A Place to Pray- Part 1
The places we live have plenty of locations for special purposes; rooms to prepare meals and store food, rooms for breaking bread, rooms for cleaning and caring for our bodies, rooms for rest, rooms for work, rooms for play, and rooms for putting things away until they’re needed. When an activity has a space, whether that’s a room, a corner of a room, a closet, or just one little spot, it encourages and facilitates that activity as a part of our daily living. The same can be true of our prayer and spiritual practice, making physical space for it can help us to make temporal and emotional space for it in our days.
While it is true that many practices can happen in virtually any space, dedicating space is a powerful reminder that this is an essential activity of daily life. While Jesus recommends entering a prayer closet and praying in secret (Matthew 6:6), I believe that this guidance is more about an interior location within ourselves, versus a space in our domicile. Furthermore, as a queer person of faith, I really dislike the metaphor of meeting God only in the closet.
At the same time, I have found it to be a powerful reminder to have a space that invites me back into a deeper relationship with God in the place where I live. The meditation cushion and singing bowl invite me to the power of silence and now. The icons and art give me a place to fix my gaze and to be beheld in love. The vows of my community remind me of my promises. A begging bowl invites me into practices of shameless begging for the sake of my neighbors and world. My father’s pondering chair invites me to gentle contemplation. My beloved sibling’s crocheted prayer shawl wraps me in comfort and holy love. Various rosaries invite me into conversation with God(ess), the Holy Mother, and with Christ. This space invites me over and over and over into a posture and attitude of reverence, prayer, and love.
This doesn’t mean that this is the only place I pray or practice my spirituality. Indeed there is ample prayer that echoes forth in walks around the neighborhood, at the sink washing dishes, in the gardens as I tend the earth (more on this in part 2), beside the dog as she presses into me, and at my bedside as I begin and end each day. What makes it powerful is that this space is one that I enter daily, and I am invited once more to be mindful of God and neighbor in a gentle and compassionate way.
It’s one small corner in my living space that is loaded with meaning and the chance for additional meaning making abounds. For this, I am deeply grateful.
Practice
- Is there a spot in your home that could be an intentional place of prayer?
- Where would it be?
- What might you put there?
- What items, artifacts, and tools help you connect with yourself, with the divine, with beloved ancestors, and with current kinfolk in faith?
- How might you use this space?
- Could you put it somewhere that you see daily, even if it isn’t obvious to a visitor in your home?
Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.
Peace and Everything Good,
The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care
https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef