That's a lot of Catholics—and we don't all practice our faith the same way.

From daily Mass to meditation and yoga, there are many ways to pray.

U.S. Catholic surveyed readers to find out how they connect with God.

Of the 357 people who took our survey, 94 percent pray every day.

Fifty-nine percent prefer to pray alone, while 25 percent like to pray with their church community, and only 15 percent enjoy prayer with family or friends.

Almost half of the survey takers, 48 percent, say they pray most in their own home.

Only 21 percent favor prayer at church, and 11 percent connect most with God when they are outdoors.

"I pray mostly at night," says Mary Lou White of Georgetown, Kentucky.

"That is when I am most focused—after everyone has gone to bed."

Geri Mclaughlin of West Lafayette, Indiana says she feels "closest to God when in community with others."

Many U.S. Catholic readers say they struggle to pray in places that are noisy.

David Santos of Denville, New Jersey says, "I find it hard to pray when there is a lot of noise around me. I would rather pray in solitude."

Likewise, Beverly Eskel from Methuen, Massachusetts prays in quiet.

"I'm old," she says.

"I have the luxury of having solitude in my own home and time to pray. Every morning, as I put my feet on the floor, I thank God for another day and the grace not to screw it up."

Although only 25% of readers prefer praying during Mass, 74 percent attend service weekly.

Seventeen percent attend daily, while only 9 percent find themselves in the pews fewer than once per month.

"I usually find it hard to pray when there are a lot of people around," says Morehead City, North Carolina resident Lynn Brugnolotti.

"The exception is when I attend Mass."

In line with Brugnolotti, Christine Shannon of Danville, Illinois says, "Mass is by far my favorite form of prayer. When it has been convenient I have loved to attend daily Mass and did so for many years."

But schedules make it harder at some stages of life, she says. Tom Rinkoski of Minneapolis agrees with Shannon on the benefits of praying in community.

He says, "I am an extrovert, so I like discussing spirituality, prayer, and scripture with folks the most."

Rinkoski's love of scripture is common.

Eighty-nine percent of survey takers engage with scripture outside of Mass, but only 28 percent are a part of a Bible study group.

However, 88 percent do not shy away from a faith discussion, saying they openly talk about their beliefs with others.

Judith Stafford of Morehead, Kentucky says, "I am part of a discussion group at my church, and we read different books that deal with faith."

For her, being able to meet with the group is a special form of prayer.

Fiona Martingale from South Beach, Florida also connects most with God when she is with others.

"When I can talk about my faith and connect with people on theirs—especially those who have a different faith than I do, I feel most connected to God," she says. Continue reading

You know the one: You read an article about ways to better connect or deepen your relationship with God and say, "Yeah, well, glad that works for other people, but no way that works for me! I've got kids! I've got work to do! I've got people to feed and pick up after!"

Becky Eldredge, a mom of three, spiritual director, and the author of Busy Lives and Restless Souls, understands all too well what we're up against, but still says there are practices that work right into our schedules — even the "toughies" like silence and dedicated time for prayer.

In fact, as someone who gets up long before her family to spend time in prayer, Becky says we can all do it to.

It's a matter, she says, of "setting aside a daily time for prayer that you honor and schedule on your calendar like you would any other appointment."

"This daily time of being with God grounds your day in silence and stillness with God," Becky says.

"The silence of our home helps me still and quiet myself to just be with God and hear God's voice. It reminds me of Psalm 46:6, ‘Be still and know that I am God.'"

Pray as you can, not as you can't

But Becky notes that what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for everyone.

Becky says she lives by the motto of her priest-friend: "Pray as you can, not as you can't."

"It is easy for life's responsibilities and roles to get in the way of our prayer lives," Becky says.

At times, we can say "yes" to a lot of things that we put as precedence over our relationship with God.

Being intentional and scheduling time with God on our calendars and honoring this time like we would any appointment helps keep this a priority in our life."

"At the same time," Becky cautions, "we have to be gentle with ourselves when life calls us to care for children, for aging family members, or for our own health.

