You can pray to different things on many scales

If you see prayer as the practice of getting into a resonant reciprocally-caring relationship with a system that you’re part of, then you can reasonably pray to all sorts of things.

How?

1. You find or create a moment of some stillness.
2. You attend to your sense of the thing.
3. You appreciate the ways in which it already cares for you. The ways in which it being how it is, helps you survive and/or thrive.
4. You then ask it: “how can I care for you better, so you can care for me better?” Not just in words, but feeling into how you would naturally like to do so, if you had clarity on how.
5. Then you wait for the silence to grant an answer.
6. (Then, I would add, if the answer feels wrong or in conflict with something else, you reflect back the wrongness, and wait for a new answer.)

You can pray to your bedroom, or your apartment or house.  Feel how nice it is to have this space, and how your ability to relax into it (however much you can) serves your sanity.  Then consider…  how can you take care of it in some small or big way right now?  What needs doing?  What’s been neglected?  What act of care brought you so much joy last time that you get excited imagining doing it again?  What do you need, and can you make it happen?

You can pray to your friend group.  Feel the gladness you have for these relationships and connections.  Who needs your help, or listening ear?  Who have you fallen out of touch with, such that you wouldn’t even know if you could do something for them?  Who would like to meet each other, that you could introduce?  What event could you throw that would bring people together and create laughter or relief or satisfaction?

You can pray to your neighborhood, or your dorm.  As with the friend group, but perhaps with more emphasis not just on the individuals but on the whole system that includes place and rhythms and people you aren’t close to but who nonetheless share it with you.

You can pray to your body.  Feel appreciation for how it works, for how many things are happening without you having to attend to them at all—breath, cellular respiration, blood pumping, neurons firing, muscles making sounds come out of your mouth, eyes saccading to read and take everything in.  How can you love your body better?  How can you shift into a slightly more comfortable position?  Are you thirsty or tired?  Would it feel good to have music on, or more quiet?  Are there choices you could make that will benefit your health over the coming years? Not because you have to or because it’s “good to” in some abstract sense, but because you care about your body and want to take care of it so it can care for you.  (Don’t @ me about mind-body dualism here, I get it. I am the body.)

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