Week of Guided Prayer: Day 1
This week is the Week of Guided Prayer at the Catholic Chaplaincy, when students are invited to sign up to spend 30 minutes a day in silent prayer, and to meet with a spiritual director for another 30 mins. There are general aims of the week; that participants should be able to experience some of the atmosphere of a retreat within their daily lives, and also that we should be able to explore in prayer, meditation and discussion those avenues which are most pertinent to our own lives, whether that be how to pray, discernment of vocations or finding inner peace.
Because the retreat was specifically advertised as 'for busy people' and because the meetings with our spiritual guides were very flexible, I signed up for the week. In order to coalesce my thoughts and feelings, I intend to try and post each day on how the week is going - this post is sadly a day late (!) but hopefully I'll post again this evening with a record of Day 2.
Being engaged during the welcome session on Sunday, I arranged a meeting with my spiritual guide by e-mail and thought I should do some prayer and/or meditation before going to see him. So, with 15 minutes to go before it was time for this meeting, I guiltily tried to pray. Even though I do practice formalized religion, the amount of time I normally dedicate to prayer is shamefully small, and I think I'm pretty rusty at praying! I found the first 5-10 minutes really difficult; it was hard to focus on anything to do with God as I kept being distracted by the most mundane things - what I needed to get from the shops, when I needed to be where, what e-mails I needed to send. I found myself thinking - am I just too busy to pray? I was really tempted in that time by the idea of prayer as an optional extra. In the remaining 5 minutes though, I felt myself beginning to focus - I stopped thinking and just started listening to what was around me - no more generation of a banal stream of consciousness! Just stopping thinking gave me a remarkable sense of clarity and peace (and a feeling that I had realized something important which allowed me to move forward) and I was able to share this later with my spiritual director. I had also scribbled down some notes after I finished my session; I felt frustrated at my lack of patience during those long, early 10 minutes, and I also felt a powerful need to stop asking God for things all the time - while I can petition God, I think I need to listen to him more and talk at him less.
That evening, although I was too tired to follow the recommended prayer, I took a cup of tea up to my bedroom and sat thinking with it for 10 minutes or so. Today I have followed up on yesterday's prayer; expect another post this evening with the results. :)
Because the retreat was specifically advertised as 'for busy people' and because the meetings with our spiritual guides were very flexible, I signed up for the week. In order to coalesce my thoughts and feelings, I intend to try and post each day on how the week is going - this post is sadly a day late (!) but hopefully I'll post again this evening with a record of Day 2.
Being engaged during the welcome session on Sunday, I arranged a meeting with my spiritual guide by e-mail and thought I should do some prayer and/or meditation before going to see him. So, with 15 minutes to go before it was time for this meeting, I guiltily tried to pray. Even though I do practice formalized religion, the amount of time I normally dedicate to prayer is shamefully small, and I think I'm pretty rusty at praying! I found the first 5-10 minutes really difficult; it was hard to focus on anything to do with God as I kept being distracted by the most mundane things - what I needed to get from the shops, when I needed to be where, what e-mails I needed to send. I found myself thinking - am I just too busy to pray? I was really tempted in that time by the idea of prayer as an optional extra. In the remaining 5 minutes though, I felt myself beginning to focus - I stopped thinking and just started listening to what was around me - no more generation of a banal stream of consciousness! Just stopping thinking gave me a remarkable sense of clarity and peace (and a feeling that I had realized something important which allowed me to move forward) and I was able to share this later with my spiritual director. I had also scribbled down some notes after I finished my session; I felt frustrated at my lack of patience during those long, early 10 minutes, and I also felt a powerful need to stop asking God for things all the time - while I can petition God, I think I need to listen to him more and talk at him less.
That evening, although I was too tired to follow the recommended prayer, I took a cup of tea up to my bedroom and sat thinking with it for 10 minutes or so. Today I have followed up on yesterday's prayer; expect another post this evening with the results. :)
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