Much of prayer life gets choked with the business of our lives and minds. We sit down to pray for people and it becomes like a child’s letter to Santa Claus although we are probably not wishing for  a Playdoh Icecream Truck or a Vtech Jotbot, fun though those sound. We attend Sunday Mass and then worry about whether we are singing too loud, what the children are doing or whether we have time for coffee afterwards. 

With meditation we try to present for God by trying to focus on him. Yes you still get distracted but we are trying to draw our minds back towards God and to not hold as tightly to our business for thirty minutes. Practising with others simply brings us the companionship of having others doing this as well. It is so much easier to complete a task if others are also trying to do it. 

Nobody I know is ever focused for the entire thirty minutes and God certainly does not turn up with blazing lights each time. Rather it allows us to take a little more calm and a little more focus into our prayer and a little more awareness of God in our everyday life.