Dear All,

One of the best images to illustrate the nature of prayer that I have come across is that of 'pickling onions'. It comes in George Guiver's book about prayer 'Everyday God' in which he asks the simple question 'what needs to happen for an onion to be pickled?' The answer: 'it needs to stay in the vinegar for as long as possible'. Prayer is like this. For us to begin to take on Christ's likeness, to share in God's life, we need to spend time in God's presence: only as we do so can the life of God begin to soak into us and change us.

So far so good. The problem however is this: sometimes I will do everything in my power to avoid praying. I can give the impression of doing other things quite well. Busy-ness affects us all: there's the study to be tidied, the tea to be made, the fire to be laid, the newspaper article to be read....time slips away until that which we know to be crucial to our life (let alone our life of faith) is overwhelmed by less important things. I can read any number of books and hear numerous sermons about praying but I'm hopeless at doing it: in theory' its fine, in practice not so good.

So what to do? Sometimes I think the reason I became a priest was because God realised that I needed help to pray. Help for me comes in the form of a regular pattern of prayer each day, words given to me by other 'pray-ers' in the form of Morning and Evening prayer but even more important than the words help comes in setting an actual 'time' to pray. Being disciplined enough to say that I will be in church at such and such a time and getting up out of bed early enough to do this really helps. A simple Rule - a few decisions as to how to make time for prayer - ensures that I consciously place myself in God's presence each day: hopefully the 'pickling process' is helped along.

During Lent Andy and I would like to invite you to join us in 'making time for prayer'. On Wednesday mornings from 7.45am - 9.45am and on Thursday evenings from 5. l5pm - 7.15pm one or other of us will be in church and will place resources for prayer around the church. On the hour and the half hour we will lead some short 'spoken' prayers but the rest of the time will be silent, allowing you to come and go as you wish and to make your own prayer in church as you do so. You don't have to stay for 2 hours: you may just have 5 - 10 minutes to drop into church on one or other of these days - it would be good to see you.

One final thing: one lesson I have learned in my years of praying is that 'the words' don't matter overly much. It's the intention of the heart that God desires. So don't fret about coming into church and just sitting quietly: God sees, God understands, God will honour the offering you make.

Alec