prayer
What is praying? I've been struggling to know what I ought to be doing when praying, or to see its point. There are a range of answers (talking to, spending time with, God) which aren't wrong but don't get someone like me anywhere. And whilst I've sometimes found rote prayers (the Rosary; repeating the Jesus Prayer - below) truly meaningful, at other times that all seems pretty empty. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God Have mercy on me, a sinner Here's how I'm thinking about it now. Prayer is about righting imbalances in the soul. (Soul: not some non-existent spooky entity; instead: the grounding core of our being, the possibility of our hope, conscience and liveliness.) It's about inner honesty. On the axis of acceptance and striving, it's at the acceptance end. It's the practice of the relinquishing of futile will and the restoration of a trusting acceptance - even if the result is a new, different, kind of striving. It's the restoration of cont