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 January 3, 2024 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
A beloved definition of contemplation, attributed to Walter Burghart, SJ, is: to take “a long, loving look at the Real.” To take a second look, then, might be considered prayer. To view again and again, to re-view, in the spirit of the loving gaze of contemplation, is to pray.
We humans tend to attend to this process of re-viewing on an annual basis: when a new year begins, or on a birthday or anniversary. At these times, we take stock. We look at the way things are, the way things have been, and the ways we would wish they might be. When done through the lens of the View of the Holy One, leaning into that which “the more” might call us toward, is to re-view as prayer.
When we re-view in prayer, we take a long, loving look at everything. Our deepest desires, our hidden fears, our daily rhythms, our good and our bad habits. To re-view in a spirit of prayer is to affirm both that we must do our part, and also that there is a Holy Hand, a larger Presence, ceaselessly at work inside and within us, prompting us toward healing and wholeness, toward that which Jesus named as the Reign of God. St. Ignatius of Loyola sensed the urgency of the Reign of God such that he recommended a daily re-view, known in the form of an Examen of Conscience.
To regularly re-view the whole of our lives is prayer. Conscious of the Presence of the Holy One, to re-view our daily lives in prayer is to renew our attention and to hold that long, loving gaze, so that our lives might become more fully integrated into the Divine Life.
