roller and pound away at the vintage keys. Sometimes I speaking directly to God. Sometimes I’m just getting my thoughts and feelings on paper.

The whole time, I’m seeking to get at what’s really true.

What’s happening now? What do I think and feel about those things? Where is God in here? What am I learning? What’s difficult? How can my previous experience shed light on this? How will I respond?

These questions, for me, are prayer. They’re an act of opening my heart to the truth and of inviting God to tell me the truth, too.

They’re moments of clarity. Of repentance. Of contrition. Of discernment. Of holy truth-telling.

How is writing prayer for you?

Prayer Can Be ... Preparing a Meal

Sometimes when I’m in the kitchen preparing dinner at the end of a work day, anticipating Kirk to walk in the door at any moment, I’m aware that the dinner preparations have become like prayer. 

I’m slicing tomatoes or pressing garlic or sauteeing onions or browning meat. I’m stirring soup or measuring broth or chopping cilantro or pouring spices. I’m squeezing lime wedges or mashing avocadoes or dicing bell peppers or shredding rotisserie chicken. 

And all along, I’m holding Kirk and our home in my heart. 

I heard a description of prayer once as “holding someone up to the light.” Not using any words or making specific petitions. Just holding them up to the light. 

Preparing a meal in our home often becomes that kind of prayer for me.

I’m holding Kirk and our home close to me, then holding them up to God. Just presenting them. Us. Our life. My heart toward him. My heart for peace reigning here. My love for the provision of sustenance in our home. My love for sharing that meal with him.

What is it like for meals to be viewed as prayer for you?

Prayer Can Be ... Nature

For some of us, prayer happens best when we’re outside. 

• Taking a walk in the quiet outdoors
• Hearing the back-and-forth call of birds
• Feeling the wind or sunshine
• Tromping through thick snow
• Spotting a bald eagle
• Glimpsing the sparkle of sun on lake waters
• Wandering through thousand-year-old forests
• Following a butterfly’s journey
• Feeding a horse an apple
• Laying on a blanket in the park, looking up at the sky
• Finding a rainbow
• Listening to the rhythmic pattern of pounding waves 

There are unending ways the natural world invites us toward God.

It teaches us God’s peace, as it continues on without worry of all that worries us. It teaches us God’s beauty, as the intricacies and creativity abound. It teaches us God’s care, as the ecosystems and cycles of life exist in perfect balance. And on and on and on.

The natural world becomes a doorway into the heart of God. 

How have you experienced nature as prayer?

Prayer Can Be ... Exercise

When I was six years old, my mom took my younger sister and me to join a soccer team. I remember walking toward the group of kids on the field that first day of practice and being truly petrified. I was shy, so meeting a group of strangers filled me with great anxiety. And besides that, I didn’t know the first thing about soccer. 

The soccer attempt was short-lived. (I don’t recall that I ever went back after that first day’s experience.)

But my sister and I joined a girls’ city softball league shortly after that. And the extent of my native athletic talent should be made plain to you with this fun fact: 

I played girls’ softball for three years and only hit the ball once. 

My freshman year in high school, I tried out for the volleyball team and was surprised to discover I liked it. I was also surprised to discover I made first cuts at tryouts. The coach thought I was quick and disciplined at the conditioning drills. Also, I hit a pretty mean serve, and I could bump the ball with the best of them.

Spiking and setting? Not so much. I was cut from the team in the second round.

I did, however, excel at swimming. My older brother and I went out for the team my sophomore year and were both moved to varsity within a few swim meets. But as much as I loved the conditioning experience of swimming laps and following drills, I hit a plateau and never grew beyond a certain point. Plus, anxiety crippled me at the swim meets. I swam for one year and then quit. 

All this to say, exercise has never really been my friend.

And yet I’m experiencing the way exercise can be a form of prayer these days. 

