The Prayer Thread is a collection of teachings and practical prompts to help as we learn to pray in community. This text was originally delivered on July 6, 2022 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
Often, we are taught to pray at “special times,” such as at night before bed or on Sundays in church. Yet many of us get caught up in moments of awe and gratitude at other times, right in the midst of our ordinary life. This is especially true in the middle and later stages of our spiritual journeys.
In the beginning, when we have recently awoken to the work of the Holy One in our lives, prayer is often sporadic. We vacillate between our own efforts and the effortless effort of the Holy One, purging and emptying ourselves in order to become vessels more capable of love. In these early stages, it seems we must endure more fits and stops. We expend ourselves and then need to rest before taking the next step.
As we slowly trudge through the muck of purging, we catch more and more glimpses of Light. Our being becomes more spacious, more able to sustain the intensity of the Light of Love. Slowly and surely, we begin to recognize that the Light is everywhere, even in what earlier seemed only dark or negative to us.
Having caught glimpses of Light, we begin to develop a more constant longing for the Light, and this seed of longing grows into the fruits of prayer in every moment. For even though we may not be formally at prayer, the longing for the Light of the Holy One works on us ceaselessly. The presence of the Light is always, already “turned on,” and in the simple act of surrendering to it in openness, we are able to participate in prayer in every moment.
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