David Russell Mosley

Ordinary Time

8 February 2015

The Edge of Elfland

Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

As the snow continues to fall, and I have left the house very infrequently, my reading, and especially blog catch-up, have increased. I was going through the most recent blog posts and came across this post from God and the Machine: How I Pray: The Very Reverend Archimandrite John Panteleimon Manoussakis. Thomas McDonald has been asking various, and primarily Roman Catholic, theologians and priests about how they pray. My own prayer life has seen some reinvigoration and so I was drawn to these posts, reading several of them after Archimandrite John’s. I was intrigued by McDonald’s questions. He asks:

Who are you?

What is your vocation?

What is your prayer routine for an average day?

How well do you achieve it, and how do you handle those moments when you don’t?

Do you have a devotion that is particularly important to you or effective?

Do you have a place, habit, or way of praying?

Do you use any tools or sacramentals?

What are your relationship with the Rosary?

Is there one particular book or spiritual work that has been particularly important to your devotional life?

What is your current spiritual or devotional reading?

Are there saints or other figures who inspire your prayer life or act as patrons?

What is one prayer you find particularly powerful or effective?

Have you had any unusual or even miraculous experiences in your prayer life?

I’d like to see ______________________ answer these questions.

I hope this week to answer at least some of these questions. I feel a bit strange setting myself these questions. McDonald primarily asks those who are, in some sense, worthy of answering these questions. They are, seemingly, particularly holy. I know that I am not. However, I hope that by trying to answer some of these questions myself I will be forced to think more and more intentionally about my prayer life. If this process of self-reflection is beneficial to those who read these letters, all the better. But time spent thinking about how I pray to the Creator and King of the cosmos is not time wasted.

Sincerely yours,

David