"During those times, we might not be able to honor our set prayer period because our call is to show love to those around us at that time.

"We can still lean on God and turn to God at anytime because we carry an ‘inner chapel' within us that we can access at any time."

Becky gives the example of a mother of six who sought spiritual direction to help her grow deeper in faith. Continue reading

• Image: Aleteia

If the first step is awareness of the need to be in the present moment, the second is the recognition of the way we encounter the Sacred. Our intellect may be a fine tool for processing and evaluating our spiritual experience but it is not the means of that encounter. Our five senses - hearing, sight, taste, smell, touch - are the doorways to the direct "heart" experience of the greater reality.

Most days, these doors are only just ajar. We can eat without tasting, hear without actively listening, see without observing, touch in a superficial way. It's when we pay close attention to our senses that we come into the present moment and fling the doors wide open to prayer.

When did you last listen to music that carried you out of yourself to a state beyond description? Your heart expanded with sound, and tears came to your eyes uninvited. Your felt yourself in the presence of unnameable beauty.

When did your eyes drag you into natural scenery that swallowed you up, so that for an unmeasured moment you forgot who you were? It wasn't that you were nothing; but that you were everything, a part of every tree, fern, water, mountain. And you knew, absolutely knew in that moment, the oneness of God.

Can you remember a time swimming when the smooth repetitive strokes became like a mantra and you felt that your skin had dissolved to become one with the water?

And taste? When did you last taste God in a ripe peach or a cold beer on a hot summer day?

For most of us, finding God in the present moment is a three-stage exercise of awareness:

(1) knowing that we tend to live in our heads.

(2) paying full attention to our senses.

(3) allowing ourselves to be carried through the doorway to that state of holy awe we call prayer.

This kind of awareness prayer takes only a minute here and there in our busy day. It can be a pause at a bus stop, a hesitation during a meal, a connection with the sky above us, or the daisies at our feet. The exercise is so simple, and it always brings us profound gratitude.

Most of the time our senses serve us in a functional manner; but when we allow them to take us into the mystery of the present moment, we find God everywhere.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

Many respected persons made it a practice to rise in the night or in the quiet hours of the morning to seek inspiration that comes in silence, Plato, Einstein, and even Jesus Himself. We all should find a time and a place to be in silent prayer. In the Carmelite tradition, the spiritual life is said to have two aims: the first is about our love of God and the second is about God's love for us. The practice of silence facilitates both of these aims.

The experience of God's love for us

We are meant to taste in our hearts and experience in our minds, not only after death but in this life, something of the power of the Divine Presence and the bliss of heavenly glory. From this point of departure in faith, silence becomes more than a practice. It is a form of prayer - a prayer of listening, waiting, and receptivity. It is a prayer that anticipates and expects intimate communion; it believes in the possibility and holds in high esteem the value of being in relationship with God.

The value of this type of prayer is difficult for our productivity-oriented culture to grasp. It is hard for us to see that a prayer in which "being" predominates over "doing" and that a prayer in which nothing happens is a prayer in which everything happens. It is in silence that we make the interior transition from darkness to light. We become more aware of God's presence within us, of Him speaking to us, of the hidden things which He wishes to reveal to us. Continue reading

• Source: Sister Mary Clare, O.C.D. in Integrated Catholic Life
• Image: The Raw Story

• Black (78%) and white (69%) Americans are substantially more likely than Hispanic Americans (52%) to say they are somewhat or very likely to watch the Super Bowl this year.
• Although solid majorities of both genders report that they are somewhat or very likely to watch the Super Bowl this year, men (73%) are more likely than women (58%) to say they are likely to watch the game.
• Two percent of Americans report that the team they identify with most closely is the San Francisco 49ers, while one percent say the same of the Baltimore Ravens.
• More than 4-in-10 (42%) Americans who seldom or never watch sports nevertheless report that they are very or somewhat likely to watch the Super Bowl this year.

