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Good grief it can be hard to pray. I have this day full of 30 million bits of stuff that I need to take care of. As I jam things higher up on the list, certain things always seem to sink to the bottom -- scrubbing the floors, vacuuming out the car, lugging the trash to the curb, ab crunches and paying bills, followed by prayer. (Unless I am in some sort of crisis, in which case prayer magically floats waaaaaaaaay up on the list.)
First, by prayer, I also mean meditation or anything that carves out special space in a day, apart from all the ordinary moments. It is a time for a dedicated focus within a world larger than just ourselves. In my case, it is prayer to G-d. For others of you it may be a time to connect with the universe, or a wisdom higher than your own. It is a time for surrender, for honesty, for thankfulness, for introspection and intention at a deep level.
Surrender is hard. This is where prayer and meditation become aerobic. Screeching on the brakes to the hurry that shape our day, getting still, carving out a space -- it is work. Surrender is like letting go as you allow a river to float you where it will. It is abandoning attachment to outcome, and letting the river do the work.
If you need some help in finding your way into meditation, or prayer, Beliefnet provides a fine section of short films and flash presentations, from many belief traditions, by clicking here
Tah Groen describes the difficulty in getting to the point of surrender, and suggests that the remedy is to be "in the Now".
What does that really mean -- "in the now"?
Many of us spend many hours living in the past. That is the land of "what if I had done" or "why did he do that" or "I wish history had been different". One of the best definitions of forgiveness I have ever heard is "When one stops trying to change the past." Living in the past is dragging a cast iron ball around with us by the ankle. It is impossible to really pray when one is so consumed with looking backwards.
Living in the future is living in fear and anxiety. Why? Because, like the past -- the future does not exist. Trying to live in a place that isn't there is very fear inspiring. We cannot impact our lives or anyone else's if we tie ourselves up in anxiety about the future, or in delaying our lives until some nameless future is here.
Prayer and meditation can ground us in the present, in the radiant moment of our best mindfulness. In creating a place for prayer or meditation, in carving out that space, we can focus on what matters in the now, and we can ask the Universe or G-d to be with us or others in those holy instants that require more than just our selves.
Prayer is on my mind a lot lately, as I have written here before, I am building a 20 foot by 8 foot prayer/meditation space in my back half-acre. I am finalizing the stone selection tomorrow and getting the final estimate next week.
Having a place to go to pray will help my spiritual discipline, and give me a place to offer to others as well. The stone mason (a man I first met in first grade, and am now re-meeting after 40 years absence from this town) is becoming my collaborator as I showed him pictures of various stone walls that I liked. He convinced me to build the wall as a container for a modest garden. I like that people's prayers will nourish a root system. I want stones that people can pour their prayers into. Stones that inspire through their very nature, an insistence upon the present.
I want prayer to become a special part of my day. A part that I do not neglect. A part that helps me anchor my life in a sacred moment, however tiny, however humble, every day. A time when I pray for the intentions of others, every day.
I watch people who pray and meditate like that. People for whom prayer is not any more frequent than mine, but for whom it is (at least partly) cordoned off as a special time, a simple set apart time. They experience mediation that is -- at east once a day--less casual than other moments.
