We continue to navigate this strange and difficult time of pandemic unlike anything we have experienced in our lifetime. One new reality that is increasingly important is social distancing – maintaining open space of at least six feet between people when we venture beyond home. Experts remind us regularly that this is a major factor for slowing down and eventually stopping the spread of the COVID – 19 virus. As I reflected on this new reality, the need to maintain another kind of open space came to me – daily open space in our hearts for God and others. Even while many of us have more time at home than we could have imagined, it is easy to fill that time with the busyness of caring for family, household chores, working from home, and binge watching the programs that accumulated in our various streaming watch lists. It is also easy to fill our time with the 24 hour news cycle that not only brings information but also can promote worry and anxiety. This makes maintaining open space for God essential so that the “still small voice” of the Spirit is not drowned out by everything else around us. There are many kinds of prayer practices and spiritual disciplines that can help us maintain this kind of open space. There is no need to be an “expert” in any of them, just a willingness to bring ourselves before God as we are. It is not about technique. Rather it is about intention. The following quote by Saint Therese of Lisieux gets to the essence of what it means to maintain an open space for God:
For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look toward heaven; it is a cry of recognition and love; embracing both trial and joy.
Making time for prayer each day, in whatever form provides open space with God for you, is a way to promote healing and wholeness even as we face the unknowns of life in this pandemic. I encourage all of us to make this a priority and if possible to share in this kind of open space with others. I close by sharing the words of Henri Nouwen:
Through a spiritual discipline we prevent the world from filling our lives to such an extent that there is no place left to listen. A spiritual discipline sets us free to pray, or to say it better, allows the Spirit of God to pray in us.
