The first step in making each day a prayer is to recognize that each hour, each moment is an opportunity for learning and loving. Every experience is a step that you can use to climb toward the greater development of your soul—or a step that you can use to avoid that growth. In order to live life to its potential, you have to train yourself to become aware of the present. Unfortunately, humans have a tendency to be more comfortable living in everything but the moment.

In his book Lift Up Your Heart: A Guide to Spiritual Peace, Fulton Sheen discusses the tragedy of how human beings waste the now, while obsessing over the past and future. He explains that by using memory and imagination, the human mind can unite the past and the future with the present. As a result, we grow distracted, anxious, angry, and even compulsive. It is much healthier to “sanctify the moment,” realizing how precious and powerful each instant is. We don’t know when things will change, or how things will end. All we truly have is the opportunity at hand—right now. And we have the power to grace the now with peaceful intentions. That way, we will make ourselves, as well as others, happier.

Sheen asserts that God sends us personal messages within each moment. Our thoughts, our inclinations, our instincts, and our feelings are avenues through which God can work. In addition, God might send instant messages through a stranger’s words, a child’s smile, even the wag of a passing dog’s tail. But if we are not in the moment, aware of the little things around us, how can we recognize these messages? And won’t life be a more pleasant experience if we look for the divine in each occasion? Sheen continues, “Those who sanctify the moment and offer it up in union with God’s will never become frustrated—never grumble or complain. They overcome all obstacles by making them occasions of prayer and channels of merit.”

Similarly, Leslie Marmon Silko captures the human condition of resistance to the now in her novel Ceremony. One of the characters in this work discusses how human beings are the only creatures who resist nature and the demands of the moment, sacrificing the present to the past and the future. The character explains that we can learn a lot by watching animals grazing in the fields. They move with the direction of the wind, and to wherever they are likely to find food and safety. It’s a simple approach to existence—no resistance, just acceptance and action. Only humans ignore the vibrant power of the moment to wage futile battles against what happened long ago and what might occur in the future.

Try evaluating yourself in light of this perspective. Are you spending many of your moments living in the past or future? If so, be aware that you have the capability to change. When you concentrate on the time at hand and its potential for greater good, you live a prayer. You become aware of the divine aspects of each instant. You also become a far healthier and kinder person. Enhancing your awareness of the moment will lead you to a more sacred understanding of people, other creatures, nature, and daily activities. In fact, sanctifying the moment is the secret to life! Once you find the moment, work becomes a prayer, laughter becomes a prayer, and conversation becomes a prayer, because it is all done in love and gratitude. Fear no longer plays a dominant role because you trust that you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing.

Appreciation of the present keeps us in constant contact with God. Consider the traditional lifestyle of the Mohawk tribe, as described by Chief Tom Porter in “Why We’re Here Today,” an essay in the magazine Parabola. Porter defines prayer as, “When you take a moment to communicate with the spiritual life that surrounds you.” He explains that upon rising in the morning, a person should greet the Creator, then brother sun, then parents, then neighbors. Throughout the day, little “hellos” should be said to keep us in touch with the Oneness that we all share. This extends to livestock, wild animals, even flowers and trees. He warns that if we do not communicate with the spiritual lives around us, we become “imbalanced, unhappy, and ungrateful.” That’s no way to live! So prayer is not limited to formal recitations, or even quiet time alone. It has to do with daily functioning, from the moment of rising until the moment of sleep. It has to do with the now.

CREATING SILENCE AND STILLNESS

It is hard to live a prayer when you are consumed by anxiety and noise. Have you noticed the average attitude in busy urban centers? Have you seen how many people practically trample the pigeons and run into baby strollers as they rush to make the next business lunch? That’s because there is too much noise and activity both inside and outside their minds.

You may find it relatively easy to find silent prayer time, but what about a silent life? Now you’re saying, “You’ve got to be kidding! Not in this world!” But silence doesn’t have to be silence in the traditional, physical sense. And the same is true of stillness. Silence and stillness can be qualities of the mind that stem from practicing enhanced awareness. To achieve greater silence and stillness—which can be described as calm, balance, and peace—avoid the urge to swallow everything, attempting to control your environment and to compete with others. Instead, try to focus on the little occurrences of the moment. Concentrate on the simplest aspects of your activities and surroundings, and on the happenings to your right and left. By calling yourself away from scattered thoughts, and toward what is before you, the noise from three blocks down will fade away, and that hectic, harried feeling will dwindle.

Zen Buddhism teaches that silence can be found everywhere. Silence is timeless and ever present, if we choose to recognize it. You can find silence on the subway, in the hospital, at a concert hall, because it is simply the underlying calm and goodness that resides in creation. Beneath all the fears that you normally feel—fears of failure, competition, insignificance, hurt, and the like—the simplicity of silence and stillness waits for you. If you can tap into the simplicity through the practice of concentration on the small tasks and beings at hand, life becomes a beautiful prayer.

