I must confess that I’m suffering from a case of blogger’s block today. I’ve done everything I can think of to jog my creative juices—scanned the New York Times, leafed through the new issue of Horizons, stared at my Bible hoping that the Spirit would speak to me. I’ve gone away and done other work, and then come back. Nothing seems to be helping much.

And then I read the following passage on the inside front cover of Horizons, the magazine for Presbyterian Women:

“This, then, is the beginning of my advice: make prayer the first step in anything worthwhile that you attempt. Persevere and do not weaken in that prayer. Pray with confidence, because God, in his love and forgiveness, has counted on us as his own sons and daughters.” --Prologue, St. Benedict’s Rule

In these last few weeks leading up to my wedding, with important project goals to meet before I leave, craft projects to finish, and bills to pay, I’m finding it increasingly hard to stop and pray. Maybe some of you feel like this too right now, rocks tumbling down a hillside, faster and faster and faster until you smack the ground at the bottom when the semester ends. I remember going to the waterslides park as a kid and riding the inner-tube slides. There was always that last waterfall, that last second hanging suspended on the lip of the slide before you plunged down and landed in the pool below. You couldn’t stop the progression.

It is hard to sit back and be reflective, to pray, when you’re in that mode. Many times I feel like these blog posts are prayers of sorts, so the futility of my rush to find a topic makes sense. You simply cannot hear the voice of God when your mind is so cluttered.

And yet the early medieval monk St. Benedict tells us to make prayer the first step in anything worthwhile that we attempt. True confession—I always prayed before tests in school, as nerdy/Bible-thumping as that sounds. I took great pains to hide this, actually. To the outside observer it probably looked like I was just taking a deep breath before I began the exam. Yet that moment of focus, center, and even that sense that my toil was for a purpose greater than myself was exactly what I needed to get down to business.

Perhaps that’s what St. Benedict means. In praying, we focus outside ourselves toward the God that loves us and calls us by name. The things we do, no matter how much we screw them up, have meaning and value in the context of our calling to be God’s agents of love and reconciliation in the world. Just as prayer invokes God’s blessings on our work, it also serves to remind us that God is already present.

Some of my most meaningful moments of prayer are prayers of presence, not necessarily the prayers of supplication that we’re more accustomed to. Last night, walking in the park, my only prayer was the Taize chorus:

“Come and fill our hearts with your peace,
You alone, O Lord, are holy,
Come and fill our hearts with your peace,
Allelujah.”

Perhaps my blogger’s block, this whole annoyingly time-consuming process of writing today when I just can’t find something to write about, is God’s way of forcing me to slow down and listen for the Spirit. To feel God’s presence. To realize that this work is for something greater than itself, something greater than myself, something greater than you all. And it all starts in prayer.

“God said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’” --1 Kings 19:11-13

Kelsey