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Friday, January 4, 2013

Dominican Prayer Day 1

So I finally managed to start the Nine Prayers of St. Dominic last night.  And the book that I'm using says I should keep a journal detailing my experience with praying the ways to chart spiritual growth.

I'll post the way tomorrow as I do not have the book in front of me.  But I'll take a minute to write about some initial thoughts of my first experience.

Basically the first way is a preparation for other ways.  It calls us to be humble when approaching God and to dwell on the person of Christ.

I finally managed to stop goofing off and remember to at least attempt to pray this way last night.  I opened up the book and began to follow the steps.  Here is what I found.

First off the first way is short.  The steps we are given are open ended and do not specify a time or any specific meditations.  Just the theme of humility and our relationship to Christ.  My metric loving brain became frustrated with this lack of specificity.

Secondly because it was so short I had no idea if I was "doing it right."  Again, metrics.  So I was a little let down by the fact that I only took about five minutes.

So I still did my "Our Father/Hail Mary/Glory Be/I'm sorry I don't pray more" routine that I do.  But I did notice a change.  I prayed these common prayers more slowly.  More reverently.  I found myself at more peace than I had the past few nights.

So my first experience was a bit of a mixed bag.  My obsession with "getting it right" I have found is my pride getting in the way.  Can't look foolish in front of the Lord Almighty and all.  But even that small investment improved my prayer life a tiny bit.  Which is the whole point of this.

So we shall see about tonight.

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