A simple way to begin the day

The alarm goes off before dawn. I hit snooze . . . at least once. My wife finally nudges me and I turn off the alarm and click the prayer app on my smart phone. For ten drowsy minutes we lie there, listening to the guided prayer from Pray As You Go. A bell begins this morning meditation on scripture. The summons to prayer is followed by an introduction by a lovely British voice, then a piece of sacred music. All this prepares us for the reading of the text for the day, and a few sentences spoken reflectively, inviting us to listen for the whisper of God illuminating our lives, preparing us to experience God this day.

Look, I don't always stay awake for the whole thing. But that doesn't matter as much as the fact that the sounds are awakening my mind and heart to the Holy even before I put my feet on the floor. It has an effect beyond my rational awareness of that effect.

Of course, sometimes, I'm stunned by the appropriateness of the meditation to what happened the day before, what came to me in my dreams, or what I sense is before me. But much of the time, it's just a gentle influence upon my first conscious thoughts . . . a better way to start the day, than stumbling in the dark, muttering to myself about the day that's already coming hard at me with its many obligations.

Take a look; better, listen in daily as a way to start a fire of prayer on the hearth of your heart.

Pray-as-you-go, http://www.pray-as-you-go.org

Intention: I'll try this simply guide to prayer, either tonight as I prepare for sleep or tomorrow morning as I awaken.

The way you awaken each day matters

The way you awaken each day matters. It can set the mood, and that mood can affect or infect the rest of your day. You know what it feels like to awaken in a panic because you're running late. You don't eat. You're still getting ready during your commute. You pick up breakfast on the way--a sweet roll or breakfast burrito with coffee from the drive through. (And why is it you think the drive through saves you time?). You get to work or class barely on time, adrenalin pumping through your body. And let's be honest, by now, you're as addicted to the always-running-late adrenalin rush as you are to the coffee you need to get you going.

Maybe it's hard to imagine living differently, setting a different mood as you awaken. But there's a part of you that would like to. There's a part of you that needs to, whether you know it or not. You can't live this way all the time. You need good sleep and good food. You need exercise. You need prayer. I know, getting these sounds impossible. But get even one or two of them and you'll change the way you live your day, the way you experience living.

There's probably a lot that you can change about the way you awaken each day. Getting to bed earlier. Falling asleep without the TV on. Rising early enough that you can actually enjoy some kind of morning routine. Boiling a few eggs the night before, so you can spend six and a half minutes eating a hard boiled egg and a little yogurt instead of sitting in line at the drive through.

Just try one thing to shift the way you awaken, and that one thing, no matter how small, will change the way you enter the day.

Intention: Tonight, I'll do one thing to prepare myself to enter the day with more purpose than I did this morning. That'll give me a little traction so I'll be less a victim and more a victor.

Receiving the gifts of those very different from ourselves

A few days ago, I sat on a train, headed to Los Angeles for meetings. I was minding my own business. Since Amtrak has wireless, I was grading student reflections on their reading of Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen. The readings invited them to move out of the zone of their own comfort to encounter God in others. One of them, Joseph, wrote:

"God created us to be in relationship with one another. It is my tendency (and I believe most of humanity's tendency) to shut out those around us. I can no longer assume that God can't use all people and all relationships to speak to me."

No sooner had I read this, than a man behind me asked if he could use my cell phone. Busy with my "work" I'd taken no real notice of him. "I said 'no.'" And went back to my work. He stood up and started down the aisle with an handful of five dollar bills asking people if he could pay to use a phone.

He was a middle aged black man, dressed in a black T-shirt and sweat pants. The T-shirt was new. It still had the crease lines from being recently liberated from its package.

"I need to call my wife and tell her I'm arriving at Union Station in LA."

He looked desperate. And his desperation pulled me out of my cramped, little world just enough for me to say, "Hey, use mine. But you don't have to pay for it."

After he'd made the call, I learned that he was on his way home after several years in prison. "Just out this morning," he told me. "Can't wait to see my wife. But I can't walk from the station, 'cause the shoes she sent me are too small."

He grinned happily despite his discomfort. A man who'd just be let out of prison was seeing the world with new eyes.

I've never known a day behind bars, but captivity doesn't require a jail cell. I need others, people very different from myself, to step out of all that holds me captive inside my own cramped little world.

Intention: Help me today, Lord Christ, to see the world with the eyes of one who's not so used to it all that I can't enjoy its wonder.

Others

"We should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in the part of our humanity that is most remote from our own."

Thomas Merton

What will it take for a true Christian revolution to take hold of us?  It's too easy for us to build walls between us.  Who's right.  Who's wrong.  Who's in.  Who's out.  The dividing walls are becoming more numerous.  Thicker too.  Before long we'll be trapped in a maze of our own making.  Prisoners in our own little worlds, having excluded everyone else but those who are just like us.  Far from what it truly means to be human, in-dwelt by the Divine.

Intention: Today, I'll open myself to someone who I would otherwise ignore as too different from myself.  As I do I'll find something of myself, some part of me I've ignored, judged, dismissed, and excluded from the loving embrace of Christ.

Nourishment

Have you ever experienced a moment in prayer when it felt as if a gentle rain was falling on your shoulders? For many of us prayer is a duty--a should, an ought. Of course, there are benefits prayer. We have a sense that the God of the universe had heard what's on our hearts, and we believe that God will do something with what we've expressed. More than that, we've seen answers to prayer, and these answers keep us going, keep us praying.

But prayer as a gentle rain falling upon the thirsty earth of your inner being? When was the last time you felt that?

This nourishment of prayer is not something you can believe; it's something you experience. Beliefs are artifacts of faith; they're derived from genuine spiritual experience, they are not spiritual experiences themselves. Faith, on the other hand, is the experience of God, and that experience cannot be fully described anymore than your love for another person can be fully described. If course, we try. And well we should. Experiences nearly cry out for communication. Poets try to speak of the love that burns in their hearts. Artists paint it. Musicians put it to sound. But these expressions are symbols and metaphors, not the real thing--as lovely as they may be.

So you believe in prayer. That's good. But why not experience it? Get outside the usual cramped space of your praying, and step into the rain. A slow, life-giving rain is falling.

Too few get out of themselves long enough to feel it.

Intention: Today, I'll pause for prayer, but I'll avoid telling God things. Instead, for just a few moments, I'll let the grace of God fall upon my parched soul, like "rain and snow that water the earth" (Isaiah 55.10).