Prayer Practice Part Two

 

Like a television re-run, we come back to the prayer practice of Ignatius, I want to encourage you to rewrite the prayer prompts in different words.  This is a great experiment to see if shifting the words slightly might reveal something new to you today.

 

○ Become aware of God’s presence.  Breathe deeply several times.  Perhaps if you have been sitting, you may want to stand.  Or go outside.  Or get up and go to a different room just for today.  Find a new physical position and place to offer this prayer.

 

○  Review the day with gratitude ~ as you look back with thanksgiving, name what gave you life yesterday.  What were one or two experiences/encounters that fed and fueled your soul?  We claim the good amid a world where there is pain because God is found in both.  This is your chance to say where you touched, tasted, and encountered the Creator, Author, and Source of life. 

 

○  Pay attention to your emotions.  Write down what is in your heart.  This prompt is to look around right now.  Be in this moment and attending to what is within you.  We can never fully exhaust or explore or know everything within us or around us.  I’ve heard it said, “Give up the thought that you know what happened.”  Our point of view is a view from a point; one way the light flows through the prism revealing God’s love, but NOT the only way.  We pay attention to this moment, where we are, so we can sense the current/movement of energy in our emotions.

 

○  Choose one feature/moment (experience or encounter) of the day and pray from it. Does that moment bring joy or lament?  We do this so God might edit and help us tell a better story.  If I keep thinking that person did me wrong, I never surrender the red pen of editing to God who might have something to add.  This moment is an invitation let go and let God enter in with a wisdom and love to re-write the stories we tell ourselves.

 

○ Look toward tomorrow.  Where do you need God’s guidance in the hours to come?  In some ways, this prayer practices brings the past, present, and future together.  We’ve glance in the rearview mirror with gratitude and past experiences; at our side mirrors of emotions; and now we focus on the windshield of what is to come.  But we don’t just step on the gas to get on with life, we let God be the One to direct us.  Or as we say each week in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your will, O God, be done.”  That is not my will.  That is not my to-do-list. Let God enter with a grace that can loosen and lighten how we walk into the events that are to come. 

 

As you close may you know peace, joy, love, and grace this day; and may you be peace, joy, love and grace to those you encounter.  Amen.