Some fun stuff here, if you happen to like the rosary:
I’ve written about the rosary before, and my current streak is three years and three months without missing a day. (Including the time on vacation when my guardian woke me up at 10:30. “Why am I awake?” … “This is about the rosary, isn’t it?” !! “Oh, fine.”)
I keep looking into the future and finding an end date where I won’t be able to do it any longer (“After Kiddo#4 is born, I won’t be able to do it.” “Once we move…” “Once Kiddo#4 stops napping…”) but I keep finding the time to do it one more day, and one more day has lasted three and a quarter years.
I don’t own the t-shirt.
Jane,
I’m very impressed that you’ve managed to say the rosary for that many days running! I am about to join an Episcopalian women’s religious order (non-cloistered), that includes committing to a Rule of Prayer (basically praying daily). While its not exactly the same as saying the rosary every day (something I’ve also looked into doing, despite it not being a traditionally Anglican practice), it is challenging to find the time every day to have some quiet communion with God (and I only have a husband and a cat to compete for my time — my cat is especially bad about waiting until I’m kneeling bedside to want my attention — I can’t imagine managing it with all that you have on your plate), but it IS so very important. I know I feel better afterwards. I hope your prayers also imbue you with a sense of peace and oneness with the Holy Spirit.
Peace+
Ivy is Jewish and came up with her own version of the rosary, so there’s no reason you can’t develop an Anglican rosary. I’ve seen rosaries where the final two glorious mysteries are replaced with the establishment of the church and the anticipated return of Christ.
I blogged about this a while ago, but the rosary thing was somewhat angel-prompted, and the first time I did it, I asked for the grace to find the time to do it again the next day. Then I asked my guardian to be an absolute mercenary: find me the time to pray it. If he could see there were 20 minutes ahead where I’d be relatively quiet, flag me and let me know.
And it worked. The combination of the two things worked, although clearly God was providing the impetus behind all three (the initial hunger for prayer, the grace to do it again, the permission to the angel to flag me when he could tell I’d have free time.)
I can’t imagine God saying no to an urgent “God, please help us to pray!” 🙂
Do you find that God is one of those things that the more you have, the more you want? The more and more I devote myself and my life to God, the more and more I hunger to be closer to God, to have more of God in my life, to live my life more centered around God. It’s kind of like falling in love. Only when you’re falling into God’s love, you’re sort of falling in love with yourself, your real self, your self imbued with His Grace and in Oneness with the Holy Spirit.
What I find is that it’s one of those “the more I see, the more I continue to see” things. I’m a little uptight in my spiritual life (I just heard an angel laugh out loud about that. “And in other news,” you can imagine an announcer saying, “water is wet and Jupiter is big.”) So I’m more wrapped around the axle about Rule Two than about Rule One (if you saw that post) and I have a hard time letting go and just enjoying being close to God.
Of course, my next response is to say “that’s something I need to work on,” which nicely encapsulates just about every one of my spiritual problems in a nutshell. *sigh* Everything becomes a project with me.
I know *exactly* how you feel. Some days I can wind myself up in the most complicated knots. Fortunately, God seems to be OK with us taking forever to finally get “it”, whatever “it” is.
I stopped by a weblog recently that had an awesome quote in the sidebar by the writer’s grandmother. The grandmother had said, “Someday the Good Lord will have had enough of your foolishness and will tell you to hit your knees. And when that happens, you can either go down willingly or have him push you by the head.”
I feel sometimes like God keeps thinking, “Maybe now…”
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