August 22, 2026

Step Outside To Pray

Master of the Universe, grant me the ability to be alone; may it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees and grass, among all growing things, and there may I be alone, and enter into prayer, to talk with the One to whom I belong.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810), great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, taught his followers to practice hitbodedut, a daily hour of solitary conversation with God spoken aloud in the fields and forests near his home in Ukraine. He insisted the practice happen outdoors, believing the grass and trees themselves were singing praise to their Creator and that a person needed to stand bodily among them to feel it. Chronically ill with tuberculosis for much of his short life, he still walked into nature nearly every day, treating the physical act of being outside as inseparable from prayer. His teaching reminds us that the body is not a distraction from spiritual life but the very instrument that carries us into it.