Article February 26, 2001 Issue

A breath of fresh prayer

Try this at home . . . or anywhere

By Tony Lobl.

Where I Live in Massachusetts, I like to slip outdoors in the summer, walk in the warm sunshine, drink in the light, and breathe in the air. In recent years I've added something that makes these walks even better—and that's prayer.

Maybe your view of prayer is that it's too solemn a thing for a sunny walk—that prayer needs the sacred silence of a church. Of course such an environment is a wonderful place to pray. But prayer can also be as joyful as a zydeco dance. It can happen anywhere.

The point is that you don't need to be walking on a sunny day or kneeling in a church in order to pray. You can pray anywhere. Some of my most effective praying has been at the office, down in the subway, on an inner-city street late at night, even while crossing the Atlantic, squeezed into the back seat of the economy class section of a plane. Places where it could be tempting to feel cooped up. Even there, you can grab a breath of fresh prayer.

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