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 October 31, 2025 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
If you practice embodied prayer forms, then quite literally, physically, prayer may stretch your arms, legs, and shoulders! Prayer also stretches us metaphorically.
Prayer stretches our minds, especially when we are newly learning prayers and trying to memorize words. My daughter still looks up at me as we recite the Nicene Creed, just to show off that she knows the words and doesn’t need to read them anymore! Prayer can also stretch our minds when we come across new concepts in holy reading or new ways of worshipping in other places. I recall how transubstantiation blew my mind open and how making an altar in my home changed my worldview.
Prayer also stretches our hearts. Our hearts are stretched in prayer when we consider the needs of others and offer petitions. Our hearts are stretched in prayer when our radius of concern expands beyond ourselves, to our family, to our community, to our nation, to our earth and to the cosmos. Care for the housefly is care for stardust!
Prayer also stretches our spirits. Each of us is endowed with a particular portion of spirit. As we grow in stature and transform in being because of our prayer, we expand our particular spirit. Each of us also carries a spark, or a particle, of the Spirit of the Holy One. Making more and more room for the Holy Flame also expands and stretches our spirit. I recall just twice in my life the times when I felt that my being might burst open because it was so full of Love and Light.
May we be blessed as we are stretched both deep and wide by the Loving Pressure of our life of prayer!
