Faith column: Each can pray in their own way

I am standing on the steps of a wharf under a white sky. There is no breeze. I hold my simple cork fishing rod in one hand, the line poised on the pointer finger of my other hand. That way I feel every nibble, every interested tug at my bait by the fish in the water below.

I’m not really intent on catching fish but on finding peace. Scientist and inventor Thomas Edison reportedly fished without bait so he could be left alone to think. I am surrounded by nature, externally focused on the sea, my line, the fish. My mind is free to roam.

Fishing can be meditative.Credit:Leigh Henningham

Another day and I am tired, lying in bed. I prop my book up on pillows as my hand keeps losing its grip and my novel keeps falling backwards when my eyes flutter shut. A few more minutes and I will surrender. The day is done and my body knows it. It is time to find peace in sleep.

Prayer also brings peace. It is, at its simplest, a conversation with God. It doesn’t have to be a set form of prayers, elaborate or particularly eloquent. A cry for help can be a prayer. God is no different to us when it comes to wanting to help his children.

Through prayer we are able to pass through the thin veil that separates our physical world from the spiritual. This transition is accompanied by an awareness of change like slipping into a bigger room – of a shift in perspective, of peace, of presence in the listening silence and of deep, compassionate love.

We might start praying out of a sense of duty, to give God one last chance, or perhaps because we are desperate and have nowhere else to turn.

Once we have experienced that sense of transition, though, prayer becomes something we seek out, a place we go to rejuvenate.

Prayer takes time, requiring us first to loosen the ties that bind us so tightly to the physical world, thereby releasing our spiritual self to be more active and move more freely.

The benefits of prayer do not fade but rather compound, drawing more peace, more love, more compassion back through that thin veil into our physical world.

Melissa Coburn is a freelance writer.

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