What if your mind wanders in prayer?

Lost in tortuous and distracted thoughts while praying? Here is a simple tip to regain concentration.

Focused on prayer
I always hear this question: "What should I do when my mind wanders while I pray?" I found an excellent answer in a book written hundreds of years ago.

The authorship of The Cloud of Unknowing is a mystery. Maybe he was a monk, maybe a priest, writing in English - medium English - at the end of the XNUMXth century. Give advice to a younger friend about prayer.

I depend on a translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher to penetrate deep into the practical wisdom of The Cloud. As Butcher points out, the author wanted to remain anonymous for a reason. The light was to be illuminated by God, not by him.

"God is not asking for your help," writes Anonymous. “He wants you to close your eyes on him and leave him alone to work in you. Your part is to protect the door and windows by keeping intruders and flies out. "

Those intruders and flies? Our interrupted and unwelcome thoughts. In my prayer practice, when I sit on the sofa and close my eyes, I will inevitably start thinking about something I have to do at work, an email to send, a question I have to ask. Intruders and flies really.

So I do something that suggests Anonymous, or use a single word to bring me back to my intent. "The shorter the word, the more it helps the work of the spirit," he writes. "God or love works well. Choose one of these or any other word you like, as long as it's a syllable. "

Why only one syllable? Maybe that's how we don't get caught up in something too complicated, too stuck in our minds. As he says: “No one's mind is powerful enough to understand who God is. We can only know him by living his love. "

Prayer is an opportunity to sit and savor the love of God, to remember how important it is. "We cannot think of God," writes the author. But we can meet the Lord in prayer.

"That's why I'm willing to abandon everything I know," he writes, "to love the only thing I can't think of. It can be loved, but not by thought. "

Lost in prayer? Good for you. Lost in tortuous and distracted thoughts? Try this: focus on one powerful short word, say it slowly to yourself and go back to your prayer.

You will do something that believers have done for hundreds of years.