Friendships Formed in Communal Prayer

Each year during January and February, Catherine and Christopher Richards lead a month-long retreat in daily life. The month consists of guided prayer – each person who has signed up to be
a prayee is matched up with a prayer guide who they see once a week over the four weeks to talk and pray together. Whilst it is not about being led in prayer nor about getting praying right, it is about being open to the uncertain and one’s feelings to prayer whilst becoming closer to God
in one’s everyday life.

Although you only meet with everyone who is involved twice (once at the beginning of the retreat and again at the end) and you only meet with your prayer guide once a week, you become a community for a short period of time. In my experience of it, I feel that I have formed a friendship
with my prayer guide that I and they hope will last. Friendship and prayer can therefore be very similar in a way – you can be drawn to and find both through God.

Bethany Stephenson