Pray More, Bless More, Be More

If you want to live a rich life, pray more, bless more and be more.

Pray More: Unfortunately talking about prayer often brings up more questions than answers. So here I am going to cut to the chase: don’t think about who God is, don’t think about the gender of God, don’t think about what you can or cannot say to God, don’t think of formulas or traditions. Pray this way: talk to God as your most intimate self. Tell God your hopes, dreams, angers, frustrations, failures, loves, successes and vulnerabilities. Do this daily. At the end of the day is good, you can review how your day has gone with God, ask his blessing on that night’s sleep and on the next day. Or morning is good, too. Tell God what you want to accomplish and ask his blessing on the day. In the afternoon works, also, if you suffer a low point in mid-afternoon, you can ask God’s help in moving on with more energy. Pray anytime, anywhere. After a while of praying this way, after you’ve said what’s on your heart and mind, you’ll find in the silence a sense of answer or just a little lightness, a little comfort, something in the silence. As you continue in this dialogue with God, you might find a suggestion in the silence, or a direction, a choice to be made. Eventually the silence may become more important than what you have to say, and you just let your heart speak for you. Pay lots of attention to what happens in the silences.

Bless More: Ask God’s blessing on everything you do, every meeting you have, every difficult situation you face. Ask God’s blessing on the people you love, your friends, your enemy, even the person next to you in line at the grocery store Ask God’s blessing on you and those in your life. Ask God’s blessing on world situations like Myammar, China, Darfur, the lawlessness in Mexico, poverty or high food prices. Ask God’s blessing on your work, your play, your church, synagogue, or mosque, if you have one.

Be More: To be means to be without agendas, purpose or goals. To be is the absence of everything but you. The more you use your senses, all of them, the more present you are. Thinking will take you out of being, so don’t pay any attention to your thoughts. You can’t get rid of them, but you can develop an attitude towards them of not being sucked into them. On a summer morning sit outside with a cup of coffee or iced tea. Feel the breeze on your skin and in your hair, listen for the birds. Watch the people on the street or the animals that cross your yard. Take a walk, not for exercise, but for you. Notice the different shades of green in the landscape, the shape of different leaves, and what the weeds are like; look for an interesting stone to pick up. Sit on a rock or in a tree and listen for the wisdom it offers. In the winter sit at your front window with a cup of cocoa and sip slowly. Notice what is happening outside, if anything. Swing. Dance without purpose. Remember how it was to be a child, doing things for the sheer joy of doing it, trying something because it just seemed like a good idea and definitely without any particular object in mind.

To Pray More, Bless More and Be More is to move into the spaces between all the action in our lives, to absorb what the silences have to offer us, and to hear our inner nature first and foremost. Take the invitation of God, of mystery, of the stars themselves to explore the inner space. We know the outer landscape, not is the time to know the inner one, too.