Pray as you can.

Perhaps I should say that I am not, at first glance, a person in any way cut out for prayer. I'm nervous, jumpy, easily distracted, and my mind tends to run in obsessive ruts--usually on subjects that are far removed from prayer.

So at first, developing a prayer life sounded way too advanced and esoteric for me. But then I cam across a quote from Dom John Chapman, a twentieth-century British priest, monk, and biblical scholar, who said, "Pray as you can and do not try to pray as you can't. Take yourself as you find yourself; start from that.

Personally I wanted to start from St. John of the Cross and go straight to the "living flame" of infused contemplation, but I saw that for someone who couldn't get through "No I lay me down to sleep" without several time-outs to mull over resentments, descend into sexual reverie, or wonder whether I could buy almond paste at Ralphs or if I would have to go to Vons--shoot, I was up on Melrose today, I could have stopped in at Pavilions--this was unlikely.

In a way I didn't feel worthy to pray the Psalms, but if they were for laypeople, that meant they were even for jumpy, easily distracted laypeople. I had to remind myself I wasn't after some exalted state; I wasn't trying to have an "experience."

I just wanted to know myself a little better, do a little better when it came to loving my fellow man. I just wanted to get closer to Jesus.

Source: Redeemed, by Heather King, Viking Press, page 107.