Stillness · “Stillness Reveals”
Practice of the Presence of God
To keep an unbroken, loving awareness of God’s presence throughout ordinary activity, so that work itself becomes prayer.
In 5 lines: Decide, once and sincerely, to keep turning toward God. Through the day, address Him inwardly — before, during, and after each task — doing the task itself for love of Him. When you notice you have forgotten, simply and unanxiously turn back. No special time, no special place. Over time the turning becomes a quiet, continuous companionship.
What it is
The Practice of the Presence of God is not a seated meditation but a continuous habit of attention: keeping a quiet, loving awareness that God is intimately present, in every moment and every task. Brother Lawrence — a humble lay Carmelite who worked in a monastery kitchen and repaired sandals — taught that there is no need to wait for set “prayer times”; one can “possess God in as great tranquillity” amid the clatter of pots as on one’s knees.
The aim is to abolish the gap between sacred and ordinary by doing every common action purely for the love of God and addressing oneself to Him inwardly throughout. It is the simplest of practices and, by his own admission, the hardest to keep — the whole work is simply returning, again and again, to a felt sense of God’s nearness.
It trains attention as the creative faculty (The Inner Creates the Outer): what you persistently turn toward grows.
The Method
From the recorded conversations and letters (faithfully described, not reproduced):
- Begin with one resolve. Brother Lawrence describes “one hearty renunciation of everything which we are conscious does not lead to God,” then accustoming oneself “to a continual conversation with Him, with freedom and in simplicity.”
- Turn to God in each moment. “Recognise God intimately present with us” and “address ourselves to Him every moment” — asking His help, offering each action to Him before doing it, and giving thanks after.
- Make work itself the prayer. “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer.” Do the dish, the letter, the errand for love of God; the activity becomes the place of communion, not an interruption of it.
- Keep returning after lapses. When he found he had forgotten God, he did not torment himself; he simply acknowledged the lapse to God and gently turned back. The whole practice is this patient, unanxious return — no scene-making over failure.
- Short inward acts, all day. Brief interior glances, words, or affections toward God (“little internal acts”) woven through the day, rather than long formal exercises.
- Let love, not effort, carry it. The motive is affection, not duty or strain; over years the turning becomes “habitual,” an almost continuous quiet sense of God’s company.
Source & Lineage
Nicolas Herman (c. 1614–1691), who took the name Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, was a French Discalced Carmelite lay brother.
He left no treatise; the book The Practice of the Presence of God was assembled after his death by Joseph de Beaufort from four recorded conversations and a set of letters. It sits in the Carmelite contemplative stream (alongside Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross) and the broader Christian tradition of unceasing prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:17; the Desert Fathers; the Eastern “prayer of the heart”).
Its emphasis on sanctifying ordinary action later echoes in figures such as Jean-Pierre de Caussade (“the sacrament of the present moment”).
Common refinements
Treating it as a scheduled exercise. The whole point is that it is continuous and informal — woven into action, not confined to a cushion.
- Self-punishment over forgetting. You will forget constantly. Brother Lawrence’s refinement is the unbothered return: acknowledge, turn back, continue. Guilt restarts the distraction.
- Straining for a feeling. It is an act of loving attention, not a manufactured emotion. Dryness is normal and not failure.
- Splitting “holy” from “ordinary.” The practice collapses that split; if you only feel close to God in chapel, you have not yet begun the practice.