Attention & Focus · “You Become What You Hold”
Short Interior Acts
To keep the heart turned to God through countless brief, wordless or one-line interior acts, building a continuous ‘silent conversation’ rather than relying on long formal prayer.
In 5 lines: Stop relying on long set prayers; instead lift your heart to God for a second, again and again, all day. Use a tiny phrase (“My God, I am wholly Yours”; “Lord, make me according to Your heart”) or a wordless glance. Carry an “oratory of the heart” you can step into anywhere — kitchen, road, mid-task. Keep each act short and effortless; the power is in frequency. Over time the turning becomes a habit you can hardly drop.
What it is
Where Brother Lawrence’s better-known “practice of the presence” describes the whole habit of living turned toward God, this is its smallest concrete unit: the short interior act — a brief, often one-line turning of the heart to God that takes a second or two and can be repeated dozens of times an hour.
He called these “little internal acts” and made them his entire prayer life, having “ceased all forms of devotion and set prayers” in favour of “a simple attention.” The image he gives is the “oratory of the heart”: you carry within you a private chapel you can step into, for an instant, anywhere — at the stove, on the road, mid-conversation.
The act may be wordless (a glance of love), or a tiny phrase — “My God, here I am all devoted to You,” *“Lord, make me according to Your heart.”* The point is not eloquence or length but frequency: it is by “frequently renewed acts of faith and love” that the turning eventually becomes habitual.
This trains attention (The Inner Creates the Outer) and affection (The Inner Creates the Outer) in many tiny reps rather than one long sitting.
The Method
Faithfully described from the Conversations and Letters (paraphrase, with short attributed quotes):
- Drop the requirement for long, formal prayer. Lawrence “could never regulate his devotion by certain methods as some do”; he found “the shortest way to go straight to God was by a continual exercise of love.” You are not adding a new long ritual — you are scattering tiny ones through the day.
- Make one brief act, right now. Lift the heart to God for a second with a simple phrase or a wordless glance. His examples: “My God, here I am all devoted to You” and “Lord, make me according to Your heart” (Fourth Letter); “Lord, I cannot do this unless Thou enablest me” when a hard moment arises (Fourth Conversation).
- Repeat it constantly, at every opening. Whenever you remember — between tasks, while walking, waiting, working — make another. He prayed thus “by day, by night, in your business, and even in your entertainments.” Even “one act of inward worship. upon a march with sword in hand” counts and is “very acceptable to God.”
- Use the oratory of the heart. “We may make an oratory of our heart so we can, from time to time, retire to converse with Him in meekness, humility, and love” (Seventh Letter). Treat your inner space as an always-open chapel: step in for an instant, then step back out into your task.
- Keep each act effortless and short. These are darts, not sieges. No strain, no working-up of feeling — a quick lift of attention and affection, then release.
- Let frequency build the habit. Over time, “by frequently renewed acts of faith and love, I am come to a state wherein it would be as difficult for me not to think of God as it was at first to accustom myself to it.” The continuity is built from thousands of brief acts, not held by willpower.
Source & Lineage
Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection (Nicolas Herman, c. 1614–1691) was a Discalced Carmelite lay brother who left no treatise; The Practice of the Presence of God was assembled after his death by Joseph de Beaufort from recorded conversations and letters.
The “short act” / brief lifting of the heart is the Christian practice of the ejaculatory prayer (Latin iaculum, “a dart”) and the arrow prayer of the Desert Fathers, and is kin to the aspirations of Francis de Sales and the Jesus Prayer of the Hesychasts — but Lawrence is unusual in making these brief acts his entire method, displacing formal mental prayer.
The Traditions' versions
Aspirations / ejaculatory prayer (de Sales) — short, frequent darts of love woven through the day; the closest cousin.
- Jesus Prayer / Hesychasm — one short repeated formula as continuous prayer of the heart.
- Mantra / japa — brief repeated phrase carried through activity.
- Remembrance (dhikr) — frequent short recollection of God in Sufi practice.
- Modern “anchoring” / informal mindfulness — brief, repeated returns of attention to a chosen anchor through the day.
Common refinements
Making the acts long. The power is in brevity and frequency; if each “act” becomes a paragraph, you’ve slipped back into formal prayer and will do it far less often.
- Counting compulsively. These are darts of love, not a tally to hit. A quota turns a tender practice into a chore (and can feed scrupulosity).
- Straining for emotion. A glance of attention is enough; the feeling, when it comes, follows the turning — it isn’t manufactured first.
- Waiting for a “spiritual” moment. Lawrence’s whole point is that an act on the march, in the kitchen, mid-errand, is fully acceptable. Ordinary moments are the practice.
- Giving up because you keep forgetting. Forgetting is expected; each remembering is the next act. Frequency, built over time, is what makes it habitual.