Paying attention is prayer.

"My only prayer practice is paying attention. I carry on a habitual, silent, and secret conversation with God that fills me with overwhelming joy."

Brother Lawrence

As July comes to a close and August begins, we continue in the season of Ordinary Time. Summer is still here, but the light has begin to shift ever so slightly. I noticed a few ordinary things that have filled my summertime cup.

These are things that brought me and those I love much joy and, at the very same time, carried me closer to Jesus. Maybe they will fill your cup in these last weeks of summer.

1. cloud-watching from my porch swing or hammock
2. reading a good story aloud to a child (currently, Narnia and Anne of Green Gables)
3. being honest with myself
4. morning pages
5. not finishing something gave me a creative idea fro finishing another way
6. noticing the moon during the day
7. tiny outdoor concerts
8. leftovers, fresh fruit, and wildflowers
9. toothless grins from 5-year-olds
10. remembering we are God's very good idea

When I shared these, a few friends added their own:
11. weeding my garden
12. sipping tea from a cup and saucer rather than a mug
13. pruning tomato vines
14. yoga and weights
15. dew on the grass
16. watching a house renovation in my neighborhood
17. reading in a hammock
18. watching our kitten tease the dog

Then I added a couple more:
19. cloth napkins (from a friend out of the blue)
20. God is familiar and surprising

Do any of these fill your cup or give you an idea for nurturing your own relationships? What would you put on your list?

Notice that some are work, some rest, some nature, some community, and some are simple happiness in the life we have been gifted. A few are directly about God, but all are about ultimately about enjoying God, his people, and creation.

Notice how each list of attention and thankfulness brought more from being shared in community. That is the power and creativity of prayer. Like creativity and generosity, prayer is generative.

For years, I kept prayer lists of specific requests in a spiral notebook. I kept trying to keep up with my prayers. Even with a genuine desire to pray, my well-intentioned practice held an underlying sense of duty and striving. I had made my prayer life complicated with long lists of needs, specific days set aside for prayer, requiring quiet concentration before I could truly call it prayer. It was very much a solo endeavor.

I wondered if I needed better, truer definitions of prayer, not merely easier but more accessible and naturally brimming in everyday life. I started asking some questions about the nature of prayer.

What if our attention, listening, and thankfulness are just as much prayer as our words? Or more? What if generously listening to life, noticing what brings joy and connection with God, his creatures, and his creation shapes a life of unceasing prayer?

About six years ago, I began paying better attention. I claimed my attentiveness as prayer, including my everyday life, work, personality, and devotion.

I continued to pray for specific people (leaders, pastors, children, friends, ourselves), circumstances (currently flash floods, mudslides, wildfires, heat waves, hungry and orphaned children, political divisiveness, homelessness, racial injustices, the continuing Covid pandemic and it’s Delta variant), and my own blind spots. (Lord, have mercy!)

These all break the heart of God and deserve our blood, sweat and tears, our focused attention and action. These prayers are important and often point to our world-wide need for and lack of God’s kingdom values.

But I thought there might be more to the idea of praying unceasingly.

What if the foundation of our prayers, where we truly keep holding God’s hand (and letting Him hold ours), is found in being attentive to the ordinary slices of our lives - our own hearts and heartbreaks, families, and neighborhoods where God is already present and alive among us - if only we could become aware and alert to what is truly happening in and around us?

The power of our attention and our prayers last longer than the moment we are attending. They create a playlist of sorts in our brain and so in our lives like the grooves on a vinyl album spinning on a turntable.

Curt Thompson, M.D., a psychiatrist interested in the intersection of neuro-biology and Christian spiritual formation, writes,

“What we pay attention to is what we, then, remember, what we remember becomes our anticipated future, and our anticipated future is constantly circling back into our present moment, shaping what we are doing in the here and now.”

In attending to God’s tenderness inside me, I started to recognize my Savior so near, my “familiar friendship with Jesus” (as Thomas á Kempis named it) shining out into the world as I went about my day. That attentiveness opened up a wide world of joy and possibilities. There was even room to include my heartache as prayer. Being attuned and attentive to my life brought everything into my life with Jesus.

In the words of Simone Weil,

“Prayer is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God.”

In other words, attentiveness is a sense we hone or a skill we cultivate, giving us more capability of turning towards God’s face which is already turned towards us in love.

The truth that God is already looking for us in love is stunning to me every single time I recall it. His gracious invitation for us to come home to Him is what begins and carries our entire Beloved relationship.

I am discovering that my prayer life matures into its full width, breadth, and depth as I turn all of my rapt attention toward God. Prayer is more than our words, more than a list of requests that need His attention, no matter how urgent. It is all of that, and so much more.

I have discovered fresh ways of paying attention as prayer:

• quieting my inner world to hear God’s voice in my life

• noticing and expressing gratefulness for specific things (big and tiny, hard and happy, God’s character)

• taking a walk outside (without phone calls, podcasts, music, or audible books)

• generously listening to others

• inviting God to speak to me in the night

The idea is to invite the Trinity to speak in all ways at all times, even while I sleep. I don’t mean I stay up all night, but having invited God to speak or sing to me in the night, I often wake up with the strong sense that He has. This is growing trust between us as I realize I am n ever out of His presence.

In his book “The Game with Minutes”, Frank Laubach describes a lifestyle of prayer as a way of tuning into Christ as another radio frequency or hearing another language.

“We make [Christ] our inseparable chum . . . like all concentration upon one objective, (this) eventually results in flashes of new brilliant thought which astonish us, and keep us tiptoe with expectancy for the next vision which God will give us.”

No one uses the word “chum’ anymore, but you know what Laubach is talking about - deep friendship, solid companionship, kindred hearts. This camaraderie is our deepest longing. We are made for it in Christ. We find it in our dear friend and confidant, Jesus, who won it for us on the cross and gave it to us when He went back home to our Father. Jesus’ friendship is meant to grow in and between us.

Try offering God your undivided heart even as you go about your day and work and life. No attention is too small. May your communion with Christ in every small and subtle thing spill out as shafts of light all around you.

Questions to ponder and talk about with someone who loves you:

What turns your attention towards God? Where is He showing up in your everyday life?

In what new places or fresh ways are you inviting Jesus to speak to you this season?

A few books for further reading. (curated with affiliate links)

Banner photo by Monica Conlin. All others by me.