Sister Joyce Rupp writes that this past year, she has become more aware of the scenarios that crowd and clutter her mind, whose imaginary settings she conceives of what someone might be thinking, feeling, or planning to do. “These scenarios waste a lot of my energy that could be spent on something worthwhile. The more I intentionally send those mental judgments on their way, the more quickly I become alert to them when they zoom into my mind. It becomes increasingly easy to boot them out with an inner smile as I say to myself, ‘Oh, here is my six thousand and five hundredth scenario.’ The word spoken to Jeremiah strengthens my resolve to recognize that I have neither the ability nor the right to ‘probe the mind and test the heart’ of another with my mental ruminations.” Fr. Rolheiser reminds us that in these times of mental ruminations, God alone seeks to know what is in the deepest depth of our hearts and minds through prayer. Lifting mind and heart to God means lifting up, at any given moment, exactly what’s there and not what, ideally, might be there. When you go to pray, lift up what’s inside of you at that moment. If you are bored, lift up that boredom; if you are angry, lift up your anger; if you are tired, lift up that tiredness; if you feel selfish, don’t be afraid to let God see that. We need to “pray always” by doing everything out of that kind of awareness. Rabbi Abraham Heschel points out how, in prayer, the great figures of scripture did not always easily acquiesce to God and say: “Thy will be done!” They sometimes fought bitterly and said: “Thy will be changed!” That can be a good prayer. It lifts the mind and heart to God.