Reading Thomas Merton this morning reminded me again about the realities or our prayer life.  He writes, ” Prayer and Love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone. 

If you have never had any distractions you don’t know how to pray.  For the secret of prayer is a hunger for God and for the vision of God, a hunger that lies far deeper than the level of language or affection.  And a man whose memory and imagination are persecuting him with a crowd of useless or even evil thoughts and images may be forced to pray far better, in the depths of his murdered heart, than one whose mind is swimming with clear concepts and brilliant purposes and easy acts of love. 

     That is why it is useless to get upset when you cannot shake off distractions.  In the first place, you must realize that they are often unavoidable in the life of prayer.  The necessity of kneeling and suffering submersion under a tidal wave of wild and inane images is one of the standard trials of the contemplative life.  If you think that you are obliged to stave these things off by using a book and clutching at its sentences the way a drowning man clutches at straws, you have the privilege of doing so, but if you allow your prayer to degenerate into a period of spiritual reading you are losing a great deal of fruit.  You would profit much more by patiently resisting distractions and learning something of your own helplessness and incapacity.  And if your book merely becomes an anesthetic, far from helping your meditation it has probably ruined it”.

     Certainly there is an ebb and flow in our prayer life. There are times when we are so intent upon our time spent with God, that we are able to truly and openly converse with Him. Both in  expressing our innermost needs and being able to listen to Him.  Most often though we can be distracted.  We come into that time in prayer so loaded with our own agenda that we don’t or are unable to hear what we most need. Or we have so much of going on with work, family, life, etc., that those things crowd into our time of prayer. How often have you been praying and different random thoughts begin to float in and out during your time in prayer?  It can be distracting for sure, and even disheartening as we really want to pay attention and be focused.  Many times it is when we are tired, or there is an over abundance of stuff going on that we are dealing with, but sometimes none of that may be the case.  These distractions are seemingly ever present during our times with God.  They are most intense when we have stopped talking and are trying to listen to God’s side of the conversation.

     As Merton shares with us, struggling with this is  an ongoing endeavor.  But struggling with it in fact intensifies the chatter and is a major distraction in itself.  I find that I need to bring myself gently back into focus. Sometimes is is by quoting a verse of scripture, often times it is by saying the Jesus Prayer. I find that the Spirit of God uses these things to bring me back into my shared time with God.

How have you struggled with this reality of prayer?  When you are distracted what is it that brings you back into the conversation?

Quote:  Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, pgs. 224-225