The Twelve Keys to Praying for Strangers

From the moment that Praying for Strangers was published, people asked me for some type of corresponding tool to assist them into adopting this resolution or at least to making it a part of their life in some consistant way. At the time, I couldn’t imagine what type of assistance I could provide. I wanted to say, “Oh, you just do it.” But that doesn’t really help anyone. The following twelve keys are elements that I know I’ve incorporated into Praying for Strangers. I believe taking these keys and practicing one each week for twelve weeks will make each step easier for you.

For additional words on “How to Pray for a Stranger” you can visit this page.
For those who choose to journal with each key, there are corresponding journal reflection questions. For small groups working through the keys together there are discussion suggestions.

 You can’t get this right through your practice and good works. The good news is – neither can you get it wrong. You cannot fail. One day of becoming more aware of the strangers around you and their meaning in your life is a day well spent.

You can do this. It’s not as difficult as it may seem. It’s a surprise, a journey, and an adventure. The world needs you so much more than you realize.  This one tiny thing that you can do can change the world you live in. In can change you.

Week One

Key One – Awareness

Prayer is a way to connect with all of humanity and the Divine. Praying for Strangers is specifically about connecting with one person at a time. To do so, one must first become aware, really aware of the human condition in a personal way. As you move through the days ahead, don’t let the need to pray for someone rule your mind. Don’t think it. Just open your eyes. Truly, open your eyes. In the course of any given day you will cross paths with many people through your life or by way of social and mass media sources.

Are they young, elderly, happy, rushed, lonesome, hurting?

Awareness Journal Reflections

1. How do the people you have noticed affect you?
2. As you continue to use the key of Awareness, what has surprised you? What has moved you unexpectedly?
3. Have you become more aware of things about yourself in the process of becoming more aware of those around you? If so, how so?

 Week Two

 Key Two – Listening

We live in a very noisy world. Everyone seems to be shouting at the same time. We walk down the grocery aisle and people are selling us items as we walk by trying to remember why we were there in the first place. Computerized advertisements compete throughout the store for our attention. More noise. More shouting. We begin to desensitize by wrapping ourselves in a type of cocoon. We don’t want to hear any more jingles; any more angry voices on the radio, and any more sarcasm of the day. We just want to be left alone. In the process, we stop listening to the people we encounter or even those closest to us.

This week make an effort to begin listening once again. Call up an old friend, contact a family member, make a new friend, or even turn to a stranger – and ask them how they are doing. How they are really doing. I promise you’ll have to look them in the eye and ask more than once for anyone to take you seriously anymore. To believe you want to hear what they have to say. Ask one more time. Then be prepared to listen without interruption to their story with your whole heart.

Journal Reflections

1. When is the first time you remember someone really listening to you with all of their attention? How did it make you feel? When is the last time someone really listened to you? If you have experienced this recently did it affect you the same way? If you haven’t had someone listen to what you need to say in a long time, how has that absence of listening affected you?
2. Do you feel distracted when listening to others? Are you impatient with them for any reason? Does it feel that time is in short supply and they are slowing you down? (If so, join the crowd we are all a part of today.) What do you believe would help you most in listening to others?
3. If you are a born listener and have a gift for allowing others to have center stage does it mean that rarely do you share your own story? This week share your story in this journal, in a letter to a friend, to someone in your life.  How do you think you could gently help people in your circle listen to others?

 Small Groups

Share a story from this week about Listening

Week Three 

 Key Three – Seeing

In New Testament scripture it says that Jesus beheld people. I think there is something significant about that. I think beholding is looking into a person’s soul not just seeing what is on the surface. A recent popular movie portrayed a race of people that didn’t exactly say, “I love you.” What they said was, “I see you.” I understood that immediately. During my years of Praying for Strangers, I’ve begun to ‘see’ at people with what I hope are those same eyes. Looking deeper than the obvious. Looking deeper than my hurried, stressed life would permit me at a glance. For the first time in most of my life, I’ve begun to look at people within the context of the great eternal story we are all living out and sharing in this space and time. Spend this week ‘seeing’ people beyond the surface, whether you perceive them as wonderful or wanting, see beyond that.

