just do it – Aspirational Adventures

I’m sharing a photograph of my dog at the writing groups I run because one of the big things I keep saying to the group is “there is no right or wrong, just write” when they ask me how to do things “properly”. It is all about finding your own voice and getting your words out there.

At the Upper Room Friday we got on to chatting about prayer. And on thing was how do we do it properly, as in what is the “right” way to pray.

Here’s a quote from Richard Rohr which even though it is about contemplation I think it applies to prayer just as well

When we emphasize specific practices too much, contemplation can become a matter of technique and performance. We fall back into self-analysis: Am I doing the practice correctly? The revelation of God, who always wants to enter the material world as our image, cannot possibly depend upon people sitting silently on a prayer cushion twice a day. That would mean that 99.9% of people who have ever lived on this earth have not known God.

It is possible to get too caught up in the “how to” of prayer and miss the whole point of “why”.

Why do I pray? Well for me it is to chat to God, to build relationships – so as much listening as talking, as much sitting with as doing with. It is to ask God to help me through things, to change situations for friends, to ask God to get involved with the lives of those I know and love so they can feel that deep inner contentment even when life is shit. It is also the same reason I write – because it is what I have to do to know what I’m thinking.

Often my prayers are more like letters in my journal than talking. Often God then speaks through my pen and gives me answers or directions or reminders. Often the outcomes of these times of chatting or writing with God can lead to unexpected answers.

One of our Upper Room friends had an amazing unexpected answer. She had to get her car to be MOTed and needed a lift there so she phone her son because she knew he went that way first thing in the morning. He was a bit short with her and even though he agreed to it said he wouldn’t have time to hang out. In other circumstances she would have found someone else but she felt God say that this was the answer to her prayer about getting back from the garage, so her son picked her and her husband up from the garage early. Instead of speeding off down the dual carriageway the son had to get off at their junction. As he slowed on the slip road of the junction his tyre blew out, the car shuddered and he fought the wheel but was only going at 25mph so all was fine. If my friend hadn’t heeded God’s response to her prayer her son could have been going at 70mph when it happened and who knows what the circumstances would have been.

Now I don’t think my friend did any special prayer technique or if she did I don’t think she’ll always expected that the answer to her prayers; an disaster averted. So it was not the technique she was thinking of or even her son at that time. All she did when she prayed that time was to ask God how to sort a lift back from the garage and her son popped into her mind. Next time, even next time to the garage, it might be a totally different response.

So I don’t think there is a “right way” to pray. I think it helps if we say we’re sorry for trying to do things our own way and not God’s way and that we do so want our hearts to be open to hear God not ourselves. But I don’t think we have to. I think there are times God answers prayer just because God loves us – whether we admit to loving and trusting them totally or not. I think it helps if we do love and trust God but then I think that helps with peace in our hearts thing rather than whether God will answer or not.

So let’s stop worrying about technique whether in prayer, contemplation, meditation, writing, our friendships, our jobs and more and just get on and do!

Just Do It

Blurred picture of a white egret in flight over Conwy Beach as the tide recedes on spring day. Photographed by Diane Woodrow — Egret flying over Conwy Beach Saturday 18th March 2023 Photographed by myself

Last Sunday I was leading the discussion for our Church youth group. We are working our way through The Lord’s Prayer. [If you go back through some of my posts you will see I am a bit “into” the Lord’s Prayer] This week’s couplet was “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

As always the young people are much less religious than adults and have reach a point of trust with me and my co-worker so they aren’t saying what they think we want them to say. There were some great things that came out of them about the closeness of God’s kingdom and the ease of doing God’s will.

I will paraphrase one girl but it was the bit that stayed with me. She said something along the lines of “God’s will being about trust and if we trust God then we can just do it, just go out and believe that God will make what we do God’s will.” Basically trust that what we feel in our hearts is God’s will. Too often we get into weighing up and judging and then disbelieving, sitting back, not doing.

Of course there are things we should not do, things we should run by those we love and trust – and that means we do need people in our lives that we can be open with and trust with our dreams, our desires, our hopes. So I suppose firstly we need to build up those people around us.

But at the same time as doing that we need to build up the trust in our own hearts. I am getting more and more to a point where I trust my heart and am aware when I’m not “feeling it”.

With these words of this wise thirteen year old girl in my head and a feeling in my heart that I had a space that needed filling in my day I went on Indeed to job hunt. I wasn’t overly serious because I had set myself quite firm criteria – children/young people and afternoons. Well up popped an job in an after-schools club in my town. I scrolled on past but couldn’t get it out of my head so in the end applied. I’ve got the job. I start next week. But when I was at the trial afternoon I felt my heart settle for being there, felt that it was a safe place that I was going to for the right reasons.

Then yesterday I was telling the vicar I co-run the youth group about the job and about how much this girl’s words had impacted me and I realised that this job was totally of God. It stops me from taking on too many things because I will be tied to work every afternoon but also if I want to write I won’t be able to do much during the day. I do have a couple of commitments but that is ok too.

So I did trust my heart, trust that my heart was hearing God/the Universe’s will for my life and I “just did it” and then it appears that I was given a reassurance that I had done right.

So yes it will be tough fitting everything I want to do in to my morning, and will be odd being committed every afternoon and only have weekends and holidays to roam randomly. But that doesn’t mean it is wrong to do. In fact it all feels very right.

Sometimes we do just have to trust and do it