How to Pray for Others
Paying attention to flickering lights
It is suddenly very cold here in Germany. It is so cold that I read that there is already snow in the foothills an hour south of my home and it is way too early for snow.
Still, there is something gleeful about the sudden change. I am delighting in pulling out cozy sweaters from the back of my closet and lighting candles around the house. Candles aren’t lit in my home during the summer. These rituals are saved for the cooler months where one might want to cuddle up by a fireplace. I, instead, surround my space with the flickering light of candles.
It’s reminding me to pray again. Not that I forgot to pray exactly but that there is something about sparking a match that calls me into greater awareness of the world around me.
I think we think that prayer has to have fancy words and long periods of extended silence. We convince ourselves what it should it be something that we are never actually going to do that we never actually do it. We are worse for it because there is something powerful about being held in another’s prayers. It changes us.
It opens us to a story that is bigger than our own and it forces us outside of our own heads. I don’t know about you but I am in my head a lot. I need that scratch of the match to remind me that this is not all there is.
So, this is how I am praying for my children, my family, friends, my directees and this whole mutilated world right now.
Get a candle. Preferably more than one.
Get box of matches.
Scratch match across box remembering that everything changes.
Lighting each wick slowly and carefully holding onto the certainty that everyone and everything needs more light and love.
Sit and watch the candle dance allowing my thoughts to wander through worries, fears and the true things that have been said to me. Keep sitting. Keep thinking until I’m only thinking about the gift of light and love. (This is the bottom of my prayer list where I have no more thoughts and only want to be cradled in mystery.)
You might think I blow out the candles then but I don’t unless I’m leaving the room and fear I might burn down our house. I let the candles flicker as I do the things that need to be done. I notice them out of the corner of my eye and remember all that I am connected to and how amazing it is to share in this life together.
When I do finally blow out candles, there aren’t words but a feeling emerges from within my heart. I know that I’ve prayed. I’ve kept people close and dared to hope for things that I don’t understand for them, for myself and for this whole world.
Sometimes it feels like my prayer list is so long. I sit longer. I worry I missed someone or something or sometimes I end up thinking only about one thing. My heart goes to that one thing that needs my attention. That’s all praying is after all. As the great saint Mary Oliver repeats, “just pay attention… this isn’t a contest but a doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.”
I don’t keep an actual list like I once did. I don’t even have a prayer jar for my kids. My prayers wander through my thoughts all the time even when the candles are not actually lit. I’m holding space that there is more love out there for all of us. I find myself more and more curious about God has to say in each flickering light.
I’m thrilled to offer the gift of a retreat to you this autumn because I know you are doing so much and you might need some time to remember why all things things that fill your day matter. I am so grateful that you are out there and praying with me and so I’m thrilled to offer readers of Prayer Threads an exclusive discount. Use FALLCOLORS at checkout at Dandelion Marketplace.
Your writing was recommended to me by a colleague in ministry. This is the first post I read. You write so beautifully and I really needed this today. Where the Spirit leads I follow and I can feel it in this spiritual practice. Thanks for sharing your writing with me (and others).
This is such a perfect post for me today. there are the lights of fall color here in Maine, but the candle ritual gives me such time and space for praying. I can come and go, come again, sit, let the other lights grow dim.