Earlier this year, due to a couple of events, I began to explore the importance of the body in our lives — especially our spiritual lives — and have been experimenting in different small ways with what I’m learning. I have such a long way to go in truly understanding all this, and especially in integrating it into my daily life and behavior, but there is one thing I’ve noticed.

When I think of my body as part of the whole of who I am, exercise becomes a form of prayer.

I push and pull against resistance with the weights. I expand and contract my muscles with stretches and reps. 

And all along, as it’s hard, I’m thinking, This body is yours, God. You gave it to me to steward. It houses my heart, mind, and soul. I’m doing this for you.

Do you ever experience exercise as prayer? 

Prayer Can Be ... Serving Another Person

Earlier this year, I volunteered for an event in downtown Orlando called iDignity, which provides free services once a month to help people get their paperwork so they can apply for ID cards, birth certificates, and social security cards.

You probably already know that without proper identification, it’s impossible to do certain things in society, like get hired for a job, cash a check, rent an apartment, or vote. Identification plays such a critical role in helping people become participating members of society. 

I was privileged to interact with a broad spectrum of humanity that day.

So many stories. 

A number of the people I met had just gotten out of jail, some for the second or third time. They didn’t have places to live. Some had been previously arrested in other states, and their only form of physical identification was a mug shot on file at the out-of-state jail. They were hungry and trying to scrounge money for their next meal.

I remember, still today, some of the individuals I met. A tall, quiet young man with a record. An older black woman with dark eyes and a meek smile. A young pregnant girl so thin her legs looked like they could so easily snap like twigs.

It felt like such a privilege to look into their eyes and smile. 

To accord them dignity. 

To acknowledge their common humanity with me. 

I felt like I was looking into the eyes of Christ each time someone approached me to put their name on the list for a birth certificate application.

In them was the image of God. Just like the image of God is in me. 

And so each smile, each moment of eye contact, each small conversation was an instance of prayer. As I loved them, I was loving Jesus. 

Have you ever experienced prayer as serving another person?

Prayer Can Be ... Spiritual Direction

I’ve shared on different occasions how meaningful it is for me to meet with my spiritual director, Elaine, once a month.

We sit together in her home, and there’s open space for me to talk about what’s going on in my relationship with God. Or simply what’s going on in my life in general, and we look together for God’s presence and activity in those things. 

I always leave her home feeling refreshed.

I know God is in that place, present between the two of us. 

A lot of that has to do with my knowing Elaine is attuned to God as she listens to me. She’s listening to me, but she’s also listening to the Holy Spirit. And in her responses to me, she reflects that prayerful posture — sometimes through asking just the right question, sometimes through pointing out something I hadn’t noticed, sometimes by remembering the landscape she knows of my story and how it might speak to what’s currently going on.

As a spiritual director myself, I know that the full hour of time that I hold with someone in a session — or even the full length of an email dialogue we might carry concerning their journey of the heart — is prayer. Whether their sharing is spoken to me or to God, all of it is prayer.

That space is sacred. We are listening and looking together for God. 

Have you ever experienced spiritual direction? Would you like to?

Prayer Can Be ... Tears

Sometimes you’re in a place where all you can do is cry. 

Those tears are prayer. 

I love the way Psalm 56 describes our tears in the sight of God: 

“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.”

—Psalm 56:8, NLT

I have all these images in mind of what those bottles of tears look like in God’s storehouse. Maybe one is a vial. Maybe another a mason jar full. Maybe another the size of an old glass milk bottle. Maybe another a bottle of wine. 

I suspect that no matter the volume of our tears, God finds bottles of suitable size to hold every single one of them. How could he not?

Have tears ever been prayer for you? Is it helpful to know that they are?

Prayer Can Be ... Being Present to Another

One of my favorite things in the world to do is be present to another person as they’re sharing their heart.

Whether we’re sitting together on the couch, connecting across the miles by phone, or sharing an email exchange, I love the experience of receiving another person’s heart and giving them the experience of being truly heard and seen.

