Gary Jansen - The 15-Minute Prayer Solution: How One Percent of Your Day Can Transform Your Life

3441 N. Ashland Avenue

Chicago, Illinois 60657

(800) 621-1008

www.loyolapress.com

2010 by Gary Jansen

All rights reserved.

Previously published in a different version as Exercising Your Soul, Hachette, 2010

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright 1993 and 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cover art credit: iStock/Hong Li

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8294-4408-7

Based on the print edition: 978-0-8294-4407-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015951189

15 16 17 18 19 20 EPUB 5 4 3 2 1

Pray constantly.

St. Paul, from his First Letter to the Thessalonians, 5:17

Dont be an idiot.

Judge Judy

The old man and the boy were walking through a park.

See those two trees over there? said the old man.

Yes, said the boy.

See the distance between them? See how their branches almost touch each other? Almost, but never do?

Yes.

The tree on the left adores the tree on the right. And Im pretty sure the tree on the right feels the same way about the tree on the left. They cant stop looking at each other. Did you hear what I said?

The boy, startled, answered, Yes.

The old man sighed. No matter how much they yearn to be closer to each other they can never touch. They can never touch each others happiness. They can never touch each others suffering. If one gets sick, the other one can only watch, cant help. They are locked apart from each other forever.

Unless lightning knocks one of them over onto the other, said the boy.

Yes, youre right, said the old man. They stood together silently for a while, the wind blowing the branches of the trees. The old man smiled.

The boy looked up. This makes me sad and angry, he said. What are you smiling about?

Dont be sad, said the old man. Yes, the branches of the trees can never touch. They can never hug. But if you go below the surface, the roots of these two very separate trees are entwined and entangled. What they yearn for above, they experience deep below. We cant see it, but they share one life. What happens to one, happens to the other.

The boy thought for a moment, nodded, and said, Im hungry.

Me too. Lets go.

Did you know that there are 1,440 minutes in a day? Its true. I did the math. Did you also know that one percent of all that time is fourteen minutes and twenty-four seconds? What would happen if you made a conscious decision, every day, to exercise your soul by giving roughly fifteen minutes of your time over to God? Just one tiny percent of your life. Would your life change?

Mine did.

The book you have in your hands is a result of that spiritual experiment. This book is not a memoir (though I do share a number of personal stories with you in the pages that follow); it is essentially a book on prayer. Not the namby-pamby, rattling-off-a-wish-list, Oh, please let me have nice things kind of prayer. (Who am I kiddingjust five minutes ago I asked to win the lottery... again!) Im talking about simple, effective prayer, the type that does not have to take a lot of time and will ultimately help you answer lifes most daunting questions (Why am I here? What difference does my life make? Do I really want fries with that?), leading you on a path to experiencing God more boldly, deeply, and intimately. And lets face it, in our fast-paced, overextended, attention-deficit, twittering world, whether youre a student, a busy mom, a stressed-out father, a single woman struggling to find a job, a guy looking for a girlfriend, a loner, a freak, a geek, or the life-of-the-party with all the friends in the world, prayer needs to be effective to be worth our time (and Gods time too). Otherwise, why do it?

This collection of reflections, anecdotes, stories, and exercisesthe result of that one percent change in my life and inspired in many ways by the spirituality of St. Ignatius, a sixteenth-century Spanish soldier and mystic with a strong Protestant work ethic (even though he was Catholic) and a unique way of relating to God (more on that in the pages that follow)may appear to be masquerading as a self-help book. I can assure you it is no such thing. As an editor who has worked in publishing for many years, I have read and edited my share of self-help books. Many of them are terrific, informative, and, well, very helpful. Almost all of them, however, put the self first, meaning you (or if not you, the author). Not a bad thing for the genre, but we who are believers should put nothing before God.

The Fifteen-Minute Prayer Solution, then, is a God-help book, not because I think the world revolves around me, but because all life, all people, all thingsall assistancecome from God.

Much talk is made of the idea of grace, Gods unmerited gift of love to us, as if God created some people to receive this blessing and others not. For all I know, this may be truemaybe God does play favoritesbut I dont believe this. All of creation is ever present in God. You. Me. That annoying person at your job. That waffle you ate this morning. The coffee cup you just threw away. Everything.

Many of us may already think this, but the trick is not just perceiving grace in the brain, but feeling it in the heart. Its about having the experience.

If you have ever shared an intimate part of yourself with a beloved so that that person can experience something you cherish, then you can understand why I wrote this book. I am not a theologian, nor am I a mystic or an intellectual. I am a beggar and have been knocking outside Gods door for some time now. Sometimes I knock and theres no answer. But Im a stubborn kind of fellow with my mind made up on God, so I just keep knocking. Eventually, the door opens and Im given some bread, an experience of God that satisfies this deep hunger I have inside. But I must admit, Im ravenous and I always desire more. Even though Im still hungry I want to share some of this bread with you. Just a tiny crumb of it can transform your life.

I mentioned St. Ignatius, and many have summed up his spirituality as a way of finding God in all things. We can find God in our friends and family (and even our enemies). We can find God in nature or the pages of a great book or projected back to us from a TV or computer screen. Yet finding God in all things is the end result. We have to do something before that. We need to seek him out! Is he hiding under a basket? Is he somewhere in that tall tree? Is he staring back at me from the eyes of someone sprawled out on a city street? Is he speaking to me through my wife and sons? (Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes!) So before we can find God, we need to seek God everywhere. Yet seeking God everywhere can be daunting. You need to build your spiritual muscles to be up to the task. There can be a lot of disappointment along the way, a number of detours, dead ends (though as well see later we can seek God there too). All this is why some years ago I made a commitment to dedicate at least fifteen minutes, one percent of my day, to daily prayer and meditation, two things that can be mind-blowingly exciting or downright, drudgingly boring!