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.