Say the Lord’s Prayer several times each day.
This is a direct corollary of Hopko’s third maxim. For anyone putting together a simple (Orthodox) prayer rule, one non-negotiable element is the Lord’s Prayer. It encapsulates all the essential elements of a prayer rule.
The structure of this prayer directly addresses the executive function difficulties many neurodivergent individuals experience with spontaneous or open-ended prayer. Rather than facing the anxiety of ‘what should I pray about now,’ it offers a complete, theologically rich prayer that Christ himself taught and that can be prayed with confidence in its perfection. The familiarity of the words provide a stable framework that frees us from the anxiety of trying to formulate an extempore form of words and allows us to focus on the real purpose of prayer, which is communion with God.
The repetitive nature of this practice aligns well with autistic patterns of deep focus and comfort with ritual. Praying the Lord’s Prayer at consistent times – upon waking, before meals, when transitioning between activities, and before sleep – creates prayerful punctuation marks that structure your day with sacred rhythm. This isn’t mindless repetition but a disciplined returning to foundational truths: God’s fatherhood, the holiness of his name, the promise of his kingdom, daily provision, forgiveness, and deliverance.
For those who tend to hyperfocus on special interests, the Lord’s Prayer said consistently throughout the day serves as an anchor to ground us in sacred reality when something threatens to consume our entire mental landscape. And being concise, the prayer is manageable even on days when sensory overload or mental fatigue make longer prayer feel impossible.
Remember that Hopko’s second maxim (‘Pray as you can, not as you think you must’) always applies. If you need to stim while saying the Lord’s Prayer, or to pray it silently rather than aloud, or while wearing noise-cancelling headphones, or written out rather than spoken, these adaptations honour rather than diminish the practice. The goal isn’t performance but communion, and the Lord’s Prayer provides a neurodivergent-friendly vessel for that communion precisely because its structure liberates us from the complexities of spontaneous prayer while opening a direct line to the God who created neurodivergent minds as good and capable of deep spiritual life.
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