Rosary Post-Mortem

I had a lovely chat with Pam late yesterday afternoon. I told her I had just posted the final entry in the "Rosary" series. She mentioned that she had been tempted to post a comment on the penultimate entry (4th Glorious Mystery): "Whew."

Honestly, that somewhat sums up how I feel, as well. Posting something everyday, five days a week, is quite an undertaking. In looking over it all, I can tell the results are uneven. No doubt, if I had spent the time honing and editing that Real Live Preacher (RLP) does on his entries, my series could have been a lot better. Thing is, even RLP doesn't challenge himself to write something EVERY SINGLE Day.

The whole thing began with an idea I had for a class I’ll offer at St. Paul’s in January. The idea is to pray the rosary, and invite people to relate the scenes in Jesus’ life to times in their own story. Well, I couldn’t very well ask people to do this without having tried it myself. Thus, this discipline of posting some kind of response to each of 20 events in the life of Jesus.

I hope most of my responses were personal. Sharing information about Padre, was very personal, and perhaps a bit risky, but it seemed "right". How could I ask others to share their personal stories if I am not willing to share stories both pleasant and unpleasant?

I know I occasionally went with an intellectual response; as I have mentioned, that’s a safe response for me.

By the third week, I realized I was trying to write these response in less than two hours each. Well, that’s only partly true. What I mean to say is that I would think about them, meditate on them, for the better part of a morning or a day. But the actual typing and construction of the thing would be fit into time available during the work day. Thirty minutes here, and hour or so there.

And when I thought of it that way, it seemed very much like writing a response for an essay test. Once I noticed that, I realized that the process was also helping me pin down what I believe right now.

I just took a few minutes to copy the text I've written over the past four weeks into a Word document. Trivia: It's 10,541 words, and 24 pages, long. As Pam said, "Whew!"

Who said something like "I won’t know what I believe until I write it"? That has certainly proved to be true for me.

Thanks to those who have hung in with me through these overtly religious entries. I want to especially thank Pam and Mother Susan, who were enthusiastic readers and offered encouragement as I engaged in this wrestling match.

Coming up – twelve days of poetry. You’ll catch on to the gag pretty quick, but it will be a fun challenge to see if I can come close to what I currently envision.

Think of it as my Christmas present to you.