Sunday Roundup: Prayer Online

If religion’s not your thing, please pass on. If it is, here’s a rare post on it from me. I tend not to because I consider it highly personal – both for me and for you. But it means a lot to me.

Mostly I’m giving you Cliffs Notes for a recent article by Cathleen Falsani on the intersection of social media and prayer:

• Judaism: @thekotel will tuck your Tweets into the Western Wall
• Christianity: @prayforgod and holylandprayer.com let you pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There’s also prayerontwitter.net . And fatima.org helps you pray the rosary, and lourdes-france.org transmits prayers to the grotto.
• Buddhism iPhone apps include Mani Wheel, OmWheel and iPrayerwheel, and manikorlo.org spins a prayer wheel in Budapest.
• Islam: iPhone apps include Salaat Time 2.0, Prayer Times and iPray.
• Hinduism: shivshaktipeeth.org.
• None of the above:  gratefulness.org.
• All of the above and more: beliefnet.com (enormous and fascinating even for the non-religious).

And if I can add a couple that mean a lot to me,

• pray-as-you-go.org is a ten-minute weekday British Jesuit podcast
• Do It Now! is an iGoogle app with a yoga-based spiritual bent

Some things need to happen in person. But a little extra can help you along the way too, and if any of these do that for you, it can only be good.