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 31, 2024 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
I recall the first time that I heard a Christian contemplative practitioner working to claim a “heart-full” posture. They compared this to the idea of mindfulness that has become so common in popular culture, with roots in the Eastern contemplative traditions, particularly Zen Buddhism. As this practitioner described it, if mindfulness means focusing one’s attention and becoming less distracted by thought and desire, in order to become more single-minded, then “heartfulness” is a practice of becoming more single-hearted.
Of course, both emphases are really looking at a single phenomenon from the two sides of mind and heart. Starting from either perspective, and really sticking with it, will likely lead to a holistic singularity.
I wonder what a third perspective of “prayerfulness” would add to the mix. One idea that sparks is that a prayerful lens, added to heartful and mindful, could anchor the communal and social perspective of the practitioner of prayer.
For example, if as individuals we move toward singularity through practices of mindfulness and heartfulness, then perhaps as a collective, when we lean into prayerfulness, there is a powerful social force through which our prayer goes out into the actual, ordinary world. If so, be watchful all mindful and heartful folks, for the power of the prayerful might come through and change the world! Indeed, it already does.