Professional football is, by far, Americans' most-watched or followed sport: nearly half (48%) of Americans who watch college or professional sports at least a few times a year say professional football is the sport they follow most closely, while around 1-in-10 say the same of college football (12%) or professional basketball (11%). Less than 1-in-10 report that they follow major league baseball (7%) or college basketball (6%) most closely.

Most Americans (55%) say that football has replaced baseball as America's national sport, while more than one-third (36%) disagree.

Americans are less likely to believe that God plays a role in the outcome of sporting events than they are to believe God rewards religious athletes. While only about 3-in-10 (27%) Americans, believe that God plays a role in determining which team wins a sporting event, a majority (53%) believe that God rewards athletes who have faith with good health and success, compared to 42% who disagree. There are substantial differences by religious affiliation on all of these questions. Continue reading

Sources

• Public Religion Research Institute
• Image: The Guardian

A new study by the Public Religion Research Institute found that one-third of the country believes God plays a role in determining which team wins.

And Americans are even more certain about the players themselves. A majority believe God rewards individual athletes who are faithful to God with good health and success.
This kind of thinking about faith and success follows a broader religious trend. Over the past 50 years, American Christians have gravitated toward spiritual explanations for why winners deserve their rewards.

The default rationalizations — Good things happen to good people! Everything happens for a reason! — are no longer simply clichés. They are the theological bedrock for one of the most popular contemporary movements:

The American prosperity gospel.

Millions of American Christians now agree that faith brings health, wealth and victory. This movement, which began in the Pentecostal revivals of the post-World War II years, has become a commonplace theological framework for how faith works to secure God's blessings.

For the past eight years, I have studied the American prosperity gospel. Basically, it contends that believers must learn to speak positive words (called "positive confessions") to unleash spiritual forces that move God to act. Faithful people can know that their prayers and actions are working by their effects: a healthy body, a rising bank account, an ability to overcome life's obstacles. The pursuit of happiness is no longer simply an inalienable right — it's a divine mandate.

When people say God rewards certain teams or athletes, their opinions usually reflect a range of explanations — from "hard prosperity" to "soft prosperity" — for how people earn wins or losses.

Hard prosperity draws a straight line between the believer's faith to his circumstances. Did a player tithe 10 percent of his income? Did an unspoken sin block his prayers? Continue reading

Sources

• Kate Bowler in nj.com
• Image: Spirit Meat Readers

Kate Bowler is an assistant professor of American Christianity at Duke University's Divinity School.

When it comes to teaching children about prayer, I get excited, because if they can grasp this simple truth early enough in life, they will most likely grow up enjoying a fulfilling relationship with God and a satisfying prayer life. Think about it, most kids will talk openly and honestly about almost anything. This is how we can teach them to pray — openly, honestly, about anything that's on their mind.

As a mother and grandmother, I think kids just need to understand the simplicity of prayer. It's asking God for what we need and believing He will do the best thing for us. It's talking to Him about people we care about, asking Him to help them. Prayer is asking God how to handle a problem we have and doing what He puts in our heart to do. They need to know they can tell God anything at all because He loves them no matter what. They need to realize they can talk to God like they would talk to their very best friend.

So much of the time, kids are taught the way to pray and not simply to do it. They may learn to kneel, to bow their heads, or fold their hands. They might learn certain words to say or to recite a special Bible verse. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with any of that. But, while I believe it is very important to teach our children to pray, I think maybe we need to toss out the "rule book" and teach them to do what they do naturally and talk to God.

That's the inspiration for my new children's book, "Every Which Way to Pray." Harley and Hayley Hippo want to pray, but they think prayer is hard work. "There are lots of rules for praying," Harley complains. "You have to do it just right." They even have a rule book that tells them so. But the little hippos learn from a whole zoo-full of their animal friends that they can pray any way they want to. They can kneel or stand to pray. They can say loud or quiet prayers, or they can say long or short prayers. They learn that they can pray any way, anywhere, anytime. Read more

Sources

• Joyce Meyer in Huffington Post
• Image: St John the Evangelist, Clinton Md