To Pray Like a Child

So much for weekly posts, eh?

It seems that my life is a yo-yo: up, down, up, down. I have noticed that there's something of an inclination to try to avoid the downs by pushing to exhaustion; I've also noticed that that actually seems to hasten and deepen the down. Nothing seems to send me spiraling downward as fast as cumulative sleep deprivation.

Talking to my friends more often helps.
Talking to other people helps.

Accomplishing difficult tasks competently helps.

Helping other people helps.

And even having to think about what to write, having to write here, helps. I need to work on that weekly bit.

* k * k * k * k *

I find that learning prayers in other languages is a wondrous prayer device. To get them learned requires me to repeat them often, and to *think* about what I'm saying.

And the occasional phrase seems to just roll off the (mental or physical) tongue, and gets stuck in my head, just as phrases I was learning as a child used to do, whether normal "child" learning or absorbing repeated things other people were trying to learn.

[There may not be anyone still living besides me who vividly remembers me walking around all day, repeating endlessly, but I was mistress of both "LMNOP" from the alphabet song and "voolay voo, m' dear" (voulez-vous me dire) from my mother's "Learn French" records.] :)

These days, trying to learn the padre nuestro (our father), the stuck phrase seems to be sanctificado sea tu nombre.

It writes its own tunes that it plays in my head. It whispers. It orates in all the pomp of a 19th century politician.

sanc
ti
fi

CA
do

SE

a

tu

NOM

bre

!

Waves on the shore, there it is again.

But for a one line prayer, a perpetual prayer, you could do worse than "hallowed be thy name". Much worse.

Days of Strength

This last week I've been more conscious of being held in Mary's hand.

Not to say everything's gone smoothly: it hasn't. But that doesn't seem to be a factor, really.

Not only have I been more conscious of a sense of peace, of not being in control, of having surrendered control, but paradoxically that's put me more in control. It's made it easier to make choices that don't have to be dead right, don't have to be perfect. They just have to be the best choice for right now.

I've also been more aware that as I seek people, places and situations which are my answers, so may I be someone else's answer.

To have someone choose me---improbably, in context, someone they don't really know---to talk to about specific problems in their life, or places where they're feeling inadequate, when they had no way of knowing that their road is a road I've travelled, that I would be someone who might have a word or two that could help.

It's funny: we notice when other people seem to us to have been sent by God to be an angel in our pathway, expressly to help us out. But it's rare that we're given the gift to notice that we ourselves may have been sent to be standing in a particular place, at a particular time, because God knew someone was going to need us to be there. Not to do anything dramatic---not to put out a fire, rescue a baby, do CPR, but just to say the right words to ease someone else's mind, to feed someone else's spirit.

When you can feel God working in your life, that conveys a certain peace, a certain joy.

And like everything else in life, we tend to take it for granted when it happens, when things are going well. But like perfect spring days, a baby's laugh on a summer day, the rush of first falling in love, it's not a feeling that's going to be sustained. And it needs to be cherished when it happens.

Partly because we do---I do---far too little appreciating the good moments while they're happening, although I get better at it as I get older. But also because the memory of the warm moments feeds us when we're in the cold and dark..........