Lou Redmond starts with the body, not the words. Find a lift through the upper chest, let the shoulder blades melt down the back, soften the brow and the jaw, and follow the breath as it moves in through the nose and out into the room. Only then does he begin the Prayer of St. Francis, the short text that opens with "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace." His guided meditation, roughly eleven minutes long and published on YouTube in November 2019, treats that prayer less as something to recite than as a method. Settle the body, let the lines reach you, choose the line that matches your moment, and carry it out into the day. This article walks through that method: what the opening minutes are doing, how the prayer's structure works as a diagnostic tool, why Redmond asks you to surrender control rather than responsibility, and how the closing lines turn a meditation into a way of acting in the world.
Almost nothing dramatic, and that is deliberate. Redmond asks listeners to get "settled into our space," whether that means a chair, a cushion, standing, or some other form. The instructions are physical and specific: lift through the upper chest, let the hands rest where they land, and begin to soften the face. Then comes the breath. He asks you to notice the inhale as it enters through the nose and the exhale as it falls out into the room, pairing each inhale with "an expansive and luminous quality" and each exhale with "a relaxing and grounding quality."
That pairing matters more than it first appears. Much of the emotional work of a prayer like this depends on the body already being in a receptive state. If your shoulders are up around your ears and your jaw is clenched, the words will bounce off the surface of your attention. Redmond's opening is a way of making the body a suitable container before the text arrives. He frames the whole sequence as "a guided" practice in which listeners may either let the words wash over them or speak the prayer silently, "whatever you feel called and connected to do right now."
"So let us first begin by getting settled into our space and whatever that means for you today." Lou Redmond, guided meditation on the Prayer of St. Francis, YouTube, November 16, 2019 (0:35)
The breath work also tells you something about his approach. He does not present the prayer as an intellectual argument to be parsed. He presents it as something that works through the nervous system and the attention first, and through the mind second. That ordering will return when he discusses the prayer's first line.
Redmond spends time on the opening line, and his explanation is the most useful passage in the video for anyone who finds the prayer intimidating. He says the first line "sets you up and allows you to give your control to a higher power." Then he draws a distinction that is easy to miss: it "takes away not the responsibility of our lives but the need to feel like we're the ones in control."
"Just that first line what it does is it sets you up and allows you to give your control to a higher power. It takes away not the responsibility of our lives but the need to feel like we're the ones in control." Lou Redmond, guided meditation on the Prayer of St. Francis, YouTube, November 16, 2019 (5:30)
This is a subtle but important move. Many people hear "surrender" and imagine withdrawing from their own choices. Redmond is describing something narrower: a loosening of the grip on outcomes, not a retreat from effort. You still show up, make the call, have the difficult conversation. What changes is the posture from which you do it. The phrase "make me an instrument" asks you to be a channel rather than the sole author of what happens, and the instrument image carries its own sense of care and craft. An instrument is only useful when it is tuned and played.
Redmond also suggests treating that single line as an intention. He invites listeners to take "just this line almost as an intention as you go out through your day or for tomorrow," repeating it as they move through ordinary situations. You do not need to finish the whole prayer to get value from it. One line, held through a morning, can do more than a full recitation attempted once and forgotten.
The body of the prayer is built as a sequence of paired statements: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is error, truth; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Redmond's insight is to treat this structure as a mirror. Each "where there is" names a state of being, and each "let me" names the response you are being asked to bring.
In the meditation he makes this explicit. He tells listeners they may find that the prayer points to a particular difficulty in their life: "maybe you're finding the hatred situation that you need to salute, maybe you have doubt in your own journey and you need to faith, maybe you're sad and you need to bring joy to the situation." The lines become a kind of checklist for the present moment. Rather than trying to feel every line equally, you locate the one that describes where you actually are, and you let that line lead.
This is a practical way to use an old text. It asks you to be honest about your state before you attempt to change it. Hatred, doubt, and sadness are not treated as failures; they are the conditions the prayer is addressed to. The question shifts from "am I being spiritual enough?" to "which of these is present, and what would the opposite look like here?"
