prayer

today while reading fr. peters blog site and pod cast he mentions prayer and its importance in an orthodox persons life. we are to pray at the least two times a day and up to seven times a day.
for each person prayer is a private personal thing,for me i am in the habit of praying in the morning and evening but am not very good at other times in the day, though i must admit that when i wake up through the night i start to pray to help me relax.i feel i must be waking up because there is something on my mind that i have not dealt with and i need Gods intervention to help find an answer to my issue.
although it has not happened to me lately, during the spring and summer,while watching TV or reading i would get this over whelming need to pray for some one who needed help,i would have no idea who it was for but it would happen so often that i made up a prayer just for those moments,several days after my prayers i would find out someone i knew was dealing with a problem and thought well maybe this was why i needed to pray.
i have been reading a book on the life of mother angelica from ewtn.She belongs to cloistered community of the poor Claire's,which is a Franciscan community.they spend 4 hours a day in work related activities and most of the rest of their day is spent in prayer and contemplation.they offer up their prayers for those who are unable to
pray for themselves and are not allowed to read news papers or watch TV they get news of the outside world from the mother superior when she feels something is needed for the community to know.it seems like a very difficult life to me and all i can say is thank God i was never called to this sort of life,i'm sure i would not be very good at it i'm way to nosey and silence has never been my strong point plus the getting up at 4:30 am to pray would be another issue i would have trouble dealing with.
thank goodness for these sisters and i proudly must add my fathers' oldest sister belonged to one of these groups up in canada, what a very harsh life she must have lived and how little we appreciate these people who are willing to give their lives over for the good of the rest of the world.