The Modern barrier to prayer

Such talk of prayer is likely to awaken objections---

"How do I pray continually when my life is so full of obligations?"

"When I'm not doing the things I need to do to get through the day, I'm thinking about what I need to do. Prayer is often the last thing on my mind."

"As much as I desire intimacy with God, the call to prayer loads me with more guilt than inspiration. The prayers I utter are basically prayers for help---for myself and for others."

There's no getting around the truth that Jesus summons us to unbroken communion with God and that the Apostles taught this practice to the first Christians. Throughout history, there's also an unbroken line of praying people who've kept the practice alive, handing it down from one generation to the next. That it's foreign to us is an indication that the Modern world isn't very hospitable to interior experience, to mystery, and the mystic encounter with God that is above and beyond the heightened rationalism so characteristic of these last centuries.

You were made for this

Prayer then, according to Jesus, is more like breathing than sitting down for a meal at certain times each day. Nevertheless, the ability to live in unbroken communion with God is fed by formal times of prayer alone or with others, by the Psalms, Scripture, and by offering intercessions. Unless you sit down and eat periodically throughout the day, you're not likely to do much breathing. But, fail to breathe and the meal hasn't done you much good.

Unceasing prayer as unbroken communion with God is not for super-Christians only---the spiritual elite---any more than breathing is for some special class of human beings. Prayer is life and life is prayer. You were made for this.

Toward unceasing prayer

Prayer, according to Jesus, is life. Prayer isn't a doctrine or a duty; it is bread, or better, breath. Jesus lived prayer. He not only joined in the formal prayers in synagogue and temple, but also he prayed in the middle of a meeting, walking along a road, facing intense suffering, and experiencing conflict. The Name of God was constantly on his lips. His words were heart-deep, as if drawn up from a well of an inner life that was, regardless of outer circumstances, in constant communion with God.

And he taught his disciples to "pray always and not lose heart" (Luke 18.1). "Keep alert," so God doesn't "find you asleep when he comes suddenly." So, "keep awake" through the practice of unbroken communion with God (Mark 13.33-36).

Christ's disciples followed his example. Saint Paul lived a life of prayer, and urged it upon all believers. "Pray without ceasing," (1 Thessalonians 5.17). "Pray in the Spirit at all times. Keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints" (Ephesians 6.18).

Prayer, then, is life and life is prayer.

Awaken your heart

When cultivating the spiritual life, don't focus first on "how?"  But "how" is generally the first question people ask me.  It's not ultimate.  How inevitably follows why or what.  Get why or what right and you'll get to how. So, focus instead on the disposition of your heart---that is, why you seek God, and what the experience is like.

Here's Theresa of Lisieux:

"Sanctity does not consist in this or that practice; it consists in a disposition of the heart that makes us humble and little in God's arms, teaches us our weakness, and inspires us with an almost presumptuous trust in his fatherly goodness."

It's that that'll carry your where you need to go.  What's more, you can rest yourself humbly and little in God's arms whether your arguing a case before a jury, teaching kindergarteners, balancing your checkbook, or walking in a meadow.

Awaken your heart and all of life is prayer; daily life becomes sacred.

The purest prayer isn't complicated

Jesus said, "When you pray, go into your closet, shut the door, and pray to God in secret."  Matthew 6.6 "But I can't find such a place to pray," a young mother tells me. "My life's hectic. The only secret place in my house is the bathroom, and my four year old makes sure not even that's guaranteed."

You may not find such a place, but that doesn't mean you can't enter the closet of your heart.

Let go your idealizations of prayer, and just breathe.

"The breath that does not repeat the name of God is wasted breath," wrote Kabir.

The purest forms of prayer aren't complicated. That's their genius.