Anam Cara

To Frame Each Frontier of the Day with Prayer

After the absolution of night, the dawn is a new beginning. All the mystical traditions have recognized that the dawn is a special time. They all have had rituals of prayer for beginning the day. They do not greet the day with worry or the anxiousness of how many items are on the agenda before twelve. They literally take time to welcome the new day. Acknowledging the brevity of our time on earth, they recognize the huge, concealed potential of a day for soul-making. This space to recognize each unique day invests the day with a sense of the eternal. The monastic tradition blesses this beginning with prayer. As children, we were taught to say the “morning offering” prayer. Though quite traditional, this was a nice prayer of care for the new day. It would be lovely in the morning if you could give thanks for the gift of the new day and recognize its promise and possibility, and, at evening, it would be lovely to gather the difficulties and blessings of the lived day within a circle of prayer. It would intensify and refine your presence in the world if you came into a rhythm of framing your days with prayer.

A wonderful teacher and inspiration in the West of Ireland has as a motto for his school the axiom “The mind altering alters all.” This is a powerful dictum to have as central to the vision of a school. The mind is the eye of the world. When the mind changes, the world is different. In a transferred sense, the prayerful presence transfigures everything. We will never understand the power of our prayer to effect change and to bring shelter to others.

We should pray also for those who suffer each day: those in prison, hospital, and mental institutions; for refugees, prostitutes, the powerful, the destroyers. There are so many broken places where our prayer is needed each day. We should be generous with our prayer. It is important to recognize the extent and intensity of spirit that prayer awakens and sends out. Prayer is not about the private project of making yourself holy and turning yourself into a shining temple that blinds everyone else. Prayer has a deeper priority, which is, in the old language, the sanctification of the world of which you are a privileged inhabitant. By being here, you are already a custodian of sacred places and spaces. If you could but see what your prayer could do, you would always want to be in the presence that it awakens. There is a poem by Fernando Pessoa which articulates this: