When and Where to Pray
August 23, 2010 | by Stefan Slonevskiy | Category: Devotions
No one in his senses, if he has any power of ordering his own day, would reserve his chief prayers for bedtime — obviously the worst possible hour for any action which needs concentration. The trouble is that thousands of unfortunate people can hardly find any other…. My own plan, when hard pressed, is to seize any time, and place, however suitable, in preference to the last waking moment. On a day of traveling–with, perhaps, some ghastly meeting at the end of it–I’d rather pray sitting in a crowded train than put it off till midnight when one reaches a hotel bedroom with aching head and dry throat and one’s mind partly in a stupor and partly in a whirl. On other, and slightly less crowded, days a bench in a park, or a back street where one can pace up and down, will do…
The relevant point is that kneeling does matter, but other things matter even more. A concentrated mind and a sitting body make for better prayer than a kneeling body and a mind half asleep. Sometimes these are the only alternatives….
A clergyman once said to me that a railway compartment, if one has it to one’s self, is an extremely good place to pray in ‘because there is just the right amount of distraction.’ When I asked him to explain, he said that perfect silence and solitude left one more open to the distractions which come from within, and that a moderate amount of external distraction was easier to cope with. I don’t find this so myself, but I can imagine it.
–C.S.Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
