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.  

Words

When you pray, fewer words can be better, so that you pay attention to what you are saying.  If you don’t pay attention, then why should God or your Power pay attention?  I find that when people use a long explanation, when a shorter one would do, I tend to lose focus on what they are saying.  One way to say fewer words is to pray out loud if you can.  Out loud, you might even listen to what you are saying.  With fewer words we don’t have to rush to get it all in.  Besides, the Divine knows what you need before you ask. And often due to some insanity on your part, you don’t know quite what you need, only what you want.   

As You Can

 Pray as you can, not as you want.  You read a book by a monk about monks praying and you are attracted to that way of prayer.  But you are not a monk.  They have no spouse, mortgage, child, commute.  You are a jogger who reads about the training of a champion runner, maybe an Olympian.  You want to train like that, but you have not that time, or maybe talent.  So do what you can.  Pray as you can.  You may have a realistic plan, but that is interrupted by family illness or sudden events outside your control, to which you must attend.  I have come to know the difference between being lazy as opposed to being delusional.  

Ocean

As I write this I am in Florida near the Atlantic Ocean.  I watch people jump into the water and splash around from my window in an apartment at the beach.  I see the vast ocean and these tiny people in relation to it.  They are having fun.  The spiritual life is coming to the realization of our right size, not overblown falsely by ego and not diminished by shame and guilt or condemnation from others.  Recovery is about becoming right-sized.  You once saw yourself with your overblown big deal ego and then arrive at the door feeling like you are a nothing loser.  You recover your right size.  I have been in a small pool so far.  The ocean awaits!  Yikes.