Connection: Mindfulness and Prayer
Post-Easter Season 2024
In a video on stress and resilience, the first speaker, a sociologist, commented that technology has the capacity to pull us away from life around us and into another reality. One recommended way to return to our actual reality was through mindfulness and prayer. The second speaker, a rabbi, suggested that mindfulness is actually a kind of prayer, as being aware of our surroundings, our thoughts, and our emotions can bring us greater connection to our creator.
As a chaplain, I often pray with patients and their families. On occasion, the visits are about prayer itself and the person will begin the conversation by asking me whether I believe there’s a purpose to prayer, whether all prayers are answered, or why I, personally, pray. One patient told me that he doesn’t believe that you should pray in order to satisfy an emotion; instead, for him, prayer is communication with his creator. This comment stuck with me and after much thought I’ve concluded that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with praying in order to satisfy an emotion. In fact, prayer is a much more life-giving way to act on one’s emotions than many other actions that we often take to handle our emotions. When we eat, sleep, or watch TV in response to an emotion, we’re engaging in that activity in an effort to numb the emotion and to not feel it. In contrast, prayer acknowledges the emotion and does not avoid it. Prayer is a way to express our mindfulness of how we feel in the current moment. Even more, prayer lets us bring that emotion to our creator.
The rabbi in the video explained that prayer is reaching beyond oneself and expanding our vision because it connects us to the Divine and to all who are praying now. Prayer is a form of connection. I love that idea that even if we are by ourselves when we pray, we are still connecting to all who are praying concurrently with us. It is not just a vertical connection to God but also a horizontal connection with our fellow person. This view of prayer feels very expansive, as we can then imagine being connected with persons all around the world. Indeed, it’s not too different from Islam’s set times of prayer. Muslims know that fellow Muslims are praying at the same time in their own time zone. Concurrent prayer helps to form a sense of connection.
Both prayer and mindfulness counteract technology’s pull into another reality and connect us with our actual life and the present moment. When we don’t ignore an emotion, when we are allowed to just be, however we are, without any pressure to change, and when we can feel connected with the Divine and with others, then we tend to increase our sense of well-being and peace. Prayer and mindfulness help us to accept what is, the fact, the circumstance, the feeling, rather than ignoring it or acting on it in a harmful way.
Maybe prayer hasn’t been life-giving to you lately. Maybe it’s time to pray in a different way, or to return to an old form of prayer from which you fell out of habit. For me, praying with patients and families often enables me to tap into a deeper part of my spirituality than I usually access when I pray for myself or my own loved ones. The connection is still there; yet for myself and those close to me, I tend to rely on older forms of prayer, especially those found in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer. Below is one of my favorite prayers from Compline (a liturgy of prayers for the end of the day):
O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live
in and the life we live: Watch over those, both night and day,
who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never
forget that our common life depends upon each other's toil;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.