 Journal Reflection

1. This week as you begin to really see people, even those you pass momentarily, what strikes you as different?
2. Have you begun to look at those in your personal circle, your family and friends differently? What have you seen that strikes you differently?
3. If you ‘looked’ at yourself the same way, deeper than a passing glance or based on your surface examination in the mirror, what would you see? What would you keep? What would you change?

Small Groups

Share a story from this week about ‘Seeing.’ Remember to ‘listen’ to the story of others.

Week Four

Key Four  – Respect

It’s an old fashioned word. We don’t focus a lot anymore on respect. It was a word my mother’s generation knew a lot about. It was taught and expected. It didn’t take very long into the first year of my resolution where I knew I needed to respect the people I encountered in a new way. Don’t get me wrong, I was raised to respect my elders, to act like a little ‘lady’, to not use bad language and so on. I’m from the South. End of story. But we all grow up and to some extend become a product of our culture and environment. I had to learn to respect each person’s story. To respect their time, their culture, their differences. I had to understand that whether or not they worshiped like I do, believed like I do, or voted like I me on any given election year, that they had this right to walk through the world as themselves – not as I would like them to be. And to say a prayer for them at night not to become more like me, but to be filled with the grace and light and wonder of God.

 Journal Reflection

1. Do you feel you respect those around you? If so, how do you show it? If not, what example do you have that you remember where you felt you didn’t respect someone? Why?
2. Is it difficult for you to respect someone who is obviously different than you? If so, can you find something about them to respect even if their choices disagree with you?
3. When have you felt honestly respected? If you were treated with that type of respect daily would it change you? How so? 

Week Five

Key Five – Recognize

It’s amazing how as we grow up, as we go through life we begin to immediately recognize the differences between us and other people. We are either praised which elevates us or we are in someway shunned, which demoralizes us. We are the fast readers in kindergarten or the slower readers. We are faster on the recess field or the stumblers. We are part of the red group, the blue group, and the greens. And everyone knows which one is ‘better’ because we are taught these things at an early age and almost by osmosis. What I’m not certain that we recognize is our similarities, the beauty of our alikeness as readily. The first chapter of Praying for Strangers talks about how I met a homeless woman in a park in Nashville and ultimately with all our drastic differences, it was finally our similarities, the fact that we were two women with stories to tell that captivated me.

Week Five is an opportunity for you to focus on recognizing in easy ways, in odd ways, in surprising ways, the similarities you have with those around you who at first glance would appear not to be part of your regular group.

 Journal Reflections

1. Have you experienced being shut out of a particular group as child or adult? If so, on what criteria did they base their decision that you were not like them? Does this experience help you to relate easier to people now who are different or more fearful of even trying?
2. During the week have you had a hard time finding those similarities or have they come surprisingly easier than you had expected? If not, what was so difficult about the process? If you have discovered them, how so?

3. Has recognizing people this week in a new way changed the way you may continue to walk through your days judging people differently?

 Small Groups

Share a story from this week on recognizing people in a new way and how it has changed you or altered your view of the world.

Week Six 

Key Six – Believe

Believe.  It’s a heavy word. It’s filled with power and purpose. And challenge. Believing is something strongly felt. Something people live and die for. One definition says to believe is to accept the ‘truth or worth’ of something.

Let me take a moment to help you. It’s no happenstance that you are here in the sixth week of walking out this journey, of trying it on for size. If look back over the last five weeks can you see a tangible difference it’s made in your life? Have you indeed become more aware, looked at people differently and more deeply, listened to the stories of others, respected them and recognized your similarities instead of your differences? If you can answer, yes to one single question, to a single moment of your personal experience in the last five weeks than you can believe that this journey has just begun for you. That you can indeed do the tiniest of things to shape your world for the better. As you walk out week six do so with a renewed sense that your being on this planet makes a difference. That the people you encounter in your life are richer for your having been here. That the world does indeed need you. Believe.

