Pray Without Ceasing

The invitations of the past two days seemed quite similar to one another, to me. They seemed to say to me, in Paul's words, "pray without ceasing."
One of my favorite simple praise songs is Lord I Offer You This Day. It is not great art, but I find it meditative to play and sing. I also find the message to be a powerful prayer. Lord, I offer you this day. Make this day my prayer. I have been given this time. I return it as gratitude.
Or, perhaps, as Rabbi Heschel said when asked if he shouldn't rather be praying than marching with Dr. King, "our feet were praying."
So today was a prayer. It began with scurrying around to get kids to school, then some catching up on e-mail and the news.
Then I spent two hours on the phone with colleagues across the country working to frame next month's Christian Peace Witness for Iraq. I honestly believe that when the history of the war in Iraq is written, the chapters on the peace movement will be drawn to the unique, worshipful witness of CPWI. Our work, including the sometimes interminable planning work, is prayer.
Then I biked up to church to finish work for Sunday's worship, to gather some wedding materials for a couple of women I'll help hitch next month, to put together some information about CALL and discernment, fix our church web site, and to help my colleagues as People of Faith for Equality Virginia plan a faithful response to the hate-filled presence next week of people from Westboro Baptist "church" next week at George Mason University.
Through all of this work, I felt grounded in prayer. Then I rode home, poured a glass of red wine, and sat on the front porch watching neighborhood kids play and listening to the birds. Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, indeed.