Franny Glass

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

The Jesus Prayer. The Prayer of the Heart. It comes in different forms, one as short as simply saying the name "Jesus", "Lord have mercy" or the longest version that appears above. It's a staple of Eastern Christianity, and incredibly seductive force, the purpose of which is to create a lasting, constant prayer within the heart of the believer.

It's featured in Franny and Zooey (probably my least favorite book from one of my favorite authors) when Franny decides to give up her normal middle-class life for one involving the mystic Jesus Prayer.

It stems from 1 Thessalonians 5:17 where Paul tells followers to "pray without ceasing", and takes the comment quite literally. The prayer works like this:

The follower utters the prayer as a mantra, over and over until she gets into the natural rhythm of the words. This could take days, weeks, months, years. The follower has to pray without ceasing until the prayer matches her heartbeat - a sort of "feeling", a nirvana of sorts - and then, the follower's heart continues the prayer on its own with every beat, thus making the follower pray with every breath and every new burst of blood traveling through the body.

It's a way to be constantly mindful of God's presence.

I was thinking about this in terms of every adopted ethos. It certainly raises question for Christianity - are you as consistent and mindful of your chosen faith? Is your life itself a prayer to God? Does your heart beat the words "Jesus Christ" or is prayer a quiet time half-an-hour a day before bedtime?

But it could be applied to any way of life. The fact is, most people just don't adhere to the principles they aspire to with any consistency. Most are content to live their lives on auto-pilot. Some have never even thought of the driving factors that move their lives along. Why are they here? What direction are they heading? For the most part, they get into a car, start her up, and have no clue what their destination is. Or the route.

How many of us keep the grand scheme of things within sight on a daily basis? on an hourly basis? every minute? every heartbeat? Who among us lives with an eye constantly pointed toward the guiding principles of humane existence?

Repeating a single phrase until it's tattooed on our heart seems a bit radical. But isn't life pretty radical?