Sunday, March 01, 2009

Prayer in the Middle of the Night

There are a lot of wonderful things about this post and I just want to share it.

I've been looking around for Benedictine blogs for awhile. Partly because I think that prayer is the most interesting, absorbing, challenging, engaging part of life. Partly because I've been interested in the monastic experience for a long time ~ I've read the same things everyone else has, Kathleen Norris, et al.; I enjoy time with the Carmelites; and when I saw Into Great Silence I knew that I had found my calling ~ if only I were, oh, you know, male, single, Catholic, in France, not quite so taken with teaching and preaching, and more tolerant of winter. And partly because of that grace-filled afternoon last fall at Mount Angel Abbey.

Anwyay. The post is about what prayer is and how it can matter. It's terrific.

And PS: For reasons beyond me, my links don't show up in color, so I'm italicizing them and changing the font.

3 comments:

Terri said...

Thank you for that link to The Prior's Column, what a lovely reflection on prayer.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for pointing this out, GG. That is very cool indeed. As he says later in his comments, there is no switch to turn this on or off, it just happens, we give thanks and move on.

It's also good to be reminded of prayer as God's longing for us, not that I completely understand it, but it's good to hear nonetheless.

The whole contemplative thing appeals greatly to me as well. Apparently, my mom's mother was a tertiary Franciscan nun and I often wonder what that was all about. She literally died on the docks in northern France as the family was setting out to come to the "new" world so not very much is known about her. Two months after she died, the rest of the family finally made the trip and hung a left when they landed in New York, ending up in the much-too-often frozen tundra of Manitoba. Makes one wonder how much contemplation was involved in that move. ah well, we descendants freeze and hope for summer....

Mich

Anonymous said...

Oops, make that "hung a right". Otherwise, we'd be basking in some southern clime.

directionally challenged,
Mich