How are we invited to be different this Lent in terms of our spiritual practices?

Like everyone else, I frequently get bored and stagnate in prayer practices. But prayer is always about our relationship with a God who is never dull, though often I am.

Two years ago I was hit over the head --- figuratively speaking --- by a friend who introduced me to the Buddhist practice of tanglun. I have been able to translate this practice into our Christian language of Spirit and peace, and it has refreshed my view of petitionary prayer.

So often we toss up a petition to God like a Hail Mary football pass, informing God of something he already is aware of and telling him exactly how he should act; then we walk away, never checking to see how God might be acting regarding our petition. We never come back to say "Thank you" or "That's not what I had in mind."

The practice of tanglun is done for the purpose of developing a compassionate heart. For we who are Christians, this is the heart of Christ. One breathes in what a friend undergoing bypass surgery is experiencing or the anxiety the people of Baghdad are experiencing today; one breathes out peace and comfort. I breathe in another's pain or joy, and I do it seven times, each time exhaling deeply God's peace, the peace of the Spirit of Jesus.

In doing it I make myself available as a possible servant or messenger of that peace. This is praying in the Franciscan spirit of "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace."

I now expand this practice and do it every day while I drive the 20 miles from home to work. The last 10 miles I inhale the feelings of each of those I have the privilege of working with, and I exhale peace. In this way my prayer of petition on their behalf is refreshed.

I now arrive at work eager to join my co-workers and aware of whether or not I feel distant from any of them.

I thank God for the ways he has intervened to refresh my relationship to him. Let me mention another way.

I presently am ministering at a recovery center for people struggling with drugs and alcohol. Thanks to my daily work with the Twelve Steps, I have been able to refresh my Ignatian practice of the Examen or examination of consciousness. A co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson, had a Jesuit as his first spiritual director. It should be no surprise, then, that Wilson's words on the 10th of the steps --- "continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it" --- read so similar to the Jesuit Examen.

Where I work we do "10 at 9" --- the 10th step at 9 p.m. --- gathering in small groups to give thanks, to acknowledge our fears of the day, to tell how we harbored them or let go of them today, to state when we have let our ego dominate and to admit when we have been honest and when dishonest. We wrap it all again in gratitude and send each other into the night. The power of this communal practice has refreshed a practice of examination that I have pursued for 45 years.

I trust that other Christians will find the ways God wants to refresh their lives with him --- if they ask and are alert. He comes as we want, though rarely how we want.

Jesuit Father Richard Rice is a director of spiritual development at the Retreat, a recovery center in Minneapolis (rmricesj@aol.com).