Even religion can cause great anxiety and noise in a person’s life. There’s a story about a Muslim saint who despised the fact that people prayed out of fear, instead of joy and glory in God. Such fear creates noisy minds and hyperactive lives. So the saint ran through the streets with a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in another. When people asked her why she did this, she declared that she wanted to set heaven on fire and douse the flames of hell. That way, heaven and hell would cease to exist, and people wouldn’t pray out of fear or personal gain, but simply because they loved God. This story teaches that instead of being consumed by noisy and unsettling fears, we must find a quiet stillness in the happiness of the moment.

PRACTICING A PRAYERFUL LIFESTYLE

Once you have decided to extend your notion of prayer to your general lifestyle— to be fully present in the moment, and compassionately and calmly attentive in that moment—there are a number of ways in which you can help make your life a prayer. When combined, all of these small practices can actually help you cocreate a better world.

Blessing Others

Mystical Judaism promotes a concept called Tikkun Olam. It refers to maintaining and restoring the world, or doing our part to create a kinder world with God. Mystical Jewish texts suggest that at the beginning of time, the Divine was dispersed throughout the world. It entered everything. Thus, a piece of God resides in every person, creature, and object. And we are constantly communicating with and in the divine Source, even in the most ordinary activities.

To call attention more fully to the sacredness of everyday life, Jewish rabbis established certain blessings to be said at moments of awareness. Blessings were created for a magnificent landscape, the washing of hands, the mention of a good teacher’s name, the eating of food, and more. These blessings have become a part of traditional Jewish life, and can teach each one of us to become more sensitive to the world around us. Tikkun Olam is a challenge and a mission for every individual. Blessing the people whom we know, as well as the people who pass by, is one way to perform this divine task. And for those of us who don’t follow orthodox practices, no special formulas are necessary—just the intention to love and care for the beings and things of this world as we come into contact with them.

Part of a prayerful lifestyle is being receptive to other beings. If we believe that there is a Oneness that is manifest in each of us, then each person carries something divine within him. So we should always be aware of the lessons others teach us, of the presence of others, of their feelings and difficulties. Because each person, each creature, does a service to us in our personal growth, it is helpful to bless them and to pray for them, as well.

Writing about her grandfather’s practice of saying blessings throughout the day in her book My Grandfather’s Blessings, author Rachel Naomi Remen states, “When we bless others, we offer them a refuge from an indifferent world.” They don’t need to know we’re blessing them; we can do it in our minds. For example, when you pass a little girl on crutches, you can simply say, in your own head, “Bless that little girl for being so brave and enduring her hardships.” When you pass a supermarket stock person who is working hard at his job, you can think, “God bless him for his work in making our lives so much easier.” Remen reminds us that we bless others more than we realize, such as when we call a friend for no particular reason, or when we smile at a stranger out of sheer good will. And through her book, Remen subtly encourages us to more widely practice such good habits by reminding us that every moment holds opportunities to appreciate and sanctify the world.

In practicing the blessing of others, we become acutely aware of the need to avoid harming the world and its inhabitants. We learn to take nothing for granted, and we lead much more peaceful lives. So to make your own life a prayer, try practicing spontaneous blessings for the people and things you happen to pass by or think about throughout each day. Notice how life-changing this practice can be.

Saying Thank You

It is very easy to say “thank you,” whether aloud or silently. What is not easy is to remember to say thank you. But practice will make this little technique easier, and you will find your general existence becoming more prayerful as you accomplish it.

In our rush-rush culture, we pass by so many gifts without even acknowledging them. Something as simple as saying a mental “thank you” to the creatures who offer their lives as food, to the engineers who design safer cars, to the computer gurus who have given us word processing, to our children for making us smile, makes life more precious. Practice noticing a few little things every day. This technique will increase your awareness of the divine in our world, and keep you in an ongoing conversation with God. For example, try touching the flowers on the dinner table at a restaurant, and simply saying, “Thank you for this beautiful little gift.” Take the time to acknowledge a little cat that brushes by you at your friend’s house, and thank God for the little cozy things in life. Say a little prayer of thanksgiving before eating your lunch—nothing special, just call to mind all that has gone into bringing that salad to your plate. You’ll be surprised at how much your perspective changes—how more peaceful and content you become—when you follow your mom’s advice: “Remember to say thank you.”

Making Better Choices

Writer Neale Donald Walsch reminds us that the actions we choose maintain a “continual request” to God. Our formal times of request are only part of how we pray for things. In “Your Life Is Your Prayer,” an essay in The Power of Prayer, Walsch offers the example of someone who is praying for a better-paying job. If that person says, “God, help me to find a new job,” but then doesn’t make sincere efforts to find that job, nor even encourage himself with an optimistic attitude, the prayer is not all that likely to come true. We must understand how very important every little choice is in our lives, and how each action can either facilitate or hinder the prayers that we offer to God.

When you choose your actions according to what you pray for and how you pray, your specific intentions are more likely to be answered. Don’t rely 100-percent on a supernatural force. Instead, “co-pilot” with God. You have a creative force inside of you already; prayer will help you to find and use it. God reminds you how to go about making your personal world, and the larger world around you, a better place.