 Journal Reflections

1. Are you a person who believes in good things, in your fellow man and in yourself easily or were you brought up to be a skeptic? How has either side of that coin affected your life up to this moment?
2. Have there been times in your life, dark seasons, where you found it hard to believe in anything? If you came through that (or are still walking through that season) what has helped you to find your way back to a place of believing again?
3. If you could believe one good, new, true thing about yourself, your environment at home, at work, or the world at large – what would you like it to be?

Small Groups
You are in a Small Group setting of some type for a reason whether it is a book club, church group, or other organization. What is it you believe to be good about small groups of people gathering, studying and reflecting together? How has participating in a group reflecting on Praying for Strangers helped you on the journey?
 

Week Seven

 Key Seven- Connecting

There they are again – those people. As an introvert I have always appreciated the individual people in my life meaning my family and friends. But the truth is it’s been very difficult for me to widen that circle. Exhausting actually on most days. Those people. There are so many people in this world and their needs seem never-ending. Just tuning into the evening news or following Facebook for an hour will reveal this to be true day after day. So the idea of connecting with people, more people than I was already responsible for, was really more than I needed to deal with. Or at least wanted to deal with. Then a funny thing happened. I began to connect with people. Praying for Strangers the book is filled with stories about those connections and even as I write these words my mind floods with face of strangers, moments of meetings, hugs, tears, smiles. I would never give those people up now. I’ll carry their stories with me forever. And I’m thankful for that. As you walk through week seven, search for ways to connect with people in a new way. Particularly, with the strangers in your path. Pay a compliment, plant a cheerful word, share something.

Journal Reflections

1. How has week seven evolved for you? Were you able to make more connections? Was it difficult or easier than you expected?
2. Was anyone surprised by your communicating with them in a personal way? Did anyone seem pleased? Offended? How did any of the reactions affect you?
3. Did connecting with others during the week inspire you? Energize you? Or drain you? Be honest.

 Small Groups

Share a story from this week about connecting.

Week Eight

Key Eight – Compassion

The more compassion I had for strangers in my path, the greater my capacity for caring seemed to be. If I could relate to any character along the way it would be the Grinch from Dr. Seuss in his famed children’s book. It would be the moment that the Grinch kept the sled with all the presents from falling over the mountain. The moment his heart grew three times that day. That’s what its felt like. A growing, a stretching, I didn’t ask for. Trust me, I was just walking out one year of this resolution, checking that box, and taking a vacation from all that humanity. But a funny thing happened along the way. I began to care about the people I met. Sitting here typing and remembering faces, I still care. Something happens when we let that type of compassion enter our lives. As you walk out this week seeing and listening, connecting and recognizing, begin to care for those you see as if they were your brother, your sister. or your best friend.  It only takes a moment to have a deep level of compassion. It doesn’t mean being deeply involved in someone’s life forever. Amazingly, you can care with great compassion in the blink of an eye and the time it takes to say, “Good Morning,”

Journal Reflections

1. Have you found a freedom this week to care for people that normally you wouldn’t have given the time of day in passing?

2. Has a strangers at any time in your life shown you a moment of caring or compassion that affected you deeply?

3. Do you associate caring with risk? If so, what is the risk? What are you afraid of?

Small Groups

Share a story this week on Caring. It can be from this week or from any moment in your life.

