Pray Without Ceasing

Going about our days in unending oneness with our God, with some degree of routine which directs our attention to the Divine Presence, can feel at times like a quiet bliss.

We breathe with God, as a friend of mine has suggested, "We let God breathe us" and what a freedom it can feel like. We feel the inflow and outflow of relatively balanced "energy" as one must feel while cross-country skiing, the fluidity of motion… Left gives to the right, gives to the left… God bestows and I receive, I "bestow " and God receives.

On we go … Happily shushing out our prayerful day. Right?

Of course not. Moments like these are special, aren't they? Again, like skiing in the forest, a few other things had to happen first like making the space in our schedules to put ourselves out of our houses and vehicles, to put on spiritual skis. Getting out and away from complex entanglements, the daily unsolved and unsolvable. We long to meet God's unflinching presence and we know in our guts that it usually is going to take something happening first, something I must first choose and then activate.

Although it might be nice, I'm not talking about getting 10 minutes alone to be away from the days noise to have "prayer time." Let's face it, that's not always going to be feasible and God doesn't need to hear anymore of your silly apologies, especially right up front at the beginning of your prayer, like you would apologize incessantly to a friend you'd been trying to meet with for a few days. Good friends always say – never a problem, I might expect such from God.

No, I want the shushing of the snow prayer in my heart space to become the very grounding of my being in every moment irrespective of the timing or circumstances.

Is this too high a calling? Too difficult to attain or too abstract to illustrate?  Let's see what we come up with.

Now it is evening the same day. I receive this image from a friend, unbidden. Not requested. Gifted with it. May I receive it fully, pray without ceasing, shush and shush and so on…