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Friends,
This is the second* in a series of episodes on How To Live in 2025, focusing on the thoughts, feelings, and actions we need to thrive, develop,  create, and resist. In other words, tools that don’t merely deaden us in the frantic pursuit of survival, but that assist us in nourishing ourselves, each other, and the world, all together.

At the end of each of these episodes, there’s an exercise – a thought exercise, spiritual exercise, or practical exercise – that brings an experiential dimension to what I and the shows guests talk about. That way, you won’t only be participating by listening, but you can actually bring some of the vitality of the conversation forward.

This episode’s theme: PRAY
and my guest, BASTIAAN BAAN.

Prayer is both misunderstood and overrepresented. Underused and overly appealed through. Prayers can be beautiful. or they can be empty. Heartfelt compassion for our “enemies” or empty political “thoughts and prayers” for the victims of a recent disaster.

How can we pray now? What is it for? Is it a throw away gesture, or does it have a real strength to it?

The Bulgarian spiritual teacher Beinsa Duono (Peter Deunov) said,

“It is a whole science for one to pray!”

And it’s not just a science of tinkering, hypothesizing, but a science of doing, of learning how by striving through. Prayer reveals itself to us – reveals its uses and lovingness – through doing. And different prayers have different revelatory capabilities.

And so on this episode, Bastiaan and I go through many prayers here. 10th century prayers, prayers for the morning and night, prayers for the elemental and nature beings, prayers with and for the dead, prayers for our enemies, and more.

At the end of the episode, there’s an exercise for you to begin to work with prayer, whether you pray every night or have never prayed before. Whether you are religious or an atheist.

Bastiaan Baan is a teacher, author, and was a Christian Community priest in the Netherlands. His many books include the just-released Trust in the Future: Facing Uncertain Times With Confidence; his book on the relationship between Christianity and the elemental beings, Lord of the Elements: Interweaving Christianity and Nature; and his exploration of christian paths of meditation, Ways into Christian Meditation. He also speaks around the world on spiritual topics.