I've been trying to look at people more when I talk to them.

Not in a stare-you-down or creep-you-out sort of way (I hope!), but I have noticed a lack of eye contact on my part with the people I'm talking to. It's not a hugely perpetual thing; I don't think it's because I lie to everyone, and I'm pretty sure it's not because I'm bashful. I suspect 'tis more a matter of self-absorption and habit. I've just gotten used to rambling into the distance, and I'm beginning to realize the value of ... actually interacting with people instead of vague horizons.

It really began to interest me, however, when I took that principle of staring at vague horizons instead of people and dragged it into my prayer life. Because if I do it some of the time with people, I'm pretty sure I do it most of the time with God. Again, it's not that I don't mean what I say. But what I say isn't worth saying, because most of the time it springs from an indefinite contemplation on the art of self-knowing.

I'm not asking for sympathy or a pat on the back. This is a horrible thing that I see in myself, and I'm repenting of it as such. There's no need to wallow in the agony of self-reproach; better to rejoice in the truth of redemption. But there - that's just the point. Ever tried staring at a mirror image of yourself and saying a prayer of praise and reverent awe to God? Ever tried being thankful to God whilst in a state of total self-absorption? Yeah. It doesn't work. (And I suspect it's stolen a great quantity of joy from my prayer life heretofore.)

I want to linger on that last one. Thankful. My prayers are often beseeching, often repentant, often wrestling - these are good and right parts of prayer. But I struggle to make them thankful. What keeps me from thankfulness? Is it not because I do not look at God when I am talking to him? Is it not because prayer for me is usually more about self-disclosure than basking in the presence of the living Christ in reverence and awe?

I say this knowing that tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. There's an element of non-coincidence there; at the same time, if a thankful heart isn't sustainable on the ordinary days then all the howling horrors of the holidays certainly won't foster one. Yet the howling horrors are not to blame. If I were to pray, and think, and walk, and live, and work, and sleep with the face of God ever before me - in all of my conversations, but especially time in the closet for prayer - that life, that conversation would be a wellspring of thanksgiving and praise, unstoppable and unending in its current.

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