It’s been a quiet week. I’m slowly feeling my way back into things.
I find it easier to pray when I’m moving or working. I was thinking that today, while planting onions. Planting onions, washing dishes, watering flowers, pacing with the baby, digging weeds, walking by the river. Maybe it’s like kids playing with lego while they’re listening to a book being read aloud. With their hands busy, their minds can focus better.
I pray better in the morning if my body has had a chance to wake up, to move around, to get the blood flowing. My physicality can bolster this ethereal task of prayer.
I also find it helpful to engage more of my body in prayer. To lift my hands in a prayer of surrender. To kneel in petition. To dance in praise. To reach, to move toward something. To somehow mirror with my body what is happening in my spirit.
I wonder if we can be too immaterial when it comes to prayer sometimes. We are physical beings as well as spiritual. I think God wants to engage us as whole persons. His Spirit is capable of that. From the beginning we had bodies in which to walk and talk with Him. And in the end, we will know the glory of resurrected bodies. And we will see Him who even now has an actual body, for the Incarnation was no temporary experiment. Our bodies matter.
And so I find myself, spirit, mind and body, reaching toward encounter with Christ. Oftentimes, the more of me that prays, the richer the connection. In some ways, prayer is movement. The movement of spirit to Spirit, but also, in a very real way, of body to Body. (And of course, the movement flows both ways.)
My fingers in the soil, they are touching earth that has been hallowed by His footsteps. My knees in the dirt, they bow in faith to the seed that will be raised incorruptible. Dig, plant, pat, repeat. Water, watch, hope. Pray.
~lg
