Prayerful Awareness

From Robert Benson's book Living Prayer:

A man once asked a monk what it is that monks actually do.

"We walk and we sit and we eat," was the reply.

"Is that all?"

"Yes. But when we walk, we know we are walking, and when we sit, we know we are sitting, and when we eat, we know we are eating."

Benson continues:

Which is more than most of us can say we know most of the time. Most of the time, we are somewhere in the past or the future. The past echoes and the future beckons; the present just seems to be sitting on the edge of the bed leering at us when we wake up in the morning. It does not always seem like much, so we do not often pay it much mind. When we do visit the present from time to time, we are likely to wonder why it is not what it seems like it used to be or not what we had hoped it might be. We rarely are content to live in it just the way it is.

"There is only now," wrote Thomas Merton.

The call to the monastery is given only to a few. The call to prayer is given to all.

I hope this day to live an intentional life encircled by prayer.