For many of us, prayer is a duty, a rote habit, a chore—something we are “supposed” to do, or something we were taught to do very early, before we even knew to ask why, and have just done automatically ever since.

Even worse—for many of us, prayer is a source of guilt.  Somewhere along the line, we heard the “should,” but we don’t often actually set aside time for prayer.  So when we think of prayer, we feel guilty—which makes us not want to think about it at all.

This week, experiment with a different image for your personal prayer time:  try thinking of it as a feast.  Think of prayer as a time to feast on God’s willingness to listen to you, pay attention to you, take to heart your concerns.  A time to feast on God’s friendship, God’s loving care.

When you begin to pray, say to yourself, “I am coming here to feast; what dishes is God offering me today?  What am I hungry for? What do I have a taste for?” 

Be aware that you are not alone at this feast.  Even when you come to your prayer in solitude, you are not alone.   You bring with you all whom you love, all whom you are concerned about—and all whom you can’t stand, all with whom you are in tension or conflict.  Believe me, if your attention and energy are invested in them at all, they come with you to the feast.

Try to make that explicit in your prayer.  Try to name those who come with you and consciously seat them at God’s table along with you.  And then go a step further:  go out into the streets, as it were, and invite more in. 

Make an effort this week to notice the “passersby” in your life:  people on the bus, in the grocery store, on the sidewalk, in the mall.  Bring them to the feast. 

Make a point of reading a newspaper or newsmagazine, or of watching or listening to the news, and bring to the feast those you encounter when you do so. 

Search out, in your immediate world and in the broader world, more and more people to bring to the feast—maybe people you’ve not known about or paid attention to before.  Gather them all, bad and good alike, until the hall is filled with guests.