I don’t sit down to pray specific prayers very often, but I do find myself noticing people every day. My heart goes out to the elderly woman standing on the street corner selling newspapers for two dollars. She smiles but I see that she is lonely. I often wonder about the childhood of the drunk man stumbling down the street with nowhere to live. What horrible things happened to him that no one knows? I also notice elderly shoppers checking their coupons in the grocery store. I am interested in these people. Sometimes I speak to them. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I give the woman selling newspapers some money. Other times I don’t. But I always notice them.

I love a post I saw on Twitter from Glennon Doyle Melton@Momastery recently.

“Noticing and feeling the joy and pain of the world is a prayer. I call it praying attention. I understand now that I’m not a mess but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. When someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, ‘For the same reason I laugh so often – because I’m paying attention.'”

Melton calls it “praying attention,” and I have adopted the phrase, too. Don’t be so quick to try to fix people and fix their “problems.” Sit with them emotionally in their stuff. Go ahead and feel sad for them. The reason it hurts is because you are praying attention. As Melton also said, “Stay woke, loves.”