COLUMN: Prayer can easily be integretated into everyday life
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Food for Thought by Simon Scott
“Have you done your piano practice? Have you said your prayers?”
These are two questions I remember from my childhood. Odd questions … no one in the house could have failed to notice whether I had done my piano practice!
The other question seemed a bit intrusive. Whether I’d said my prayers or not seemed to be my affair, not anyone else’s. My discomfort at being asked that question as a boy arose more from the fact that I usually had to say ‘no’. And I got the distinct impression that that was the wrong answer!
Many people of faith find it difficult to talk about prayer, viewing it as a private activity between themselves and God.
As you will have gathered, as a child I had piano lessons. These lessons gave my teacher and I a chance to look at techniques that would help – a difficult passage would become easier to cope with if I sorted the fingering out for example.
But I never had much help with learning to pray. I was just left to get on with it. Oh yes, we went to church. I was in the choir and there was the odd sermon, but I don’t ever remember being asked, “How are you getting on with your prayer life?”
So, I grew up thinking that I was supposed to know about prayer and that everybody else already knew. I suspect that’s what most of us think. We look around and see everyone else devoutly concentrating and don’t realise that behind the closed eyes and clasped hands, there is as much confusion and inattention as there is in us.
A skit by Joyce Grenfell shows her in church singing a hymn “Calm and untroubled are my thoughts” – and then we realise that she is singing what she is actually thinking about – she has forgotten to turn the gas down under the saucepan of chicken bones she was turning into stock; she imagines the pan boiling dry, the cooker, then the house catching fire!
She turns to her husband and sings: “I suppose you didn’t think to check the gas? No, I didn’t think you would have.”
It’s funny because it rings true for many of us. We can all find it difficult to concentrate, to find time.
Perhaps we should consider moving on from having a time of prayer to having a life of prayer. There is no activity that can’t be prayerful – it’s all about changing our attitudes and growing into a deeper understanding.
There were once two monks who were arguing about whether you could drink coffee and pray at the same time. They couldn’t agree and both went off to see their spiritual directors for advice.
When they met up again, one monk said that his director had been very cross and said that on no account must anything interfere with prayer. The other monk said that his director had no problem with it whatsoever.
Then they told each other what they had each asked. The first had asked, “Can I drink coffee whilst praying?” – this was the one who got short shrift. The other monk had asked, “Can I pray whilst drinking coffee?”
What we are about is coming closer to the God who loves each of us and that can be done during the most mundane activities we carry out every day. As St Julian of Norwich prayed, “God, of your goodness give us yourself; for if we ask anything that is less, we shall always be in want. Only in you we have all.”
Father Simon Scott is priest in charge at St Finnbarr’s Scottish Episcopal Church, Dornoch.