- Find the line that names your current state, whether that is hatred, doubt, despair, or sadness.
- Silently say the paired response: love, faith, hope, joy.
- Keep connecting with the breath while you do it, so the words stay tied to the body.
- If none of the lines fit, return to the simple phrase "Lord make me an instrument of your peace" and breathe with it.
The meditation's most portable idea is the suggestion to make daily life itself the practice. Redmond says you can "begin to make your life a meditation by simply being at work, being at home or with whoever you're with," and in that moment saying the line. The point is not to retreat to a cushion before doing it; the point is to have a moment of return in the middle of whatever you are doing.
He then offers a question as a kind of working tool: "what does your will want to express through me right now?" It is a question that reframes the usual inner monologue. Instead of asking what you want to say or how you want to be perceived, you ask what the larger intention might want to move through you in this particular exchange. Redmond's phrasing keeps the focus on expression rather than control, which is consistent with his earlier point about the first line.
For a reader who wants to test this, the practice is small enough to fit into a commute or a pause before a meeting. Take one breath. Recall the line. Ask the question. Notice what changes, even if only slightly, in the tone of what you say next. Redmond does not promise dramatic results, and the meditation does not claim them. It offers a repeatable way to bring intention into situations that would otherwise run on habit.
The prayer's closing lines are about reciprocity: "it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life." Redmond returns to this in the final stretch of the meditation, and he reads it through a practical lens. Whatever you put into the world, he says, you will receive back, "because what we do to another is really what we are doing to ourselves."
"Whatever you give into this world whenever you're given to this day you will receive back because what we do to another is really what we are doing to ourselves." Lou Redmond, guided meditation on the Prayer of St. Francis, YouTube, November 16, 2019 (8:51)
This is the moral center of the piece, and Redmond keeps it grounded. He is not offering a transactional theory of karma or reward. He is pointing to the way resentment, pardon, and generosity shape the person who holds them. If you pardon someone, the act changes you before it changes them. The prayer's paradoxes, giving to receive and pardoning to be pardoned, are framed as descriptions of how inner life actually works.
That is also why the line on pardon sits so close to the line on hatred. The prayer does not ask you to feel warmly toward everyone. It asks you to notice when hatred is present and to choose an action that moves toward love. Redmond's meditation makes room for that difficulty without forcing it.
The ending is short. Redmond gives a few more moments for silent repetition, then asks listeners to feel the points of contact of the body, the hands on the thighs, the weight of the seat. He closes with a blessing: "may you go out and be the blessing that you are, may you be an instrument of that peace, and may the light of love, joy, and faith shine brightly from you." Then he invites you to open your eyes, come back to your day, and say amen and namaste.
"May you go out and be the blessing that you are. May you be an instrument of that peace and may the light of love joy and faith shine brightly from you." Lou Redmond, guided meditation on the Prayer of St. Francis, YouTube, November 16, 2019 (10:14)
The blessing gathers the whole practice into one sentence. Settle the body, follow the breath, locate the line that fits, carry the intention out, and let what you give return. The meditation works because it is short enough to repeat. It does not need a retreat or special equipment. It needs one body, one breath, and one line, and a willingness to be used, as the prayer puts it, as an instrument.
Lou Redmond has been leading meditation since 2015, after what he describes as a sudden awakening through the practice, and his teaching spans wisdom traditions with an emphasis on authenticity and vulnerability. If this guided meditation is your entry point, several of his own resources extend the work. The video description links to a companion meditation on Psalm 23 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnTArNoCl9w), which explores another text through the same breath-first approach. Redmond also offers a course, "Living The Prayer of St. Francis," with Day 1 available free (https://lou-redmond.kit.com/0c861aa719). His weekly letters are at https://louredmond.com/blogs.
The most useful next step is simple. Choose one line from the prayer, perhaps the one that names the state you are in today, and repeat it with the breath for a week. Notice the moments when it returns to you during ordinary tasks. That is the practice Redmond is describing, and it does not require belief in anything beyond the willingness to try it.
