Hilary writes some more, this time on prayer:
Today I had a conversation with Fr. Spiritual Director about prayer. I said that I simply didn’t know how to pray. What does it consist of? How do you know when you are praying and when you are just sitting there thinking about God? When you are daydreaming? When you are merely thinking or spacing out?
I am certainly aware that most of the time when I want to be, I am not praying. I am conscious of being repelled by prayer as well as nearly equally drawn to it. The struggle to enter into prayer is the most immediate battle in fighting the Giant.
I told Fr. Sp.D. that I really didn’t understand prayer and it was a big obstacle to trying it. (Here’s a secret for you all, if you see me “praying” in church, it is likely that I am sitting there doing something entirely different.)
I have the same problem… have know it for at least twenty years. I hope Hilary can eventually share what Fr.Sp.D. advised as the correction.
Hilary White gets a touch autobiographical, and explains why she’s now a “shrieking traddie”:
I had been looking for truth and justice, as had all my friends. But where most of them gave it up as a hopeless quest, I actually managed to find what I was looking for. I found Christendom, but, it seems, only managed to get there in time to attend the burial, the funeral Mass having long since finished.
Well, here I am, and here we all are. The survivors of the Great Change. The terrible conflagration happened anyway and nary an atom was split. Here we are now, the refugees, the people who have looked around at the devastation and seen that things were, quite simply, better before our parents (and I suppose grandparents) decided to give up on the old way of thinking. We are the backlash generation. The Young Fogies.
Read the whole thing.
All this might lend some inkling, some vague hint as to why I have turned out the way I have.
Yes, it does.
I don’t qualify as an Evil Traditionalist, but I share the feeling of having awakened to discover that I’m living among the ruins. So I suppose that makes me a Young Fogey too.
The official medal results for the Torino 2006 Olympics are online at:
http://www.torino2006.org/ENG/IDF/MDL/MDL_Big.html
The Wikipedia page for Torino 2006 has the schedule, day-by-day results, and information on each country’s athletes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Winter_Olympics
(Motivated by frustration at not being able to easily get good medal counts from the Ann Arbor News‘ reporting.)
Homeschooling tie-in: Nancy is using the Olympics as an excuse to get the kids to do country reports, and also as a math exercise in graphing the various medal counts (which is why we care about getting those numbers!)
Jim Curley has good insight into why singing matters:
I have also learned that God wants not only our minds (because this is what I tend to give Him), but also our hearts. Song helps us to give our hearts. This also why the restoration of singing together-whether hymns or folk songs-is important to the restoration of a Christian culture. People need to know how to give their whole being. Music helps us do this. People resist. Singing makes them self-conscious. But this is exactly why it needs to be done-to thrust aside the self in order to give your entire self in song…
Thanks for the reminder, Jim. It’s too easy to think that “it’s only singing,” and to leave the work to the specialists and professionals.
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