Learning how to Pray

It is almost overwhelming how many directions I can try to go with learning about Christianity. When I sit down to read something other than a book (which is by it's very nature linear) I find that I have a hard time focusing on one topic. So then I wander off and play a few rounds of Plants vs Zombies or Angry BirdWords with Friends instead. I decided that I need to start with one idea and follow that for a while, and then move on to something else. I'll continue to read my books while I'm doing this, and make notes as I go so that I have an idea of where to go next.  Sounds like a plan, no?  (By the way, I'm not spending a ton of time a day doing this, that's hardly realistic for my life. I am spending time thinking about it though.)

I've decided to start with prayer. I really don't know how to pray. It's always seems so greedy to ask someone as powerful and important as God is (should be?) for my little things.  Oh sure, I could ask him to heal someone sick or help the victims of some disaster without guilt, but for myself? Does one pray for themself? If I'm going to be completely honest here, and that's the goal, I'd really like to pray for a little peace and quiet of the mental variety. I'd like to share my anxiety over life's details with someone who isn't going to take that burden and amplify it into his own brain, as my husband would do. But, isn't it weird to talk to God about that stuff? Doesn't it make my self-worth awfully inflated to think God even cares that the baby won't sleep and the phone bill is due and I never managed to mop the floor (for the 42nd day in a row?)

The other night I was rocking and nursing the baby back to sleep. It was somewhere around 1am. Normally I'd either sit in the rocker and doze and hope I didn't wake up with a start and wake the baby too, or I'd sit there and make mental to do lists that I wouldn't remember in the morning anyway. I had the idea that I needed something I could recite that would both keep me away and keep me from thinking of everything I needed to do.  I have very few things memorized and the ones I do know by heart don't lend themselves to repetition of this sort (really, the first paragraph of Gone with the Wind can only be said a couple of times before even I lose interest.) So I went with reciting The Lord's Prayer. I said it wrong, of course, Prebytarians don't say it like Catholics do, but it was a start. It still wasn't fascinating, but it did keep my attention and crowded out the other thoughts in my head. I started to think, maybe these Catholics with all their repetitive memorization are onto something here. I was about 99% sure that there's be a whole stack of prayers I could learn, and likely there would be one that fit middle of the night baby rocking. 

This morning I sat down and poked around on the internet for something to back me up in this idea. I found this link at Catholic.com, that talks about prayer in general and lists some common Catholic prayers. The next link on my search was for this list of 3398 prayers. 3398!! Isn't that a bit overboard there?  I have no idea where they come from, for all I know the person who created that site sat in a dark room and made them all up. I was particularly enchanted by this Blessing of Bacon and Lard. I found this link about daily prayer from ourcatholicprayers.com to be very helpful in solidifying the idea of starting with prayer.

All of this leaves me with the question of: which prayer(s) would be best for middle of the night solo recitation? My solitary research this morning indicates that I should start with the prayers that make up the Rosary.  Not that I'm anywhere near saying the Rosary, or really even wanting to, but if I'm going to memorize things it may as well be useful things (as opposed to the Bacon Blessing.)  Maybe if I learned this kind of guided prayer I'd be more receptive to asking for what I want? Is it selfish to want something from religion? from God?

What does my in-house cheerleading squad think? (Yes, I mean YOU.)

If Today You Hear His Voice, Harden Not Your Hearts

Today we went to church. I haven't been to a non-holiday church service since college. We'll be attending a local Catholic church, because my husband identifies as Catholic. While we were both raised to go to church, his experience was much more about faith than mine, which was more about what my parents wanted. This is not to say he wanted to get up and go as a child, but the God part was more of a factor than for me.  Since I'm not dedicated to a denomination, and he can't imagine being anything but Catholic, this is our choice.  So today we loaded up the kids and went to church.

There are a lot of parts to the Catholic Mass that I just don't understand. I find ritual very comforting and love the responsive readings and the formality of the sit, stand, kneel. I love the robes and the kissing and the part where the Priest does some things that are for God and not for the congregation. I don't know what half of it means. I don't know what comes next. I don't know which words I should capitalize! I'm learning. One of the things I learned today is that every Catholic church has the same readings as each other every week. The Priest creates his own sermon based on one of them, but everyone hears the same words and songs. I love that.  I love that if I had a friend in Alabama or California who was also Catholic that we could compare notes.

In a no-longer-surprising turn of events, today's Responsorial Psalm (another new term!) was the following from Psalms 95: 1-11:

R. (8) If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD;
let us acclaim the rock of our salvation.
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us joyfully sing psalms to him.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Come, let us bow down in worship;
let us kneel before the LORD who made us.
For he is our God,
and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Oh, that today you would hear his voice:
"Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works."
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

This happens very near the beginning of the service, with the bold lines being the respsonse. Really? My first day back at church in 13 years (not counting baptisms and holidays) and it hits my exact situation? Does that really happen? As this week has progressed I've been feeling uncertain. I'm still planning to follow through, but it really started to feel like I made the whole thing up. I was starting to think that we were going to church for everyone else's sake, and for the community. I didn't know that I was going to be able to get anything out of this. So WHAM, first thing, harden not your heart. Also, there was a cello.  This was the best intro I could have had to the rest of the service. After we left my husband and I both commented on how appropriate this was, for our new beginning.

The rest of the service was a bit harder to pay attention to, as my children have been to church even less than myself.  We knew going in that we'd likely leave early (at Communion, for those of you following along at home, since none of us could take it anyway We were very happy that the kids were able to (mostly) sit and bear it that long.) but I don't mind, it's a start. When I first met my husband, I bought a couple books about Catholicism ( What Catholics Really Believe--Setting the Record Straight: 52 Answers to Common Misconceptions about the Catholic Faith and Catholicism For Dummies ). I think I should dig them out and add them to my Recommended Reading List.