Tending to the details of life are necessary opportunities not dismal obligations. At the onset this is painfully hidden and many get sidetracked and find they have detoured. Expanding lessons from the all the training is more to the point then apparent when logging miles. Dispensing with the vicious approach avoidance cycle is paramount when desiring a more wonderfully enriching life.
The wonder is in the details and making projects your own. I have spent consecutive days following through on the tasks which have been derailed by laziness and avoidance. I was amazed repeatedly the progress and movement that is made by consistent effort and labor. Small tasks have an impact over time. For example stringing together many short runs builds the base which makes long runs possible.
Remember to cense your house to bless your family to pray. I have spent a few moments each day with my three year old blessing one another. I prayed evening prayers tonight alone in my chapel and I called to mind through the structure of the designated prayers to invoke the assistance of the Holy Trinity, the Theotokos, the angels, Saint John Chrysostom, Gregory the Theologian, Nicholas the Wonder worker, John the Baptist, the Apostles, the Female martyrs, myrhbearers and virgins, angelic hosts, the ascetics and Prophets etc. and so the list went on and on. The effect was that I was increasingly more aware that I prayed in concert with the Church Triumphant. Each became humbly approachable and wholly personal to me like physicians awaiting to hear my symptoms and heartache.
I was reminded how organic the Church is and how we are interconnected one with another a true body with Christ the Bridegroom as the head. It is enough for me to know that although I pray privately within my heart but I am never alone.
1 comment:
I am at the fire station 3 days at a time (72 hrs straight) and do the most part of my morning and evening prayers alone. I find that when I pray, though I am miles from home, I carry my wife and kids in my heart as I pray. I am learning to call on the saints for intercession, but it is still relatively new for me. I also find that my prayers at home are less consistent. At work I am up early, before the rest of the crew. At home, I get up and have to go right to work getting the girls ready for school. In the evenings prayer time is distracted by the complaints, antsiness of the kids, grumbling of the wife, etc. Perseverance is the key, I suppose. It doesn't help that my wife has no desire to become Orthodox with me and the girls are divided between "fun church" and the reverence and holiness of Orthodox spirituality. It's difficult to explain to a child that has been raised on the spiritual junkfood of "church = fun for me" that Church is meant to be reverential and sober. They instinctively see the beauty of holiness, but are dazzled by the other. I just continue to ask God to unite us as a family within the Holy Orthodox, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Thanks for sharing this reflection.
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