God seems to have given me an uncommon ability to do this:

• Asking questions that help a person probe deeper into their heart, feelings, beliefs, and experiences; 
• Reflecting back what I hear so they find themselves saying, “Yes! That’s exactly it!” and feel that amazing, uncommon rush of having been actually known;
• Providing space for the “real deal” to be said without a flinch or agenda offered in response;
• Getting out of the way so my stuff and my story don’t interrupt or detract from their sharing.

I love being made this way. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that God made this attentive listening the focus of my life’s work now. (And if you need someone to be present to you in this way, consider this an open invitation from me.)

But sometimes, when being present to another person, the way forward becomes unseen. I find myself, with them, stuck in the brambles. There isn’t a clear way through. 

Usually, at this point, I discover the end of myself. And the next step forward is truly a Hail Mary pass: 

“God, help. I don’t know what to say. Please show up.”

Pretty much every time, he does.

In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced God not showing up after I prayed that panicked plea. The conversation takes a turn I never could have foreseen or orchestrated, and I know that God has been there. He showed up in ways beyond me.

Have you ever experienced prayer when being present to another?

Prayer Can Be ... Receiving Love

Do you know what it’s like to receive love? 

Like, really receive it? 

I have a close friend who teaches me a lot about this.

There have been a number of special times when we’ve been visiting each other where, before our time together ends, we sit together on the couch, our heads on each other’s shoulders, just being together in silence. 

In those moments, I can literally feel her receiving my love. Her eyes are closed, and she’s just sitting there, letting me be with her in a vulnerable moment. 

Her receiving my love in those moments?

That’s prayer. 

How do I know this? Because my own heart toward her is full to bursting with the same heart God has toward her: love, acceptance, enjoyment, welcome, delight. When she allows herself to receive those things from me, she’s also receiving them from God.

What is it like for you to receive love? Can you consider that experience the equivalent of receiving God’s love for you?

Prayer Can Be ... Liturgy, Part 2

I’ve been sharing with the Cup of Sunday Quiet subscribers about some of the difficult changes at work in my spirit and my life with God. Over the last few weeks, as these changes have accelerated, I’ve seen myself grow more and more weary. More and more weak. 

Last weekend, I had hardly any physical or emotional or spiritual strength to stand. 

When it came time on Sunday evening to drive to the contemplative eucharist service at our church that we love so much, I had a hard time just being willing to go. It felt like I was pushing myself to get ready, pushing myself out the door, pushing myself to be faithful and just show up. 

And as we were driving to our little church, just around the corner from our home, I thought to myself: 

“I’m not going to have the strength to say the prayers. I just can’t physically do it. I’m going to have to let the prayers of the people carry me.”

This is another reason I love liturgy. It prays for us when we cannot pray ourselves. 

I knew that I could be in that church with that gathering of people that night and simply be there, not even a single word escaping my mouth the entire time, and the people would still pray. 

Their prayers would hold me up.

I could rely on their prayers when I had no ability of my own.

Prayer can be liturgy because in the gathering of the people, it prays faithfully. It allows the voices of the strong many to hold up the weary few.

Prayer can be liturgy … if we need it, and if we let it.

Have you ever experienced liturgy holding you up in this way?

Prayer Can Be ... Liturgy, Part 1

Kirk and I made an episcopal church our home a little over a year ago.

After attending non-denominational Christian churches for most of my life, getting used to liturgy in church definitely took some time. We were the ones flipping through the Book of Common Prayer, never quite sure which pages were happening next. We were the ones taking the cues of those around us when the time came to kneel or stand or sit. We were the ones who never made the sign of the cross on our foreheads, lips, and heart at the announcement of the day’s Gospel reading because we just didn’t know what that gesture was or what it meant. 

Despite the learning curve, it took me no time at all to appreciate two key aspects of liturgy: 

1. Liturgy helps you pray what’s true.
2. Liturgy holds you up when you’ve fallen down.

Today we’re going to talk about the first, and tomorrow we’ll talk about the second.

