I had a neat piece all sketched out in my head this week--something connecting the new development at the east end of town, with its small matched doll-like houses, to Psalm 131, very cute--and I got the first bit of it set out on the screen before it was time to meet Barb for an evening walk. Barb and I push each other, walk-wise, and so it was most of an hour till I got home, and then the baying food-fiends who are my children required Rice Krispie squares, which I made.

And then there were Simpsons jokes and squabbles and missing computer-game disks to deal with, and a friend called with a not-quite crisis that needed listening to chewing over, and then it was time to shoo the younger offspring off to bed and grab a quick bath, which turned into a not-so-quick bath because I am enjoying a new book. --but dammit, I need that too! And the cats were wanting in, and out, and in, and out, and three wrong numbers... Anyway, by the time I got back to the piece I'd started, the wind had gone right out of it and it looked cold and foolish and pretentious. Oh well. Life's like this.

And so's my prayer life. The prayer life of others leaves me awed and envious. I think of monks in a Benedictine abbey somewhere --could be nuns, I'm not fussy, and it doesn't have to be Benedictines, either--with lectio divina and meditation and serene well-ordered offices woven regularly and steadily throughout the days. Or I read what my listsibs write, of reading Morning Prayer on the subway, or saying Compline at day's end with a spouse, or noontime Bible studies and Eucharists. And then I look at my own track record and get depressed.

My life's not like that. It's a muddled mass of necessities and demands--a business of keeping plates spinning on poles: kids, clients, house, friends, church, parents' illnesses, deadlines, errands, appointments, new shoes for school. None of it can, or should, be stinted in the least. All of it matters. It's all mine; I can't hand it off to other people.

But it seems that God gets the short end too often. I do have my own devotions, and I will get around to them just as soon as I have a chance--but when? I sit down and read the Psalms and work through my prayers, but it is in such tiredness and frazzledness of spirit that I'm more apt to doze off than to worship as God deserves. This is my own fault. I cannot seem to say "no" to a ringing telephone.

What I have learned, however, is that if I can't seem to get it together for regular prayer-time, I can manage to meditate while I'm doing the dishes. Life's full of times when the hands are busy but the mind can be disengaged. It's normal human nature to fill these mental interstices with Interesting Things, like worry or scheming or resentment or obsession or envy or.... But with some effort and practice, you can clear out these spaces and use them for Godful purposes. Things like noticing things and people with love. Or thinking about a psalm verse or a concept, or untangling a worrying knotty little problem in matching up Received Truth and Real Life. Or praying. Or a sort of buzzing meditativeness. Or whatever.

We pray for our own sakes, not for God's. We pray because we need to, not to buy the grace that God has already laid down before us so thickly. It's good to be in the habit of prayer, as it is to be in the habit of eating good and regular meals--but it is possible to snack intelligently, if you're willing to work at it instead of grabbing a bag of potato chips.

What I have learned to do is to do a sort of shift, like a mental shuffle, and take up a small prayer-task while I'm doing something else. I call this Martha-prayer, after Lazarus's busy sister. Maybe this Martha-prayer I do isn't as "good" as the purer, better-organized Mary-prayer of the monks, but it seems to be what I can manage in this particular life of mine. Certainly my own efforts at Mary-prayer have been outstandingly unsuccessful, jump-starts and fizzles, resolutions made and failed at. What's the old line? "I am woman. I am invincible. I am tired."

In the course of writing this, I've stopped for a couple of domestic crises and an ongoing dispute about the state of the TV room floor, besides starting another load of laundry and discussing the necessity for growing up with a child who doesn't see why this process is imperative. So if this piece is a tad disjointed, I'm sorry, but that's just the way life is sometimes. No doubt God knows already.

But maybe it's better for my soul to set aside my authorial professionalism (read: vanity) and do some real-life loving work than it is to write a perfect piece for God. Maybe this daily work of keeping those plates spinning is my prayer. We are all called to different God-tasks, different liturgies, and maybe this is mine, much more than reading the psalms and meditation could be. Doesn't mean that you aren't called to do things differently. If your life is full of Mary-prayer, I give thanks for you, for you're doing the work I don't seem to be able to manage.

God and I are going to have to put up with what I can manage, and I hope that doesn't bother God too much. I'm starting to get used to the notion that maybe this is what I'm supposed to be doing anyway. This is my life, as I'm called to it right now; the important thing is for me to make the best of it, as best I may, and to let it make the best it can of me.