FINDING YOUR RHYTHM

Finding Your Rhythm


When I was in high school and learning how to play basketball, I would set aside an hour each afternoon to work on my game. During that hour I had a routine. I'd stretch. I'd dribble for 10 minutes: right hand, left hand, switching hands, between the legs, behind the back. I'd shoot close in, maybe 50 shots. I'd shoot 10 shots each from different spots on the perimeter. I'd shoot 50 free throws. Then I'd work on moves.

Establishing a regular routine is key to improving in anything, including prayer.

Why Regular Times for Prayer?

In some ways, it's hard to imagine that a regular routine is necessary in something as intimate, as personal, and as spontaneous as a personal relationship. But it sure helps.

That's why a lot of couples schedule times for one another. Some go to the Wednesday matinee every week. Others go out for breakfast every Saturday. Some make sure they have sex on Sunday morning. Others take a walk together every evening. Whatever. Couples have learned that a serious relationship cannot be sustained by spontaneous moments alone. There needs to be some routine.


It's no different in a relationship with God in fact, it's probably even more important with God. If I don't set aside regular times for my wife, well, I'm going to keep bumping into her anyway, and at some point she's just going to grab me and make me sit and talk with her. But God tends to be more of a gentleman and will not force us to spend time with him.


The result? We can go weeks without praying, our awareness of God becomes dull, and our spiritual walk slows to a halt.

The need for a routine comes and goes. Sometimes I'm resolute about it: I'm determined to find a time and a place and a routine and then stick with it. I want to grow in prayer. I want to become more spiritually aware.


Other times, though, I rebel against the routine and for good reason. Sometimes the routine itself turns into a god. I take pride in externals: Good for me I spent time in prayer every day for a month! Big deal since I was so anal-retentive about the whole thing, I never actually met God during the time. When I find myself in this sort of confused state, I back off from routine and let my prayer life become more spontaneous. But for most people most of the time, routine is a key element in a maturing prayer life.

What Time Is It?

Routine starts with picking a time of the day to settle into prayer. What are your options? Let's take a look at each.

Morning

This can be a great time of day, especially for the morning person who is alert and chipper and ready to tackle anything even prayer. Morning prayer allows you to think about the day ahead and to prepare and pray accordingly.

But even the morning-impaired might want to consider early morning prayer. Let me explain.

Dorothea Brand, in her book Becoming a Writer, tells would-be writers to make it a habit to rise early and write whatever comes to mind. It doesn't matter what you write; just do it immediately upon waking. She argues that when we awake, we're still partially in a dream state, a state that encourages creative, intuitive thinking, which is a key process for writers.


The same principle works in prayer. As mentioned in the last chapter, there is the rational side of prayer and an intuitive side. Praying upon immediately waking is one way to experience God in a more intuitive way. Because the morning-impaired are not exactly in touch with their rational faculties, morning may be the perfect time to experience the non-rational aspects of prayer.

Assuming that you just don't fall asleep, that is! This can be a problem for the morning-impaired, which means you may want to consider other times.

Evening

The evening-impaired have the intuitive advantage at night, but falling asleep is even more of a temptation for them. For night owls, though, evening is the time when the brain is finally in gear, and prayer can become a time of keen reflection and insight.

In evening prayer, you tend to focus on how the day has gone; in that sense, it's less a time of preparation (as in morning prayer) and more of evaluation. Then again, some people use evening prayer to think about the activities of the following day.

Noon Hour

You can split the difference and pray at noon, or sometime in the middle of the day. Some people like to just start their days with a bang and stop in the middle and reflect on how things are going. I, for one, have never found this helpful. Once I start into my day, which moves often at breakneck speed, it's hard to get into a frame of mind that allows me to pray more than an arrow prayer.


How long should you set aside for regular prayer? My advice is to take things easy at first. If you've never had a routine of prayer, 5 or 10 minutes will be seem like a lot. Once you get into it, though, it will hardly seem long enough. A few hardy souls spend up to an hour or two a day in prayer, but 15 minutes to a half-hour is probably what you can expect to work up to.

Finding a Place

Naturally, you'll want to find a place where you can be alone and undistracted, a room where you can shut the door.

The bedroom has certain advantages: For one thing, you're right there in the morning as you awake, and in the evening as you go to bed.

