My recent move--
the scary, sixty day looking for a new place to live hunt, the thirty days of living with my brother during the stop gap and the WAAHHH!! my husband is now a long-distance commuter who lives apart from me for 14 hours a day--
has seriously messed up my prayer life.
It's gone!
I'm back to square one.
I can't meditate for more than 5 minutes at time.
I hate saying Morning and Evening Prayer, I'd rather watch a Netflix movie.
And I never go to Daily Mass.
I stink!
And its especially painful because this month I'm supposed to be writing my prayer life "autobiography" to ask my superiors for permission to say my three year temporary Carmel vows in November.
This November, (hopefully, through God's grace) I will be promising to pray 30 minutes of silent prayer a day, say two Divine Offices a day and go to Daily Mass whenever possible. For Three Years. That's sort of like running a prayer marathon every day FOR THREE YEARS.
So I was thinking during my last Carmel retreat how much it stunk being back in the beginner row again, (and by beginner I truly mean "I can not sit still for more than ten minutes in front of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament without becoming all distracted and twitchy even WITHOUT small children sitting next to me.")
But then I thought, "Hey, I get to start building up my prayer life from square one and this time I get to take my blog readers with me!"
You come too!* (from one of my favorite Robert Frost poems)
You want a better prayer life also, don't you? Even thought its not Lent, even though its not Advent. Boring Ordinary Time is just a great a time as ever to start adding some endurance and hill sprints to your daily prayer routine.
You come too!
It's more fun to pray with friends!
*The Pasture
BY ROBERT FROST
I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.
I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.
