...Says A Little Prayer For You!

Today one of my very dear sweet friends was somewhat troubled, so I suggested that he say a prayer to help ease his burden. "Oh but I'm not really religious" he replied, immediately categorising the idea as untenable.

That made me think, is the concept of prayer exclusively owned by religion or can we all pray, even if we aren't religious? 

I'm not particularly religious, but I always pray. I regard prayer as asking for help. To me, a prayer is not about religion. Prayer is about needing help, asking for that help and then waiting patiently with the full knowledge and trust that your prayer has been heard and will be answered. 

Read that last sentence again and look at that little word "trust". How does that make you feel?  

Many times I've said a prayer and because the answer didn't come in my time frame, I assumed I would have to do the leg work and get the ball rolling. So instead of waiting patiently, trusting that my prayer had been answered, I took over. I didn't trust. And of course the result was that the answer either went unheard, because I was too busy, or it went by unnoticed because I had forgotten about my request.

That's a little bit like going out for a meal, giving the waiter your order and after waiting a few moments, giving up and going into the kitchen and cooking it myself, or standing over the chef while s/he cooks! Who does that? Nobody as far as I'm aware. So why do we do it with prayers? What drives us to feel we have to do it all? 

We don't have to do it all. Help is available. 

This is my recommendation on how to pray: say your prayer, be very specific about what you're asking for, and then let it go. Just speak using your normal language, and ask for what you need. Sometimes my prayer is just these three words "Please help me". And the help always comes.

Don't worry about being in a designated place of prayer, instead find that place within you where stillness sits. In my opinion, that's the best prayer house on this earth.

And please don't worry about what you're wearing or if your hair looks good. Just say a little prayer. Or a long prayer. It's up to you. Make your prayer personal to you. I don't believe we can influence others in our prayers, but we can seek to enhance our lives. So you can't pray for David Beckham or Kelly Brook to fall in love with you, but you can pray for a happy, healthy relationship with someone kind, compassionate and thoughtful (insert any words of your choice here!) who loves and respects you.

Next, please don't get upset if it doesn't happen straight away. That will only serve to diminish your trust. While you wait for your prayer to be answered, you must have trust that it's in the process of being delivered. 

Get excited that it's on it's way. Look forward happily to receiving your answer, and feel positively grateful that your prayer has been heard. Waiting with a heavy heart is so painful, but waiting in hopeful expectation is exhilarating and uplifting. 

I suggest that those are the very feelings we should to aim to cultivate in our lives, and if we imbue our prayers with those feelings, we'll see miracles happening every day all around us.

I don't know if my beautiful friend did say a prayer after all, but I said one asking for my heart to stay open and loving.

...GETS IMPATIENT FOR THE LAST TIME! (hopefully…)

I was reflecting upon virtues today – you know what I mean here – those character traits that represent superb, five-star, gold-plated qualities of moral excellence. These are the things we all strive for such as modesty, probity, integrity, kindness…the list is quite long and full of elements that cannot help but make us feel good about ourselves. Until we reach one virtue that, practically without exception, makes us all groan...patience.

As virtues go, I think we can all agree that patience gets a really bad press. I mean, come on let’s face it, who looks forward to waiting? Isn’t this the age of instant gratification? If I want it, I’ll have it now please. Which one of you enjoys hearing that irksome phrase “...remember - patience is a virtue…”? I’m willing to bet the numbers are in single figures! Even as I write this I’m feeling somewhat irritated as I ponder upon the various experiences that are yet to manifest in my life, as I tell myself to be patient because it’ll all come together in the end (cue gnashing of gritted teeth).

Patience is one of those words that’s steeped in negativity. We end up being so aghast and distressed at the requirement to wait that we put masses of energy into being impatient. Its really quite odd when we think about it. In our instinctive determination to rebel against being patient we end up making the whole process quite unbearable.

This is the age of now – if we want pizza at 1am we can have it; if we want to check our bank balance at 3am we can do it; if we want to read tomorrow’s headlines at 4am we can read them.

But what happens when we want an omelette instead of scrambled eggs? Or when driving to Manchester from London in a traffic jam? In those instances, instantaneous it most certainly is not! There are many circumstances where instant gratification has not made its presence felt. Think of pregnancy and childbirth (how many months?) or gardening (how long does it take for the bulbs to appear?) or baking a cake, roasting a joint, growing an oak tree or becoming a Jedi Master. They all require varying degrees of patience. There’s just no getting round it.

So in a fit of revolutionary pique I have decided it’s time patience got a makeover! I’m on a one-woman mission to convert you into loving this virtue and embracing patience wholeheartedly. I’m hopeful that the benefits will bring immeasurable joy into our lives and give us back our peace of mind.

Reader, allow me to share my 6 year old son’s explanation of patience. He said that patience is when we really want something to happen but it won’t happen immediately and there’s nothing we can do about that, so while we wait for it to happen we do other things to help pass the time. His proviso (my word not his – he was only 6 remember) being that we must always keep a clear and certain image of the thing we want in our minds. From the mouths of babes!

When I have applied my son’s logic to the many times patience has been required, it has indeed worked like magic. If I’m stuck in traffic when I’m running late for a meeting, I’ll use the time to do something constructive like mentally review my agenda for the meeting. That way instead of arriving at the meeting frazzled and flustered, I’m even better prepared and the traffic jam is a distant memory that hasn’t blighted my day.

I also find that gratitude is a crucial way to help the process along. We can always find things to be grateful for, no matter what the circumstances, and I’d urge you to think of 5 things you’re grateful for right now. See how it lifts you, and distracts you from the process of waiting?

Some things will always only ever happen in their own time whether we like it or not. So the more we learn to let go of the process itself and the more we focus with certainty (not desperation) on the outcome, whilst simultaneously spending our time pursuing other tasks and preoccupations that we enjoy, the less we tend to notice that we are in fact waiting. The added bonus being the realisation that we’re actually very good at being patient. Admittedly it does take some practice, but surely that’s a win-win we all want to be a part of?