"Prayer Advice"

"Prayer Advice"

In order to discover the right rhythm of prayer for us, the prayer that works with our temperament, we must listen to the ways that God speaks to us. How do you best slow down and enter in to the dialogue of revelation and response? It’s different for each of us.

You may need a holy spot, perhaps a place where God has spoken to you before. Maybe it’s out in nature, maybe it’s a certain chair or before the Blessed Sacrament. Maybe it’s in the last pew in church. It’s that place where you can return to and sort of settle back and seek God’s face. That’s the simplest form of prayer: Each day simply seek, for a moment, if possible, the face of God. Know that you’ve looked at God eyeball to eyeball, and you’ve let God look at you.

If you’re more the thinking type, ideas will lead you into that revelation-and-faith-dialogue. Use a book, if that’s your style. But don’t think that reading the book is itself the dialogue. You’ve got to end by talking to God from your heart, person-to-person, with ordinary words like you’d talk to everybody else. Speak out of what you’re really feeling, not what you think you’re supposed to be feeling. If you’re feeling depression, failure, competition, that’s what you bring to God. Everything is data. There are no such things as distractions.

from The Price of Peoplehood