Pray where you are: we can pray on our way to work or jogging in the park--God is wherever we are. (practicing catholic).

IN THE CATHOLIC SPIRITUAL LIFE, NOTHING IS SIMPLER than prayer. Yet, as it turns out, nothing is more difficult either. All my life I have yearned and struggled to be faithful to prayer. As a young, excessively idealistic seminarian I often forced myself to complete long and tiring devotions.

I prayed the rosary, often including all 15 decades, and punctuated my day with numerous novenas and prayer formulas. There were Friday and Saturday devotions, morning and evening devotions, and even a 40-hour devotion. But, no matter how hard I tried or how much time I invested, it never seemed that I was faithful enough to the call to prayer.

Looking back, it appears my mistake was to believe that prayer was all about me rather than about God. Those times were not experiences of freedom or peace but moments of obsessive worry that all the words and formulas should be spoken exactly. I had adopted an unhealthy vision of the world in which everything secular and mundane was understood to be the opposite of everything spiritual and heavenly. I was blind to the goodness of God that was all around me.

Eventually I came to understand that prayer is not about finding God or coming into God's presence. It is about recognizing the divine presence that is so close to us. God's self-revelation is so common in our daily lives that we have learned to take it for granted.

We are not called to do prayer, but to be prayerful people. As the French Carmelite Brother Lawrence pointed out more than 300 years ago, prayer is simply "practicing the presence of God," a communing with God that offers endless options. It consists of a mindfulness of God's activity in ourselves and in others.

There was a time when my own prayer was centered on a certain place or setting, and that can still offer great solace. But I have also learned that deep prayer happens right in the midst of a busy world. It occurs at a classroom or office desk, at the kitchen sink, in the car, or on a park bench. It happens when we are mindful that God is with us in the here and now, so close and so intimate as to be easily overlooked.

The recitation of a particular devotion may bring us comfort in times when words fail us, but there are no secret formulas for prayer.

Recently, as I ran along a country road near my home in south Mississippi, I grew discouraged with how many things needed to be accomplished that day. Deadlines loomed over me, doctoral research seemed to be lagging, and there were obligations in the business owned by my wife and me. On top of it all, it seemed that I had not been mindful of God's presence lately, and prayer was out of my grasp. As I considered turning back, I remembered how often I had encouraged others to realize the simplicity and power of prayer as a mindfulness of God's presence. I needed to heed my own advice.

"God is here right now," I thought to myself. With tennis shoes pounding the pavement, I simply let that realization be the place to deposit the list of cares that worried me. As I did so, I suddenly noticed things around me that seemed absent only a moment before. God's presence spoke out powerfully in the country setting with its farm animals and barns, but also in the workman digging holes for fence posts and in those who were passing by in cars.

As I arrived home later, I realized that the deadlines still loomed and business responsibilities still had to be met. Those kinds of details are part of a divine plan in which God makes ultimate sense of our lives. They are not things to be escaped but opportunities to experience life.

Of course, parts of the plan are not always so easy to accept, and mindfulness of God can be difficult in times of anger and confusion. Jesus seems to have understood this. According to the gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus cried out in pain and bewilderment as he wondered if God had abandoned him.

Remind yourself often, "God is here." If you feel moved to offer a traditional prayer, do so, but remember that there are also times in deep relationships when presence to one another is enough. Being prayerful is accomplished by discovering the movement of God in our own lives, not necessarily by imitating the spiritual lives of others.

Don't plan to pray. Just do it now. Be mindful that God is with you. This is the time and this is the place.

By JOHN SWITZER, a doctoral candidate in religious education at Boston College.