Busy-ness and praying?

St. Paul called us to "pray always," or "pray without ceasing."  The Orthodox tradition of the Jesus Prayer as a guide for praying continually is helpful, but I don't always remember to use that.  (If you are not familiar with that particular spiritual tradition among our Orthodox brothers and sisters, and if you'd like to know more, just holler; I'd love to talk with folks about that.)  So living into an attitude of prayer is something that I continue to find myself needing more and more.  It's ironic, isn't it, to think that finding/making time for prayer is something that a "Church person" needs to do more of?  And yet I confess it freely... knowing that I am most assuredly not alone in this need.

Whether working in and for the Church, or working somewhere else, or going to school, or living into retirement, most all of us have busy lives filled with too many things, too many appointment, too many worries, too many distractions from the spiritual life.  In his wonderful and challenging book, The Contemplative Pastor, Eugene Peterson wrote these words.  Now, he was writing to pastors, but I think it applies to most all of us.

"It takes time to develop a life of prayer: set-aside, disciplined, deliberate time. It isn't accomplished on the run... I know I can't be busy and pray at the same time.  I can be active and pray; I can work and pray; but I cannot be busy and pray.  I cannot be inwardly rushed, distracted, or dispersed.  In order to pray I have to be paying more attention to God than to what people are saying to me; to God than to my clamoring ego."

I'm going to be working again to make the time to pray... even, or perhaps especially, as I work.  Work and prayer are not mutually exclusive; quite the contrary.  The key, I believe, is being consciously aware of God's presence within us, working through us, in the lives of others we meet, in the splendor of creation.  Care to join in this endeavor?