Prayers of Attention
Pray and Be Prayed For Here
[The Church of All Saints in Wrington, Somerset, England, burial place of John Locke and Hannah More; photo by Karen Swallow Prior]
"Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” – Simone Weil1
There are stories from a city where I once lived of an order of nuns who devoted their lives to quiet, secret prayer from behind the wall of their convent. Few who lived in the area knew they were even there. But they prayed without ceasing, and I have heard of some of the answers to their prayers.
I am no nun. But this is The Priory, and this newsletter is subtitled, Prayers of Attention.2
And tonight, I feel led to make this a place of prayer. Just a few minutes ago, I was messaging with a friend in ministry. He shared with me some of the heavy burdens those he ministers to are bearing. I told him I was going to pray right then for him, and I did. But I don’t want to stop there. I want to keep praying. I want to invite others to pray. I want to pray for other needs. I want others to pray for the needs of others.
So I am inviting anyone at any time to post a prayer need here in the comments. This invitation is for everyone (not just paid subscribers).
The Bible has much to say about the power and necessity of prayer.
Julian of Norwich (1342-1416), an anchoress and mystic of medieval England, also had much to say about prayer. Here is one of my favorite passages from her Revelations of Divine Love (sometimes translated as Showings):
Prayer unites the soul to God, for though the soul may always be like God in nature and in substance restored by grace, it is often unlike him in condition, through sin on our part. Then prayer is a witness that the soul wills as God wills, and it eases the conscience and fits us for grace. And so he teaches us to pray and to have firm trust that we shall have it; for he beholds us in love, and wants to make us partners in his good will and work.3
Please post your prayer need in the comments. I invite all to pray for these as led. And may our prayers unite our souls to God.
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. By Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr (London: Routledge, 2002), 117.
“Prayers of attention” is a play on traditional phrase “prayers of intention.” The meaning isn’t all that different, but places the emphasis on re-focusing our increasingly fractured attention, as I wrote about in my first post.
Julian of Norwich, Showings, English/Middle English edition (Paulist Press, 1977), 253.
Pray for J, who ministers to young people and is seeing them struggle in many ways.
I will be leading my first "Blue Christmas" service in the seniors residence where I pastor a little church. Since announcing this quiet gentle hour to acknowledge sorrow and loss in the holiday season, I have been overwhelmed with the number of people (residents, staff, family and visitors) who are clearly desperate to have their story of grieving heard: deaths of loved ones, loss of home, independence, and especially loss of the ability to remember. Please pray we will bring comfort into all this pain and sorrow while we point folks toward hope.