Watch your actions carefully and see if they reflect your prayer requests. This means constant reevaluation, an effort that may seem difficult at first, but will become more natural with practice. For example, if you are praying for better health, notice the little things you do during the day to affect your health. Do you take time to breathe deeply and relax your mind? Do you bombard yourself with caffeine and sugar, instead of clean water and fruits? Do you drive recklessly? Do you get enough sleep? It’s the little choices that have the big effects in our lives. So practice being aware of your actions as much as your words.

Taking the Middle Road

In The Way Into Jewish Prayer, Lawrence Hoffman writes, “North American culture divides human activity into simple oppositions. We are either at work or at play, on vacation or on the job, in school or at recess. We instinctively treat prayer, therefore, as what you do when you are in a synagogue (or Church) but not in the office, the garden, the playground, or the car.” Hoffman further asserts that Judaism encourages its followers to see all of life as holy. That means shedding the concept that we must live with a dualism that separates prayer from active life.

If prayer extends to our entire lifestyle, it certainly extends to how we make our living and how we perform our daily tasks. Yes, even the routine things we do in the office or in the classroom are part of the continual prayer we live every day. Realizing this, work becomes more sacred and less burdensome. And our bodies become actively involved in our prayers. We can understand even our paying jobs as opportunities for thankfulness, blessings, and Tikkun Olam. That makes the office like a little sanctuary in and of itself!

The idea of physical and mental labor as a form of prayer is an ancient one. In Buddhist philosophy, we are encouraged to follow the Middle Path. That means not only performing private sessions of mental discipline, but also carrying out wholesome conduct and action in the world. In fact, action is as much an element on the road to enlightenment as contemplation. Therefore, it’s not surprising that, for instance, in Zen Buddhism, every action is looked upon as critical. Washing the dishes, making tea, are all paths to enlightenment. As we learn in J.A. Taylor’s essay “Koans of Silence,” published in Parabola, “ Any task performed with concentration and respect is a marvel to behold. When every act is a new beginning there are no ordinary events. . . .”

Christian monk Saint Benedict promoted a strikingly similar lifestyle: the via media, or literally, the middle way. It involves a three-part life of prayer, comprised of formal prayer and hymns, sacred reading, and physical work. Saint Benedict taught that the body is necessarily a part of our prayer; we were born into the body for a reason. And actions that we perform with the body are opportunities to give glory to God, to appreciate the earth, and to improve our world. Therefore, harvesting vegetables is prayer. Cleaning the house is prayer. So is reading from the Scriptures. So is humming a hymn. Anything that encourages love and knowledge is prayer.

Likewise, the Muslim faith asks its followers to live in the constant presence of God. Every action is to be done with Allah in mind, so as to continually praise Allah and willingly allow His plan to unfold. Muslims are encouraged to view each action as a prayerful action, be it talking with a stranger in a store or bowing at the mention of Allah’s name. Throughout history, as branches of Muslim mysticism explored various forms of praise to God, the body became increasingly involved in worship, from prostration to dances. Therefore, Islam teaches us to involve body, mind, and spirit in our prayerful lifestyles. It doing so, we generate balance in our lives and make everything sacred.

Taking the Middle Path or the via media means avoiding extremes such as social isolation, scorn of the body, and lack of worldly action. Having an effective prayer life involves the body as well as the mind, and can be conducted in the world as much as in the spirit. Prayer is as much about work as it is about thought, and as much about others as it is about your individual spirit. Prayer is not only conversing with God, but also expanding that conversation to include others.

CONTINUING TO RESERVE SPECIAL PRAYER TIME

Remember that while extending your notions of prayer to embrace your daily activities, special prayer times are still important. These are the periods of renewal and respite—periods during which you refill yourself, gathering guidance and creative energy. Mother Teresa of Calcutta suggests that as we grow in prayerful lifestyle, we grow in our desires to set aside special times for prayer. These prayer times become life food—we crave them. It is important to listen to those cravings.

Personal prayer sessions offer enhanced opportunities to find the silence and stillness inside yourself. They are like private lessons with God, during which you receive the guidance and inspiration that fosters compassion when you function in the world. Once you find the calm alone with God, you can make efforts to continue that calm outside of personal prayer sessions.

CONCLUSION

It takes some practice, but it is actually possible to make each day a prayer. It begins with living in the now, continues with discovering the sacred quiet and stillness that exists beneath all things, and ends up making even your job and your contact with strangers holy experiences. Thoughts and actions that involve anger, hatred, pride, greed, and other negative emotions and impulses are not prayer because they keep you from opening to love. But any activity that makes you more aware of the goodness, beauty, and divinity of this world is prayer. Any activity, mental or physical, that encourages the divine glimmer in another being is prayer. You’ve probably been praying a lot more than you thought you were! Your life is already an unfolding prayer!




Copyright © 2001 by Helene Ciaravino

From How to Pray by Helene Ciaravino (Garden City Park, New York: Square One Publishers)