So, when it comes to helping you pray what’s true, I love that every week, I get to tell God this:

I confess that I have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what I have done and what I have left undone. I have not loved you with my whole heart. I have not loved my neighbor as myself.

This prayer brings me back to myself. I’m reminded of what’s happened since I last prayed these words, as though the events of the previous week — or even the previous hour! — are playing on the movie screen of my mind. These words help me acknowledge my need for grace to myself and to God. 

I love that just before taking eucharist, I get to say the words of the Lord’s Prayer slowly. I get to remember that God’s name is hallowed. That I long for his kingdom to come. That I get to be a part of his will being done on earth right now. I get to keep asking for just the right amount of daily bread. To be forgiven while being reminded of my own need to forgive. For God’s grace to help me evade the darker side of life. I get to tell God each and every week that his is the kingdom and the power and glory, forever and ever, amen. 

And I love when it comes time to pray this: 

Grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart.

It reminds me of my heart’s deepest prayer: that I want to love God with single-hearted focus all my days.

Liturgy helps us pray what’s true. 

Have you ever experienced this with liturgy?

Prayer Can Be ... An Offering

Kirk and I traveled to the Pacific Northwest for a wedding a little over three years ago, and before we flew back home, we had one full day to explore the area. So we trekked over to Whidbey Island, off the coast of northern Washington State, and spent the day there.

While we were exploring the island, we stopped the car overlooking the coast in one particular area, and Kirk got out of the car. When he got back in the car, he had a large, smooth, gray stone in his hand, which he handed to me.

This trip was happening just before I was going to begin a 3-month summer of solitude dedicated to the study of nonviolence. And this stone, we both knew, had something to do with that.

It was a prayer rock in some way.

When we got home from the trip, I placed the stone on top of a Trinity fixture, which you see pictured above, which sits in a corner of my desk. I placed the stone there and just sat there looking at it, letting it be a kind of offering to God.

It was the offering of the summer of solitude about to begin and whatever words might emerge from it. 

It was the offering of my trust in God for those three months and their result. 

It was an offering of acknowledging that my doing what I was about to do in those three months — and anything I did as a result of them — was simply a response to God’s invitation in my life in the first place. 

Objects can be offered up as prayer. 

Have you ever experienced something like this?

Prayer Can Be ... Symbolic

I have this wall next to my desk that I call my prayer wall. Affixed to it are 5 or 6 symbolic items I’ve purchased or received as gifts over the years. 

Each one of these symbols reflects something deep and meaningful to my heart. 

One of the symbols is a cast-iron symbol of a tree. It has small sprouting buds on each branch, and the topmost branches make the form of a cross. It reminds me of resurrection — that life springs out of death. It speaks of my life’s work, which is centered around growth. It reminds me of the tree of life.

Another of the symbols is a tiny golden-bronze cross that has 12 individual stick-figures joining hands in a circle at the center of it. Their joined hands create the image of a heart between each one of them. This symbol reminds me of my heart for cooperation and my prayer for a peaceful world. 

Yet another of the symbols has a large Holy Spirit dove on it, swooning over the word “Pax,” for “peace.” It reminds me of my ongoing journey to understand and embody nonviolence.

It’s my prayer wall. 

Sometimes, when sitting at my desk, I stare at each image, letting my gaze linger on each one.

It’s a time of remembering who I am in my deepest core. It’s a time of asking God to keep cultivating in me the heart he gave me before I was born. 

Do you have any symbols that are prayer to you?

Prayer Can Be ... Photography

I see a mossy mop head. Do you? 

Also, a heart.

About a year ago, a friend emailed to say she was considering an iPhone purchase and wondered how I’d liked my experience of owning one. I had owned mine for about six months at the time, and I wrote her back to say, “It’s changed my life.” 

It seems an audacious claim, I know.

But I made it in all seriousness. There were about 5 reasons I could list — quite readily — to detail why I’d found it to be true. 

