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 March 28, 2025 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
Whether you are serious about prayer or like to dabble in prayer, most of us have tried to “do” prayer in various ways and eventually stopped. One expression of this pattern is when we learn a new “form” of prayer, like the Daily Examen, or Lectio Divina, or Centering Prayer, and we determine to “do” the prayer for a myriad of reasons. It might be that we have lapsed in active prayer and we want a jump start again. It might be that we have been very consistent in another form of prayer, have become bored, and are seeking to freshen up our prayer life.
Another expression of the pattern of doing-then-stopping prayer is when we resolve to take up prayer at certain times of day. Perhaps we are not praying regularly at all, and we think doing morning prayer will help start up again. Perhaps we are already doing evening prayer on a regular basis and we determine that to add morning prayer will help us to become more serious about our prayer.
Each expression of this pattern of doing prayer is wonderful. Even the doing-it-then-stopping is good! Unfortunately, for those of us who live in a society in which success is often measured by how much we can manage to “do,” we might not believe that the pattern of start-then-stop is good. We night even assume that such doings are signs of inadequacy, failure, or lack of commitment. Such thinking about “doing” is grounded in a scarcity model, in which you can only “get” what you put out, or do.
Instead, our prayer life really flows from an abundance model. Prayer is communion. Prayer is a living stream that runs beneath the foundation of our being. Each of our fits and starts, our ideas about how to get serious, our attempts to learn a new form of prayer, are like waves in this stream that rise up from the energy of longing for Communion with and in the One. The waves that rise up and then crash are not failures or signs of unfaithfulness, because the stream of prayer is always flowing; it is already praying in and for and through us, even, and perhaps especially, when we do not “do” our own prayers in the ways that we imagine we should.
Thank God for the flow of prayer! Thank God for the abundance of the stream! Thank God that we were made to pray even when we don’t “do” our prayers!
