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 18, 2025 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
Prayer is not productive in the modern, capitalistic sense of the word, that is, valuable because of its utility or efficiency. When asked, the great google points to production as a process of creating or manufacturing something; whereas produce refers to items that are created or grown. Prayer holds production and produce together in a life-giving tension.
On the one hand, there are mechanical, disciplined, repetitive aspects of prayer that really do help to shape a product—the formation of a fully alive human being! Rather than items to be sold in masse, or valued for quantity, like home or business products, the ongoing production processes of prayer create products that are more like produce, things like watermelon and cucumbers that are grown for quality, rather than quantity.
To stretch the metaphor further, the productive process of ongoing prayer produce fruits, rather than objects. The fruits of prayer are life-giving rather than stagnant. Qualities like trust, interdependence, courage, surrender, and generosity are the lifelong products of prayer, fruits that give more life even after they have been harvested from trees with deep roots.
Each time you taste an apple or a peach, consider a ritual of pausing to give thanks for the productive processes of prayer that create life-giving produce!
