Michael F Conrad

Organizing Prayer for Everyday Living Michael F Conrad

Everyone loves slogans or quips from comedians. Bob Hope was the Master of One Liners. My personal favorite is from Will Rogers that went, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." Being organized can make what you do more sustainable. A young girl came up to me as I was teaching High School and proudly declared, "I don't belong to any organized religion." I ask her if she belonged to an unorganized one." She just laughed feebly and meandered away. If you want to have a contemplative prayer life, I recommend you consider organizing it. Having a schedule is not saying you will keep it perfectly but organizing can be a default that you come back to over and over. Then too, organizing will challenge you to put down, in crisp thoughts, what your center is, and how you will love others as Christ loves us. I don't say "Christ loved us" because my contemplative spirituality lives in the now, not the past. Organizing helps us measure ourselves. Contemplative, used here, means looking at the place no one wants to look, inside yourself and approaching the Sacred.