 Week Nine

Key Nine – Freedom

A few years ago my mother pulled something out of a box and held it up for me to see. It was a paper from my Kindergarten class when I was five back when Kindergarten was simple and full of basics like lunch, nap, and recess. What she held was a beautiful picture of a purple tiger. What she was specifically pointing to was the teachers notation in the corner where it said ‘Color the Tiger Orange’ that ‘She does not follow directions.’ At the time I laughed and thought, ‘Well there, originally wasn’t in high demand when I was five.’ I wish I could tell you I saved and framed that purple tiger and have it hanging over my desk as a reminder. I don’t. But as a writer of novels of the original variety I still am not following directions precisely. If I had, I never would have prayed for hundreds of strangers, one stranger at a time. I’m still coloring with that purple crayon and going outside the lines when it’s necessary.

As I’ve stated, people have asked me now for years how to pray for a stranger. And while I can offer this keys as a tool to help you on this journey, you must, absolutely must, make this journey your own. Initially, when people also began to tell me that they loved this idea so much they had started doing it also – well, my first thought was, “Oh, no! What if they don’t do it like I do?” Then I caught myself with quickness. I realized thank goodness that everyone was doing it ‘his or her’ way. They were meeting people, complimenting people, offering to help carry a stranger’s bags, buying groceries for the single mother in line behind them that was short, and the list goes on and on.

Make this resolution your private revolution of prayer. Color outside the lines. Use your orange, blue, or even purple crayon. We were created to be original. Allow yourself that freedom.

 Journal Reflections

1. Have you denied yourself a type of spiritual freedom? Even in these weeks of taking this journey? How? Why?
2. What would make Praying for Strangers your own? What would putting your own color on it look like?
3. Do you feel ready to do that? If so, why? If no, why not?

Small Groups

Discuss how freedom or the lack of it can affect your spiritual life both in a solitary fashion and as a community.

Week Ten

Key Ten – Change

 One of the things I’ve heard in the past year on the road is that readers had been searching for something special, some way to make a difference in the world. That something can be elusive sometimes but most people seem to carry this seed inside of them that whispers, “I want to make a change in the world for the better. I want my life to have mattered. For my time here no matter how long or short to have meant something. Praying for Strangers has offered thousands of people the opportunity to make a change by doing something simple, reachable, tangible and eternal. This one tiny thing is pausing a moment and connecting with another human being in an honest, compassionate way. It doesn’t take a lot of time, any money, the requirement to travel into a mission field beyond your own community but the changes I’ve seen and those I’ve experienced have been profound.

Journal Reflections

1. Are you one of those people who have desired to make a change in the world?
2. Have there been moments in the last ten weeks where you felt you had either made a change in someone’s day or their life or had felt significant change in yours?
3. What is the one big hope for change you have for your community? For the World? For yourself?

Small Groups

Share some of the changes you have experienced in the course of walking out this journey of Praying for Strangers so far.   

Week Eleven

Key Eleven – Story

I suppose I’ve been a champion of story since I was born. Southerners are great storytellers generally speaking. Well, certainly those of the backwoods rural variety of my childhood. Story was paramount. It was the way we shared the history of generations and immortalized our children’s first steps and first words. The only thing I ever remember really wanting to be as I grew up was a writer. Fortunately, I went on to write a few plays and a few novels and to find myself all grown up and a professional storyteller of the southern literary variety. Then this strange idea for a resolution came along. It took me by total surprise. I continued working on another novel even as I was jotting down notes about my stranger of the day. Then my husband thought I should write about my resolution, my agent likewise. I thought it was all a lot of wordy distraction from the latest novel. Then a few months into the resolution as I would journal every night about what had occurred when I met someone, I realized I had a journal full of stories. Stories of strangers, of their lives, of moments. Incredible, amazing, truthful raw moments. I began to see the way that stranger by stranger all of our stories were related. That they were part of a tapestry of one great eternal story. All special. All connected.

During week eleven walk out your story in the midst of those happening around you. Become more aware of the fact that everyone has a story with a history as wide, complicated, beautiful, painful and miraculous as yours.