And one of those 5 reasons — the most meaningful to me of them all — was the discovery of photography it brought into my life, specifically through the use of the Instagram app.

Whether you use Instagram or some other app, a “real” camera or just your handheld phone, photography can become a form of prayer in several different ways.

• First, it makes us aware. When we have a camera in hand, we notice the details. We have an eye out for beauty. We’re present to our surroundings, looking for what speaks to us to be captured. 

• Second, it makes us still. In the moment of taking a photograph, I find that everything slows down to zero. My breath even holds in my throat. I’m completely in tune with the moment and the object in front of my lens. Time evaporates. 

• Third, it enlivens. On the Instagram app, the creative proess extends beyond the click of the camera. There’s an instant editing process that invites further interaction with the image and experience. Different filters lend perspective and mood. The blurring tools help accentuate intention. The photograph becomes an organism enlivened by our touch — and it’s enlivening to experience, too. 

• Fourth, it gives us a chance for remark. When something catches my notice to be captured as a photograph, usually a short word, phrase, or line runs through my mind immediately. This becomes the photo’s caption — the way I share my heart in taking it, the way I make that image an offering.

I’ve found that photography — even my “poor man’s” version of it — heightens my love affair with beauty, stillness, perspective, and creativity. It’s a way to see and to express my heart. In a way, it’s how I tell God, “I see you here.”

Have you ever experienced photography as prayer?

Prayer Can Be ... Art Collage

My first art collage, June 2012.

In the course of a visit one time, a friend said she had something she wanted to share with me. We sat down on her comfy two-person rocker chair, and she pulled out an art collage piece she’d created.

All over the piece were images and words she’d pulled from various magazines and collected into one concentrated place. 

It was the words that arrested me the most. They spoke of realities near and dear to her heart. Realities we’d spoke often about in the years of our friendship. Realities she’d incorporated into her lifestyle and that had guided some of her biggest life decisions.

I was staring at a piece of her heart on that posterboard.

And it was holy. 

No words but three could escape my lips in that moment. “This is prayer,” I breathed.

“It is?”

My friend was surprised. She hadn’t created the collage with prayer in mind. She’d just set out to express what she cared about. 

But it was indeed a form of prayer.

When we get in touch with the most interior truths of ourselves — when we touch them, when we see them, when we say, “Yes, this is true of me” — we touch what God also sees. We touch God’s response: “Yes.”

Have you ever experienced art collage as prayer?

Prayer Can Be ... Painting

I am, quite admittedly, not much of an artist. I never have been. 

But last year, I began to experiment with paints and markers in my Moleskine, and I discovered how much the process can be prayer. 

Often, I’ll pull out my art supplies, put a blank sheet in front of me, and have no idea what I’m going to create. It often starts with nothing more than a feeling or intuition.

That feeling or intuition may be heavy — out come the dark colors, painted all over the page. It may be hopeful — out come the yellows and greens. It may include a word or a line of words. It may carry symbols or patterns.

It may feel like fiery, passionate, hope-filled growth — and so out comes the painting you see above. 

The paints teach me what my heart has to say. I discover what’s going on in there through color and brushstrokes.

And what comes out is a prayerful offering.

My heart. On the page. Offered up.

Has painting ever been prayer for you?

Prayer Can Be ... Silent

At the end of the weekly lectio that I record each week for the Cup of Sunday Quiet, I usually include a few moments to sit in silent acknowledgment of what that time has held. 

God is present. We are present.

And we just hold the acknowledgment of that for a few silent seconds.

This is prayer, too. 

In fact, these “prayers of the silences” are an often companion in the journey of my life with God right now. God is here, but we aren’t communicating in conscious, cognitive ways like I’ve been used to doing. 

It’s a strange and difficult change, but it is also okay. I sit in the silence, staring off into space, and I know God is here, just as much as I am. No effort to put things into words is needed. Just being aware of our presence in the same space is enough. It is prayer, too.

Do you ever experience these prayers of the silences?