But there's a serious drawback, especially if you pray in bed. The temptation is to slump lower and lower until you're on your back and the eyelids close, and you move into that completely intuitive state called sleep. Another disadvantage if you're married and your spouse is in bed next to you: Snoring and prayer just don't seem to go together.

Some people set aside a room or a corner of a room for prayer. They'll set up a couple of candles and maybe a cross on a table next to their chair.

Speaking of chairs pick one that is comfortable. There are few things more distracting to prayer than your leg or butt going to sleep.

Then there's the outdoors. Especially in seasonal weather, sitting in your garden or under the branches of a towering pine or maple can be a splendid setting for prayer. Few things can bring out a sense of devotion better than being surrounded by the creator's handiwork.

Some people are pretty restless and can't sit and pray so they jog and pray. I don't get it, myself. I just can't keep focused for more than a few steps. But I have a friend in Minneapolis who jogs summer and winter and prays as he jogs his 30 to 45 minutes a day.

Some people switch from one setting to another. Writer Kathleen Norris (Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, The Cloister Walk, and Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith) says she starts her day like this: "I meditate on Scripture while I'm walking. That really stimulates my body and my mind. Then I come back, and I'll sing hymns and read some Psalms. If I don't read the Bible for a couple of days, the world just seems a lot flatter and life a lot less interesting."

Again, this is a matter of experimentation and regular reappraisal. What works for one person doesn't for another and what works for you at one time in your life may not work at another.


Posture

The tongue and brain are not the only two parts of the body used in prayer. In fact, how we position ourselves when praying can change the nature of praying.


Most people prefer sitting. They're used to it. It's comfortable. But for some it seems a bit too casual.

Some kneel. Kneeling may seem old-fashioned, but there's a reason it has been around since prayer has been around that’s a few thousand years. It does put one into a humble frame of mind, just the sort of attitude you want to have in prayer.

Other people like to stand. They feel this better honors God, just as we stand when an important person comes into the room.

Some people employ prayer gestures. The classic gesture is to bow your head and to either clasp your hands or press them together with the fingers pointing upward. These are gestures of respect and supplication; another gesture of supplication is to open your arms and turn your palms upward. A gesture of praise is to raise one or both hands high with the palm pointing outward. Though most people pray with bowed heads, some like to tilt their heads back with their eyes closed, as if God's love is pouring down upon them, and as if they are opening themselves to allow God to fill them.

As with so many other aspects of prayer, you'll have to see what works best for you. Even if none of this seems meaningful to you now, I'd encourage you to give each of these postures another try at another time. I used to feel too self-conscious to use them I spent all my time thinking about how I looked (even though no one was looking). But now I use a number of them, depending on my mood, because they help me pray better.

Establishing a Pattern

In the next chapter, I'll discuss one method of prayer, but here I want to mention briefly how you might structure your time. Here's a routine I've followed with success.

· Focus. I begin by clearing my mind of all distractions, and I try to visualize that God is present. One method I've used is, in my mind's eye, to step outside the earth's atmosphere. I imagine that I am looking down on the earth, as God might. Then I zero on North America, then Illinois, then Chicago, then the suburb of Glen Ellyn, then on my street, then my home, then the room I'm sitting in. For some reason, this can help me realize that God is thinking of me and listening to me.


· Pray for guidance. This is a simple prayer asking that God would help me during this time of prayer.


· Read. This means a reading from the Bible or from a devotional classic or from a current booklet that includes a Scripture reading, an explanation, and a prayer.

· Meditate or journal. I spend time reflecting on what I've read, and sometimes I note my thoughts in my prayer journal.

· Pray. Now I turn to prayer. I may follow the outline from the next chapter, or I might just pray as the Spirit moves me. I might spend some time praying and some time listening. I may use the time simply to sit in the presence of God.

· Return. This may seem silly, but it's important to move out of prayer slowly, especially if the time has been meaningful. It's jarring simply to jump up and rush into my day. So to end my prayer, I might, for example, turn my mind slowly from the room I'm in to the other people in my home, or to the people I'll be meeting in the day and the tasks I'll be doing.

I've hardly begun to explore the options you can use to establish a routine. Unfortunately, using the word routine suggests that you'll hit on one pattern that will really "work" for you forever. Not quite. As we grow and mature in prayer, our routine will change sometimes within days. There is value in being consistent in prayer, but not necessarily in how you go about it.