Meditative Prayer can be a very good way to prayer. It is about centering and becoming aware of the presence of God. Here you will find a bit from my experience as well as an inspirational message from the miraculous recovery experience by Tammy Peterson.
One of the expectations of clergy in the Catholic and Anglican traditions is the regular practice of praying the daily office. This is a set of services:Morning Prayer, Noon Day Prayer, Evevening Prayer, and Compline (before bed). In truth, I have always found this difficult and uninspiring. The reason for my poor attitude is this: The services are meant to be prayed with others. Praying by myself seemed somewhat empty without a congregration present. The argument of course is that thousands of other people are also alone somewhere doing the same.
However, I am now beginning with a new attitude. The change came while watching an interview between Tammy Perterson (Jordan Perterson’s wife) and Bishop Barron.
( https://youtu.be/czgc6uB2-SI?si=klax1lp1HBF6F6oM )
Tammy recently experienced a miraculous healing from terminal cancer. The miracle of it is connected with praying the Rosary. In the interview they discuss not only the Rosary, but also other meditative prayer including the daily office.
Bishop Barron explains that these practices are “useless” activities. Not that they are not beneficial. They are. However, there is not any utilitarian reason for them. They force one do stop doing everything else.
“Why”, you might ask “was this helpful for me?
It takes me back to my big conversion story. You can read about this elsewhere on this site. ( https://godspeacefulsmithy.com/ )
In short in a time of depression and despair I asked aloud, “Can’t I just be.” God answered, “Yes, and I am.” The trouble is that even with this permission I have found it difficult to just stop and do nothing. Turns out I am not alone. It is true for most extroverts. We always seem to need to be doing something. We are not however, human doings, we are human beings!
Thus, now it is my aim to be able to stop throughout my day and practice being without doing! To be for at least a short period, useless in the presence of God. Hopefully, as for Tammy, it will be healing and insoirational.
If you would like to try being useless to you can find the Daily Office one line.
https://dailyoffice.app/ Or. https://dailyofficeforall.com/ or in the App Store
You might also like to try the Rosary or Using Prayer Beads in a non Roman Catholic form.
https://rosarycenter.org/how-to-pray-the-rosary Or. https://classroom.synonym.com/how-to-pray-the-protestant-rosary-12087352.html
Best of spiritual progress to you all.
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