This week's episode breaks from the usual format. Pivot producer Joey Goodall steps in for a solo reflection on what prayer practices are actually for, and what happens when we lose sight of that. He starts in an unexpected place: a line from the 1994 Australian film Muriel's Wedding, where a character compares her life to the biggest hit by the Swedish pop group she'd once used as an escape.

From there, Joey turns to prayer, scripture reading, and the practices Christians return to again and again, naming two temptations that work against their purpose: holding a practice so tightly to its exact words and structure that we forget what it's for, or adapting it so loosely that it no longer reshapes us. He closes with a version of the Examen, a nearly 500-year-old prayer practice from Ignatius of Loyola, as one way to stay open to a God who is always more than our practices.

Sometimes what we need is for our wanting to be changed, so that we can receive the thing we've already been given. That reordering rarely happens on its own. It's part of why we return to prayer, Bible reading, and other practices again and again.

Hello, my name is Joey Goodall, and I am FaithLead's digital content coordinator and the producer of the Pivot Podcast. This season on Pivot, we're talking about how spiritual practices from various eras and pockets of the Christian tradition can be contextualized to serve their intended purpose, deepening our faith and helping us more clearly see the ways God is already at work in our lives.

I wanna reflect on some of this briefly in a kinda roundabout way, and I hope you'll be willing to come along.

I recently watched Muriel's wedding for the first time, an Australian movie from the mid nineties. I remember the poster hanging in the video store in the small Wisconsin town where I grew up, but the movie was rated R, so it wasn't something I was going to see at ten years old. Not that I minded much. I was more of a rewatch Ghostbusters for the umpteenth time kind of kid. Still, the title lodged itself in the back of my brain.

Upon actually watching it, it turned out to be a much stranger movie than I was expecting. And it's all the better for it. I liked that all of the characters are flawed, some recognizably and some in over-the-top ways. I also liked that the movie doesn't try to maintain one consistent tone. It lets funny moments and deeply sad ones exist side by side.

One particularly heartbreaking image that stuck with me was Muriel's mother's yard, scorched and smoking, after she'd burned it out of sheer exhaustion, because nobody in her family would help her with it. It's such a surprising, almost absurd act. At the same time, any parent who's asked a teenager to mow the lawn or clean their room for the hundredth time knows that exhaustion.

It's funny but equally devastating. There's another scene where Muriel is talking to her friend Rhonda after Rhonda gets an unexpected serious diagnosis. The two of them had grown up as outcasts in the hilariously named beach town of Porpoise Spit and moved to Sydney together. Rhonda's worried that Muriel will no longer want to be her friend, that the burden of caregiving might be too much.

But Muriel says, When I lived in Porpoise Spit, I used to sit in my room for hours and listen to ABBA songs. Sometimes I'd stay in there all day. But since I've met you and moved to Sydney, I haven't listened to one ABBA song. That's because now my life is as good as an ABBA song. It's as good as Dancing Queen.

That's a funny line, but it's not just a joke. Muriel spends the first half of the movie longing for a life that rivals an AB-song. Then for a while she gets one. She has a true friend in Rhonda and a real life in Sydney, and she doesn't need the songs the way she used to. Luckily, the movie is wise enough to know people don't rest in their happiness that easily. On some level,

Muriel understands what she has, but it hasn't fully sunk in. Her wanting is still bent toward the wedding, and it takes her a long time and a lot of loss before Rhonda's friendship means as much to her as the idea of a wedding does. The same thing can happen in our life with God. We ache, but we don't always know what we're aching for. Sometimes what we need

Is for our wanting to be changed, so that we can receive the thing we've already been given. That reordering rarely happens on its own. It's part of why we return to prayer, Bible reading, and other practices again and again. But we can accidentally start treating them as if they are the thing itself, and that's not what they're intended to be. Their means of grace.

Ways of opening ourselves to a God who is already present and active in our lives, the same God who reshapes what we love.

These practices help us pay attention, not just while we're practicing them, but in the rest of our lives too, in conversations, meals, walks, celebrations of joy, and moments of sorrow.

There's a temptation to hold on to a practice's exact words and structure so tightly that we forget what it's actually for. And there's an opposite temptation to adapt a practice so thoroughly to fit our context that we strip out what was meant to reshape us in the first place. Both temptations come from the same impulse to make our relationship with God something we can manage and control.

But practices have endured across centuries precisely because they resist being controlled. They were never meant to be tied to one particular moment, culture, or expression. What matters isn't the exact form, it's the way a practice opens us to a God who is always more than our practices. A God who is always a surprise.

One practice that has helped many Christians stay open to that surprise is the Examine, a nearly 500 year old prayer practice that traces back to Ignatius of Loyola. At the end of the day, we look back and ask where we noticed God's presence and where we may have missed it. We might ask, where did I experience gratitude today? Where did I experience sorrow or difficulty?

Where was God inviting me to trust?

Let's pray. Gracious God, help us notice you. Open our hands to receive your presence in the ordinary moments of life, and give us eyes to see what we might otherwise miss. Amen.