Love

 Love is an emotion.  It comes and goes.  To say, “I love you,” may be nothing more than feeling the emotion of love.  No action.  No commitment.  No ego-shrinkage.  To actually love someone takes work.  If someone said, “I love golf,” but only plays when they feel like it and never does the hard grinding practice to do it better, you would think they do not really love golf.  The same goes with marriage, vocation, hobby.  These take work on a daily basis that goes beyond the emotions of “love.”  I might not always love being a priest, or putting out this blog, but I do it.  I don’t wait for some emotion to come along and carry me.  Until death do us part!

Yes

The 12 Apostles are these twelve because they said, “Yes.”  It is not because they were holy, or smart, or disciplined.  It all started with saying yes to an invitation, “Follow me.”  So if you are someone who says you want to follow Jesus, start with a “yes.”  Nothing more is needed to begin.  A very badly lived life can begin to change with a yes.  In recovery, you don’t have to be good or smart or holy to begin recovery from alcoholism.  You start with a yes.  If you start with “I cannot do all this,” or “this won’t work,” then you will stay drinking to insanity and death.  Just start with yes, not with understanding or judgment.  Yes and then begin to do what is asked, imperfectly, trudging along.  Action, not perfection, follows yes.  Sobriety does not make you a saint, but it does give you a chance at being a much better person.   

Sameness

 If you find something written that helps you to pray, why not repeat it on a regular basis?  Say you find the poet Rilke to help you to pray.  Why then look for other poets?  Keep with Rilke.  It is about prayer aids.  Many people pray the psalms from the Bible on a daily basis.  Monks do this.  Keeping at what works opens up to deeper layers of the words and deeper layers in ourself.  Trying to find something “even better” is a bit of an ego trip or spiritual gluttony.  

12 Inch Voice

 Praying aloud can help you to pay attention.  You can do this in public places. How?  Use what teachers call the “12 inch voice.”  If I typed this blog in 12 inch font you would need a magnifier to read it.  12 inch refers to font size.  It is small, like a quiet voice that only you can hear though others are around.  The noisier the environment around you, the less anyone will notice or hear you praying in your 12 inch voice.  No one listens to my homilies, so why should they listen to my 12 inch voice!  Say it isn’t so Knoxville and Boulder.  

Service

 One way of being of service is to use fewer words.  Like what?  Well, if someone says, “How are you?”  And you have some physical issue, just state the issue.  Simply.  Information can create and feed a relationship, but let the other person decide how much they want to know, which is, how much they want to befriend you.  Say you tripped recently and hurt your shoulder in the fall.  Your response can be simple:  “I tripped and bruised my shoulder.”  That is it.  How is that being of service?  It allows the other person to ask more or not.  If they are uninterested, why assume they are interested?  They may not want that much of a relationship, or their time to be taken up with listening to you.  Allow them to ask for more information.  If they change the subject or say, “Have a nice day,” then you have not burdened them with your miseries.  And you have found that this relationship is not worth your time either.  Which is a service to yourself.  

Sabbath

 In the Bible creation story there is a Sabbath.  The seventh day, the Creator rests.  Jews have a sabbath.  Other religions do too.  Sunday is supposed to be it for Christians.  Not happening much in our frenetic modern world.  Why not try a Sabbath time each day?  Make some time for rest to allow your spiritual life to flourish.  Call it a time for gathering some stillness.  This is stillness in mind and body.  It may well allow your spiritual life, your soul depth, to flourish.  You could take a slow walk, not an exercise walk.  You can slowly read a little of a spiritual book, one spiritual to you.  You can do nothing but look out at the world around you and let your heart tell you what you see.  You never know until you take this Sabbath time on a daily basis.  Rest. 

The Warm Up

 Athletes tend to warm up before they do their event or practice.  The body cannot just jump into something from nothing.  So you need to loosen up, stretch.  Why not do the same with prayer?  Don’t just jump into it from something quite different.  Do some preparation.  Like what?  Like trying to relax.  Try breathing slowly, or more slowly if you have been frenetic.  Slow down your thoughts.  Get quiet outside as well as inside.  Breathing exercises or a mantra for a few moments to transition from busy to attentive.  Think of prayer as spiritual athleticism.  You are trying, on a daily basis, to get spiritually in shape.  Some days are better than others.  Athletes know this, but the more you practice the more good days you will have.