Welcome to Responding with Prayer,
An opportunity to respond to the complex everyday experiences that lift us up and bring us down.
My name is Jess,
I've struggled with attending to prayer and I hope this little offering brings you closer to the Creator.
This meditation is on busyness.
To start,
Let's take an opening moment to slow down with five big breaths.
Deep breathing has been studied and found to change how we engage stress and situations.
This is good for slowing down,
Preparing for prayer,
But also a good practice for all kinds of situations we find ourselves in.
So for just 60 seconds,
Feel yourself breathe.
That was one minute.
If your mind went to other places,
It's okay,
It's natural,
And you're still here,
So let's move on.
Take a moment and identify one person or situation that you are grateful for as you do this today.
And we'll take a moment and out loud or in your head,
Express gratitude for that person or that situation.
Spiritual writer,
Henwy Nguyen,
Suggests that being busy is one of the most obvious characteristics of our lives.
He compared our busyness to an over-packed suitcase bursting at the seams.
He wrote those words in the 1980s before the cell phone or even the personal computer.
Seems that they're more true now than they were when he wrote them.
If you're able,
Put your arms out and turn your palms up in a posture of release toward the creator.
Our bodies are an important part of prayer.
The Christian scriptures tell of a very practical spiritual opportunity.
Cast your cares towards the divine.
Imagine for a moment you wrote the things that keep you so busy on the palms of your hands.
What words would be there?
God,
We place into your hands these things on our hands.
We give to you busyness and its impact on our lives.
A lot of meditation teaches the necessary ability to release.
Let's also focus on what healthy things we put into that space of release.
If we're releasing the cares of busyness,
What are we needing to take on?
As you close your hands,
What are the accompanying things you need as you deal with busyness in your life?
How about rest,
Play,
Children,
Boundaries?
If we took on sleep and freedom,
Busyness keeps us from our purpose because it focuses us on the modern ideals of production,
Expectations,
Time,
And less on the ability to hear the spirit calling us daily.
However,
In prayer,
We slow down and make commitments to our core foundations.
Spend a minute expressing to God how busyness is impacting your life and what freedom you want to live into.
God,
We accept the freedom that comes with submission to you.
We often fight against the very abundant life that you have for us.
So we accept the grace of contentment,
Being loved.
We accept the grace of saying no and unproductivity.
We accept the grace of open space.
Taking time today did not change your schedule or demands.
It may have changed your orientation towards those things.
You may need to take some greater steps to address busyness in your life,
But the great spiritual writers in the Christian tradition often maintained that prayer's greatest gift is not that it suddenly changes situations,
But that it often changes us.
