A certain amount of practical work is necessary for the general health of a person.  After two days of meditation a participant said to me, "I would really like to chop wood!" - a healthy feeling!  Physical doing also contributes to a healthy inner attitude in our spiritual life.  Each person is a unity of spirit, body and soul that wants to develop in its own style and way.  What we understand as right in our situation, what we truly want, we must "embody" by doing otherwise our "house is built on sand" (Matt. 7:26).  Only when we convert our will into doing does a degree of realization happen, and such "work" is more effective and real than all our plans and good intentions.  I want to take this idea one step further.  "The Word became flesh" (John 1:14).  Because God became flesh the conversion of our will into actual doing is connected with the mystery of God's embodiment, with the Incarnation.

Therefore, it is also important to embody our prayer and thereby liberate prayer from confinement to the arena of only thought and will.  We can and should pray not only during our work and doing, but we must find ways that allow the doing to become prayer itself, "prayer of work".  How is that meant?

Prayer during work or during doing has its limitations.  These limitations lie in the nature of the work.  When we are doing mental work, indeed, when work demands our complete attention, there we cannot pray on the side, and we should not do that.  This applies even more when we are working with people .  If in a conversation we are at the same time attempting to pray in thought and word, we would be demanding too much of ourselves and would evade the present task of being fully present to another.

However, the limits can also lie in our own constraints.  When we are doing a steady, repetitious work like pulling weeds, praying intensively for an hour leaves us tired and drained.  Even if we weed for another two hours we cannot pray a mental form of prayer any longer.  Is there a way to let the work itself become prayer?

It was when I was digging up some very deep, entangled roots of a weed that it first dawned on me what symbolic power this activity contained.  Is there not also in me deeply embedded failures with "roots" so hidden that it is impossible to remove them?  And do not new shoots continue to grow from these roots again and again?  As we continue to pull out one root after the other, the doing itself becomes "work as prayer ".  It is now our hands that pray: "Free me from the roots of my sin and destroy the tiny, hidden shoots which I cannot find or remove.  Create a clean heart in me, O God..."

The simpler and more essential the everyday work is, the easier it is for it to disclose to us its symbolic power and thereby its applicability.  We have, therefore, found a way to pray with our doing and at the same time bestow upon our everyday a new "dimension of depth".
 

In a symbolmeditation  meditate on the work lying before you that you will do with your hands.  In this meditation let the activity become "transparent" and apply it to a spiritual concern using metaphors that come from the work itself...

Comment:
The Bible is rich with metaphors: Particular occupations are used as parables for the activity of God as well as for the work of people in God's service.  For example, God is called, "Physician", "Master", "Shepherd", or "Householder".  Paul speaks of himself as one who "plants" and "builds".
 However, one need not be limited to biblical parables.  For example, in our course, cleaning windows and furnace duties were used several times for meditation

After a brief reflective pause before beginning work, enter the activity which you had meditated on beforehand, doing it with inner peace and composure letting the work of your hands become " work as prayer"...

• - for a specific concern...
• - for another person ...
• - for a service commissioned by God ...