Make Your Life a Prayer

Firstly, warm greetings to you, Sister Julie, from a Quaker in England who has recently become a devoted reader of your inspiring blog. And now we’re considering how to make one’s life a prayer? Well, when the late Cardinal Basil Hume, much-loved leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, was asked towards the end of his profoundly devout life about his understanding of prayer, he replied simply: ‘Oh, I just keep plugging away. At its best it’s like being in a dark room with someone you love. You can’t see them, but you know they’re there.’ For me this is an invitation, even in the midst of the activities of daily life, to cultivate an inner stillness which feels like Cardinal Hume’s dark room. Of course this is easy to say, and much harder to achieve, but even momentary glimpses of it are a blessing for me.

I have to say that the discipline encouraged by the Liturgy of the Hours is my life-saver of the day. At morning, evening and night prayer, I cherish the opportunity of placing myself before God and sing some old songs for Him. Even on those hectic days when it’s hard to quiet distractions down, the liturgy is my last resort to commune some time with the Lord. It’s heaven sent!

i always do this with young people: give them a rock and instruct them thusly: place the rock in your shoe at bedtime. when you wake up and put on your shoes let the rock remind you to pray. after you pray, put the rock on your pillow. when you go to bed and see the rock, pick it up and pray. when you are finished, put the rock in your shoe. it helps, and i do it myself

Greetings Sister Julie, I am a fairly visual person, so to help me pray without ceasing I have prayers, quotes, and sacred pictures surrounding my house and my office. As I go through my day, I see these items (many of them may not look God related but they have special meaning) and I am reminded to take a moment to be aware of God, to talk to the Lord, or simply to be in His presence before moving on. I got the idea from many of the e-marketing tools that popped up incessantly on my computer screen. I could remember every single one of those ads yet could not remember to visit with God often. So in an experiment a few years ago, I tried to make my life one big prayer pop-up and as strange as it seemed it worked. It reminds me that as I go through my day, I may feel alone, but really I am never alone. Marla, for fun I am going to try the shoe-pillow technique for my Lent devotionals. Thanks for the tip.

I take heart in that everything around me is from God. So what I do is I play a little game saying “How is God in that object, and why is it in my life today?” It made me appreciate god so much more. Plus, also I wake up and say “Good Morning Lord!” not “Good lord its morning…” Haha, yes, just reminding myself that God is there helps me to pray unceasingly.

I love this topic! And I also love the idea of turning one’s life into a prayer. Like Discerninglife25 I always wake up saying “Good morning my Lord!”, that gives me strength to sit up and start my day. From that moment on I think I live my day pretty close to Him, and because I truly believe that, that helps me to turn my day into a prayer. But that doesn’t mean I go through the street saying prayers to the Lord. As Nathalie said, I think the way to pray without ceasing is being aware of our brothers and sisters around us, being there to help them, controlling our attitudes. It’s also important to make a pause from time to time and remember that you are not alone and that He is by your side just waiting for you to hold His hand.

I once heard while on retreat of an elderly man who, at rising, prayed Grace before meals. At night, his prayer was Grace after meals. In that way, he made the whole day his prayer and gave thanks for the gift of each day. It was simple and profound.

I like to have an on-going conversation with my Beloved. On good days, this is an easy thing to do. But on some challenging, hectic days, my prayer may sound like, “Well, I’m glad that *You* know what You are doing, because *I* sure don’t!”

I agree with Augustine also. Those formal times of prayer (Mass, Liturgy of the Hours, etc.) are like putting on a pair of glasses. Everything just comes into focus. (I really like that “sing some old songs for Him” bit–so sweet!

I am working on this “praying without ceasing” thing, too. Often during the day I will think, “Oh, I need to remember to pray about that later.” Of course, if I wait I’m likely to forget, so now I remind myself that I can pray RIGHT NOW, no matter what else I’m doing at that moment. Not all prayer is stillness and focus–sometimes it is desperate and hurried, but God hears it all the same.

Discerning25: I love that “Good Lord, it’s morning” joke! Totally cracked me up. I also say a silent prayer when I hear of or read about a tragedy. So much tragedy, it seems, in this media-saturated world. Alabama and Germany school bloodbaths are only the most recent. God help the families and friends. God have mercy on the souls of the killers.

I’m still struggling with praying to Mary. She still feels remote and unreal. I sure hope I can get closer to her someday.

My favourite form of prayer is going out in nature all alone and hanging out with God. Just Him and me, in the woods, by a river, in the fields. Or gazing over an endless horizon. Just me and God. My heart soars.

By the way, prayer also extends outside quiet time. Prayer can be living life like Christ. Like “Praying spontaneously” and be nice to a person, or hold a door, smile, talk to a sad person, and etc. Jesus extended His prayer life to outside the moments He was alone. Just thought I would note that.

Good Morning, I’ve been reading this blog for a little while now and felt this was a good opportunity to comment.

The concept of “Prayer without ceasing” is very attractive to me and something I can whole heartedly get behind. For myself I take my relationship to God as I would a relationship to a trusted spouse or partner. While most of us are not around our friends, family, and significant others all the time, there is a certain change of presence or awareness when we are that is unique to the individual.

This in not unlike God’s relationship to us. Even though God by definition is omnipresent as as such with us always, a person understandably tunes out their awareness of Divinity as they focus on other tasks just as we’re not always with our friends and loved ones when at work or while we’re doing other independent things. However with God there is that moment that, while in the middle of doing something that’s possibly completely unrelated, we stop, and the mind drifts over a none-specific thought or feeling.

It is in such moments where we have an opportunity to touch base with God and share the experience of those moments with Him. In this way we can communicate with God directly and without ceremony thus creating an atmosphere of “Prayer without ceasing”.

Among other thing I spend a great deal of time with creative writing. Its my primary passion in this life and I often feel that whenever I sit at my typerwriter or gaze into the blank document on my computer screen, even though I’m doing something for myself my work becomes like a direct conduit to the Divine and as such even though the activity is not necessarily of a spiritual nature it becomes a spiritual experience be tween God and I.

I know my mother who is an RN says she feels the same way when she’s providing her services to her patients. And so I think any time we give of ourselves freely to something, a task or a person, we are also sharing ourselves with God and communicating our devotion through the natural works of our lives.

For some people the awareness of such a connection is not instantaneous, but even if we don’t feel connected during every given moment of the day the idea of acknowledging God at any point through the course of our day to day activities and experiences is still just as important and meaningful.

Just as some of us can’t always focus solely on our loved ones, there is still merit in the experience of coming home to them at the end of the day or any other time that the individual sets to devote their attention to that which is out side of themselves and yet apart of them as well.

For myself, God is an ever present companion in my life and it seems to me that the acknowledgments of that relationship is what “prayer without ceasing” means. If only to me.

Every morning I take my dog on a long walk and use the time to say my rosary. I have several, but the one that I keep in my pocket is the cheap black one that belonged to my father. He was a surgeon, so the rosary was blessed by his hands.