The komboskini, the prayer rope, also called the chotki, is a cord of knotted wool used to pray the Jesus Prayer. Each knot is tied in a pattern of many small crosses, so that the whole rope is, in a sense, woven of the Cross. It is prayed one knot at a time: at each, the Jesus Prayer, and then the fingers move to the next.
The rope exists to free the mind, not to occupy it. By giving the hand something to do, it lets the attention rest on the words rather than on keeping count. Ropes are made in thirty-three knots, or a hundred, or three hundred, but the number is a help, never a score. One does not pray to finish the rope; one prays until the heart is quiet, and the rope simply keeps the place.
The komboskini is often given as a gift, worn on the wrist as a quiet reminder to pray, or kept in the pocket for the moments between things. It belongs to the whole Church, monk and layperson alike, a small, tactile teacher of the one thing needful.