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This is labor day weekend, an annual holiday, to celebrate the achievements of workers, meaning you and me. (It's also my 24th year in the United States.) This weekend is a reminder of how important it is for us to work hard, play hard and rest well. This weekend is to honor the eight-hour discipline of life to work, rest, and play. But in this definition what is missing is "prayer." When do you then pray? There is no time allotted to prayer. Why is that?
I would like to address that in the words of St. Paul. "Pray unceasingly." Pray always, meaning prayer should be all the time, through all that happens and through good and bad. Prayer should be the thread that unites work, play, and rest. We are to make our work a prayer, play into a prayer, and so should the rest be prayer. How to do that?
There is a workshop I give on "Welcoming Prayer", a method of turning your daily life into prayer. I encourage you to take lessons on Welcoming Prayer or read up on it. They are very simple to follow and easy to implement. But of course, as is in the case of anything, if you want something to grow you have to nurture it. If you want your prayer life to grow, nurture it. If you want your children to grow, nurture them. If you want your life to be meaningful, nurture life carefully. There is absolutely no magic formula that makes prayer happen. It is time given to God intentionally and regularly, meaning EVERY DAY.