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DAILY PRAYER
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SITUATED PRAYER
By Father Michael Paul Gallagher S.J.
At one stage Jesus invited the disciples to ‘come away to some lonely place all by yourselves and rest for a while’ (Mark 6:31). The context tells us that there was so much going on that they had ‘no time to even eat’. It’s consoling to find that level of activism even in the Gospel. Therefore the disciples need to nourish their vision and sense of the Lord away from even the pressures of their mission.
But it is not true to say that prayer is possible only in times of withdrawal. Prayer involves not just time for explicit prayer, but a whole adventure of attitude that can gradually shape anyone’s life. Go back to basics. We are here to echo God who is love. Jesus is the One who shows us how. Prayer is where we learn to live like him, but that learning happens on two different fronts: in the silence of the heart, and in the chaos of reality.
I like what Donald Nicholl once said, that we throw away experiences instead of discerning the ‘finger of God in the seeming chaos of the day’. Every experience can be recognised as the call of God. But it is an acquired skill to recognize the Spirit in the crowdedness of reality. How can one see God in the pressures of each day? How can one foster a spirit of ‘situated prayer’?
I often long to be able to ‘see God in all things’ (a phrase of Ignatius Loyola). But I have tended to misinterpret it, thinking of it only as a kind of conscious remembering. It can be that. I’m sure that I can encourage the blank moments of the day to be more explicitly in contact with God. Waiting at a bus stop. Walking downstairs to meet someone. Making the bed. The day is full of such moments in neutral gear, times that can be wasted, but could, with a little effort, become more gently in contact with God. It’s not even a matter of speaking to the Lord. It’s more a matter of background music, a sense of doing God’s will, or of trying to be in tune with the self-giving of Christ.
And yet this semi-explicit prayer, or prayer in the fragments of the day, is not the key to what I am calling ‘situated prayer’. By its nature it cannot be conscious of God. It is not a question of attention. I cannot give my attention to God if I am trying to teach, or write, or listen to someone. But I can give my intention and my attitude of heart.
Let me gather what I am trying to say in a kind of argument.
1. Daily living is a key place of encounter with God.
2. It is there that explicit prayer, if it is genuine, produces fruit.
3. The Christian quality of our everyday attitudes is a form of situated prayer.
4. In terms of time, this kind of un-explicit prayer is our principal response to God.
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