Journal Reflection

1. Do you feel your story is one that is isolated from those around you? Did concentrating on the element of story help you to see people in a different light?
2. If all of our stories are connecting in these passing moments of our lives, what do you want your portion of the story of life to represent?
3. Going forward from this week, how will you view your story as it relates to those around you? Has anything changed? If so, what is it?

Small Groups

Share a portion of your story with the group that is something no one in the group knows about you. It doesn’t have to be of the skeleton in the closet variety. It can be funny, sad, or any simple day in between. It can be a single moment where you became aware of something that you would like to reveal.

 Week Twelve

 Key Twelve – Pray

For me, prayer should be like breathing. Just that simple. Just that easy on our better days. I don’t think prayer must be work although there are times we sure are passionate for good reason about our prayers. In my personal life to be very revealing, there are times I pray on my knees. Not everyday but sometimes. There are times that I fast a meal on occasion. I assure you, that’s not everyday. People ask me frequently now how I pray. It’s like this. I take everyone one of these steps you’ve been walking through, every single one, and then I seem to roll them into a ball where that days stranger is concerned, and then I hold them up in my spirit to the Creator and say, “Look down, here,” and I add, “please,” for good measure. What I mean by that is, “Please see this person I see. Please bless them, heal them, and protect them and their loved ones. Let there be grace and light in their life now and always.” My prayers are real, compassionate and openhanded. They don’t take long to say but there is strong possibility, even scientific evidence, that prayer makes a difference. I’m willing to take that chance. To offer prayers for strangers along my way in life trusting that the power of prayer is something greater than even I imagine. The fact is, I believe.

Yes, I stop to tell people that they are my special person for the day. That I pray for a stranger each night before I go to sleep and that they are the one I noticed today, the one I’ll be staying special prayers for. And just like that, I’m turning to go. For those who have read the book you know these stories. Some of you know the book so well you have the strangers and their stories memorized.

Tonight I took a break as I was writing these words and went to the store. I don’t feel I have to tell someone they are my stranger for the day. Sometimes, my feet just seem to pause and the next thing I know I’ve got that opening line rolling off my tongue – “Do you mind if I ask your name?” I did that tonight in the grocery aisle so quickly I didn’t even stop. Asked a man still walking away from him. Then I told him why walking backwards in the opposite direction. He rolled his eyes up and replied immediately, “Oh, thank you. I need it. I got in trouble yesterday at work. This is what happened.” And his story continued as I smiled and slowly walked back towards him and stood still – and listened.

I encourage you to allow yourself the freedom to tell someone that they stood out to you. That they are special. That you’ll be remembering them. I don’t think you have to do this to pray for strangers at all. I just don’t want to rob you of the experience, the chance to get out of your comfort zone, make a compassionate connection, and allow that person to know that someone in this world is thinking of them, praying for them simple good things. A good life.

Yes, with all my being, I encourage you to pray – your way. At stoplights, sitting on your porches, riding on buses. For strangers and those you already know and love. For the orphans, the elderly, the innocent, the abused, the homeless, the hurting, the joyful, those of low status, and rulers of nations. I encourage you to have a conversation with the Divine about the things that trouble your hearts in the night season and to know, to really know, that you are not alone. And thankfully, because of you neither am I or the rest of the world. We need each other. We always have. We always will.

 Journal Reflection

1. What has prayer meant to you in the past? What does it mean to you today?
2. How has walking through this journey of Praying for Strangers affected your prayer life? Your daily life? Your relationships?
3. If you could change one thing about your prayer life what would it be? Why?

Small Groups

Share reflections on your special moments of walking out this twelve-week journey. How has it changed you? How has it changed the group? Where will you go from here?

(*Dear readers, this is a work in process. I’ve promised you for months to have these available for you and in the final hour here they are. Please forgive me for typos and silly sentences. I’ll be adding additional words and Small group discussion points in the weeks ahead. Also, feel free to download, print, and share at will. God Bless you in 2012 and many years beyond!)