One in a series of short items about prayer from On Spirituality columnist Margery Eagan.
I came across this short suggestion in “Give Us This Day,” a year-round Catholic prayer book which I’ve come to love. “The most important prayer technique is to keep at it, to give it a daily place in our lives. A quarter hour daily is better than a binge,” writes Miriam Pollard, a Cistercian nun from the Santa Rita Abbey in Arizona. She’s written several books about prayer.
“Prayer is sacramental. We do not work our way toward it or master it like Spanish or cooking. Our task is to surrender to the prayer we already possess, to get out of its way.”
Withdraw from activities for a time every day to give life to the rest of your day, she says. “We should give away the time, lay it simply before God without demand that we see results. We just let God and let ourselves be the prayer we already are.”
