SOME SMALL THOUGHTS ON REPETITIVE PRAYER: I know it’s easy to criticize repeated prayers because they can seem rote, dissolving into jabberwocky. But having just finished a prayer in which I really did forget my place and get kind of mixed up, I was struck by how apt that experience is–how well it fits our experience of long-term spiritual life and struggle.

I mean, we forget parts of our pain, too, or get mixed up about which parts go where. They sometimes become rote parts of our lives, acknowledged but barely recognized. And then we’re suddenly startled by some fragment of self-knowledge and it glints like broken glass. This happens with repeated prayers as well. Some previously-overlooked phrase will suddenly envelop me like wings, or hit hard on a bruise. Repetition is a way of allowing ourselves to be surprised by what arises in the course of what might seem like an ordinary night’s prayer.

It also keeps us from thinking that spiritual problems get “solved,” finished. The struggle may feel rote one day, mumbled through quickly and gotten over with, but it in fact does have to be repeated in all its manifold forms, this day and the next and the next.

(Somewhat more coherent thoughts from me on repetitive prayer here.)