Widening Our Prayer Practices

I wrote a piece for my church's electronic newsletter that seems worth capturing here:

This Lent, Pastor Keith is exploring the Lord's Prayer for a sermon series. Perhaps this exploration has awakened in you a need to pray more. You can't go wrong with the Lord's Prayer. But if you want to widen your prayer practices, here are some ideas:

--You can't go wrong with saying, "Thank you." Once a day, make a list of 10 things for which you are grateful. They might be the same 10 things every day. That's fine.

--Pray for everyone who needs your prayers. It may be a long list. You could light a candle or do some other action to signal that you're entering into a prayer space. Notice the first five people that float through your mind. Pray for those people, even if you don't know why you're praying for them. It might be particularly important to pray for those who aren't in obvious need of prayer.

--Pray immediately when you wake up and when you go to bed.

--Set your watch to remind you to pray throughout the day. Explore the numerous apps for phones and computers that remind us to pray and give us prayers. Or set up your Outlook calendar to remind you.

--You might use other elements to remind you to pray. Every time you're stuck in traffic, pray. Every time you feel that flush of irritation from hearing other people's electronics, pray. When you see children waiting for a bus or riding bikes, pray.

--If the thought of praying throughout the day intimidates you, resolve to explore fixed hour prayer or the Liturgy of the Hours. Every morning at 5:30 a.m., Kristin offers a version of part of the Liturgy of the Hours, and it's recorded for those of you who can sleep later. You can find her daily recordings at the Trinity Facebook page.

--Experiment with prayer as movement. You might already do this if you take a yoga class. Choose your meditative movement and as you hold each pose or complete each kata, offer a prayer.

--Find a labyrinth and walk it. Many churches and retreat centers have installed labyrinths. What do you do once you’re there? Simply walk. Follow the path. As you get comfortable walking, try praying and walking.

--Explore prayer beads or a rosary (but any set of beads will do): If you’re not sure of how to do this, just offer up a different prayer as you touch each bead. Perhaps for each bead, you’d like to remember a specific person. Perhaps for each bead you’d like to offer up thanks for one thing for which you’re grateful. If you’re not good at creating prayers, simply pray the Lord’s prayer.

Hands, Prayers, and Spiritual Practices

I saw a video by the former bishop of the North Carolina synod of the ELCA, and he showed us how to use our hands to pray.  No, not in the folded hands posture, but by using each finger as a prompt for prayer.  It's not his idea, and he gave Pope Francis full credit.

As I did some research, I am feeling like I'm the last person to discover this prayer.  I used it the other morning on my walk, and found it a potent way to pray.  Here's how it works:

We touch each finger as we pray.  The thumb is closest to the body, so it reminds us to pray for those we are closest to, our family and our friends.  The index finger points, so we remember to pray for educators and health care workers, those who point to important information.  The third finger is the tallests, reminding us to pray for leaders, all sorts of leaders.  The fourth finger, the ring finger, is the weakest (really?), so we pray for those who are sick, those who are going through difficult times, those who feel ignored.  The fifth finger reminds us to pray for ourselves.

As I've been writing, I've been thinking about the practice of prayer beads, which seems to fill the same kind of purpose of reminding us how to pray while giving us something physical, something tactile to do as well.

I'm also thinking of the anti-anxiety practice of tracing one's hand, which really does work for some of us.  There's also some breath work involved for the most effective approach.  

Part of the effectiveness of both the prayer and the hand tracing come from the fact that for most of us, our hands are always with us.  I might not always have prayer beads with me, but I always have my hands.  I look at my hands frequently throughout the day.  That, too, might remind me to pray.

Even though I might be one of the last Christians to have considered the use of hands in prayer practice, I'm happy to have made the discovery.

A Different Sort of Prayer Bead

Last week, I came across an artist who is doing a stitch meditation each week; she's trying to use up scraps of silk that are left over from fabric dying projects.  Later, I may write more about the idea of stitch meditations and fabric dye.  Today I want to capture a different idea.

Inspired by that artist and by scraps of wool that my friend was snipping off of a shawl she was finishing for her daughter, I started a project of my own.  I looked forward to sewing with metallic thread.

I didn't have a chance to finish the project, so I left it on my desk.  Throughout the week, I've found my fingers returning to it.  I like tracing the looping tracks left by the thread. 

I like touching the tangles that I left on purpose.

I've wondered if my experience is what others experience as they pray with a rosary.  I know that rosary beads are there to remind us of where we are in a prayer sequence, but I've always found them to be soothing in terms of touching them too.

I've started wondering about creating a different sort of prayer bead.  I have a vision of a collection of fabrics and threads sewing into some sort of ball or bead.  Would they work if strung together?  Do I want them strung together?  I have begun to collect objects in jars as an art project.  That's a possibility too.

My experiment with stitching has also made me think about stitching labyrinth shapes onto fabric--and then they could be finger labyrinths.

Let me continue thinking about this.