In her book, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, author Kathleen Norris has this to say about her experience of prayer:
"Prayer is not doing, but being. It is not words but the beyond-words experience of coming into the presence of something much greater than oneself. It is an invitation to recognize holiness, and to utter simple words---"Holy, Holy, Holy"---in response. Attentiveness is all; I sometimes think of prayer as a certain quality of attention that comes upon me when I'm busy doing something else."
Prayer as "attentiveness" is another way of describing how one can "pray without ceasing." It's not going through life with our eyes closed and our head bowed. It's going through life with our eyes wide open -even the eyes of our heart. It's being attentive to what is going on around me an within me and seeing that as being in prayer. The minute I turn prayer into "doing" then it become a performance or something I need to accomplish and achieve. It becomes an assignment that I need to complete and turn in to God before class is over. But, prayer as being means that all I have to do is be present to who I am in that moment and present to God in that moment as well. No performance. No mask. No pretense. Just be.
