Moir Park
Bloomington, Minnesota
March 5, 2025
It started as my 2025 Lenten challenge
All glory for my park bench prayer mission goes to the Holy Spirit working through Dr. Pamela Patnode, a Catholic author and speaker. In a lecture on prayer that I was attending, Dr. Patnode offered the analogy that our prayer should be more like a park bench than a bus bench, drawing on Bishop George Niederauer’s book Precious as Silver: Imaging Your Life with God, in which the bishop offers “A Tale of Two Park Benches.” When we are sitting on a bus bench, we’re distracted waiting for the bus. There is a sense of urgency and impatience, ready to move on to the next thing. On a park bench, however, the experience is much more relaxed and unhurried. Dr. Patnode emphasized this is how our prayer needs to be, slowing down and being fully in the moment with God rather than rushing through it to check it off the to-do list.
While Dr. Patnode was speaking, I had the idea of not only making my prayer more present and languid (in the sense of being on a park bench) but taking my prayer literally to a park bench, eventually making this my 2025 Lenten resolution. The goal was to find a different park bench each day and spend a minimum of 30 minutes there with the Lord.
God had a little laugh when seven inches of snow fell on the Twin Cities overnight leading into Ash Wednesday, making it a bit of a trek just to get to a park bench! It was breathtaking, however, and extremely peaceful with the branches of the trees lined with snow. A deer even showed up across the creek I was facing and it was sheer poetry. Park bench prayer had begun!
Savage Community Park
Savage, Minnesota
August 8, 2025
Holy park benches
By the time Easter Sunday rolled around, I had park benched in rain, blustery winds, and glorious sunshine, in temperatures ranging from 31° to 72°. Despite whatever a Minnesota spring threw at me, I found I craved the experiences and the deep, raw peace only God can provide. Plus, being out in nature is incredibly restorative. So I just kept going.
As time went on, it felt like something bigger was happening than me simply connecting with my Creator through His creation. I started seeing the park benches I used as sacred spaces. I love this explanation in an article by The Very Reverend Sam Candler from the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta of what defines a holy place:
“What makes a place holy? Maybe a place is holy simply because holy people have prayed there. A holy place is where holy people have prayed. And who are the holy people? They are you. And me. The holy people are those who have struggled and rejoiced through life, and who have marked those struggles and joys with a sense of space and time. Holy places are where holy people have somehow sensed the divine in whatever circumstance they have been in, wherever they have been.”
Yes! That’s exactly how I feel about my park benches! But, what if—these benches could also be holy places for others whether they realize it or not? Could I—leave prayers behind, a kind of “spiritual residue” to be picked up by others who visit the bench after me? Imagine if—a person who was feeling particularly burdened ended up on one of these holy benches, and by virtue of sacrificing my time there and leaving behind a prayer, God then graced this person with the most divine peace possible and it became a turning point in their struggle. Maybe it all seems like wild, wishful thinking, but who knows what’s really happening in the spiritual realm? With God, all things are possible, right? Thus, my mission is to be His instrument and create as many sacred spaces as I can through park bench prayer, offering up this simple prayer at the end. (To be clear, my use of the word “sanctify” here and throughout this website is in the simplest sense of “to make holy,” not in the sense of “to consecrate” as would be the responsibility of clergy.)
“I humbly ask you to sanctify this park bench, O Lord, and grant your holy peace to all those who sit here.”
Moir Park
Bloomington, Minnesota
March 5, 2026
Park bench obsessed
My days are entirely organized around when and where I plan to go for park bench prayer that day. There’s even a new vocabulary in our household where “park bench” is no longer simply a noun: “I’m heading out to park bench.” “What are your plans for park benching today?”
It is not uncommon for me to be craning my neck while driving with my husband, who then asks, “You’re looking for park benches, aren’t you?” My pulse quickens when I catch sight of benches I never knew existed. I have maps for locations with lots of benches so I can keep track of which ones I’ve used and which ones are still waiting for me. It makes me smile when I see people sitting on park benches I’ve prayed on in the past, and I then send a quiet “May the Lord bless you and keep you” in their direction. Sometimes I stop in the middle of my day and offer up a prayer for those sitting on my sanctified park benches at that very moment.
I guess you could say I am slightly park bench obsessed. I wholeheartedly admit it joyfully and unapologetically!