Wandering Thoughts While Praying

Whatever happens to come to my mind in these morning hours becomes the subject of this blog.   It may come from something I’m reading, or a personal experience or memory, or a wandering thought that comes as I attempt to pray.  Why is it that my thoughts tend to wander more when I pray than at any other time?  Wow! What a question? I can read a good book and stay focused.  I can meet with and dialogue with a friend and stay focused.  I can engage in a project and stay attentive to the task. What is it that causes my mind to wander so when I pray? 

Apparently this “wandering mind” issue has been a real dilemma for all the saints, who, through the centuries, have attempted to pray.  Why?  Because the praying I’m talking about is the kind of praying that requires one to “Come in, come in, come all the way in.”  This kind of praying requires one’s all—mind, spirit, emotions, everything and all that one is.  This kind of praying is not primarily a matter of making requests, or asking for blessings, or healings, or favors.  This kind of prayer always begins with oneself, what he or she must do, not with denunciations of society and its wrongs.  This kind of prayer is not attempting to have God change Mary or John into what one thinks Mary and John ought to be, but to change the Pray-er.  Is it any wonder that attempting this kind of praying would create wandering thoughts.  In this kind of praying one becomes acutely aware that all of the projected sins of society are present within him (or her).  The Pray-er must begin from within his or her own depths “to purify the springs of history within his or her own heart.”   It is a fact well known  that any time we have to focus on our “real” selves (inner or outer) we immediately begin to wander away from the subject.  We avoid facing ourselves in the normal routine of living.  How much more do we avoid it in prayer via our wandering thoughts?

Then there is the matter of the One to whom we pray. When we attempt to pray, we are supposedly seeking communion with God.  Who has an adequate description of God?  Who really knows God as God?  We say that God must be like Jesus?  But do we even know Jesus? When we face any Unknown, our thoughts and fears take our minds everywhere.  So it is that our minds wander when we, who do not yet know ourselves, attempt to pray to One whom we do not yet know.  Such wandering thoughts prevent us from penetrating beyond the anteroom of prayer.