Chatting about Devoting time to prayer

Ruth (Guest): Happy Advent to you, too, Dawn.

Ruth (Guest): I enjoyed a Christmas concert at St. Bernard’s Church this afternoon.

Ruth (Guest): You are here right from the start this time, Brian. Welcome!

Ruth (Guest): How’s it been going?

Ruth (Guest): I’ve been working hard at re-learning time management skills that seem to have been second nature to me since I was a kid, but seem to have been knocked out of my head eight years ago –– with the TBI.

Ruth (Guest): How sweet, Dawn. How old is your grandchild?

Ruth (Guest): Beautiful! Maybe the computer and chat is the distraction, not the child.

Ruth (Guest): Such important play!

Ruth (Guest): A dear friend, now deceased, told me about her grandchild setting up the nativity set. He put one of his toy cars in the stable.

Ruth (Guest): She asked, why is the car there? The boy replied with a question: How do you suppose WE are going to get there?

Ruth (Guest): The imagination of a child puts life into the figures.

Ruth (Guest): We are supposed to be considering time, and how we can not waste too much time, so that we’ll have time for prayer –– and yet, it seems to me that the unscheduled time provides an atmosphere where prayer HAPPENS naturally, effortlessly.

Ruth (Guest): I like the quote about Everyone needs a half an hour for prayer, except when we are very busy; then we need a hour.

Ruth (Guest): Uh hu! Precious moments.

Ruth (Guest): But it also helps that this chat is scheduled. How else could we get together?

Ruth (Guest):

Ruth (Guest): Grandmothers make the world go round!

Ruth (Guest): I smile remember in the doctor who thought he was NOT quoting the Bible; he figured it was just his grandmother he was quoting.

Ruth (Guest): The prayers of people whose Faith has been tested and grown over the years –– who pray for their children and grandchildren –– are the most important form of evangelization ever, I think.

Ruth (Guest): My parents and my grandparents saw their Faith and their prayers as a PRIVATE matter, but other people I’ve known did not make such a secret of where the answers to life’s deepest questions lie.

Ruth (Guest): I am so grateful.

Ruth (Guest): And as soon as I could read –– worlds opened up to me.

Ruth (Guest): I wanted to meet personally the authors of some of the books I’d read.

Ruth (Guest): Wonderful, Brian!

Ruth (Guest): I –– we’ve –– been praying for your ministry. Without what you’ve been through, it probably could not have been as effect as it is.

Ruth (Guest): Dawn, I’m dyslexic ––– but I wasn’t diagnosed as such until I was in post-doctoral residency training in neurology. I just had to work extra hard at –– and spend more time –– at reading. I couldn’t really read independently until I was in about 6th or 7th grade. But then it took off! Science was my special interest then, and politics, come to think of it. The Universe and Dr. Einstein, One two three Infinity, The Papers of Thomas Paine. I’d memorized the Catechism –– Baltimore Catechism #2.

Ruth (Guest): Wonderful, Brian! I don’t think I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull until I was in high school. Maybe it was newly published then. I’m not sure how I became aware of it. I think I saw someone else reading it.

Ruth (Guest): Very important, besides the four books I mentioned at the end of last weeks chat was FABIOLA –– a novel about the early Church, when there was a lot of martyrdom. The same teacher who gave me the Psalter, the Imitation of Christ, the Selected works of GM Hopkins, and a math book –– made sure to introduce me, long distance, to the school librarian in my new school, who was a devout Catholic. He recommended FABIOLA. Not easy reading for me even now, but good. (I’d borrowed it through the interlibrary syst

Ruth (Guest): system, and then bought a copy on line. And then I bought an e-copy for the daughter of a friend who is a convert to Catholicism.

Ruth (Guest): So important, too, to attend daily Mass if you possibly can.

Ruth (Guest): I think it was my 4-H Club leader, who was a daily Communicant, who, by her example got me started doing that when I was thirteen years old –– and attending public school, and had to be there early because I was in Orchestra, which rehearsed before the regular school day started.

Ruth (Guest): I’d bicycle to church, then bicycle home, then run to school carrying a stack of books and my violin. Quite a marathon, but it was worth it!

Ruth (Guest): Around here, though, there are no Saturday morning Masses, and the church 7 1/2 miles away, the nearest, now, has no early Mass on Tuesdays and Thursdays. No regularity makes it harder to get into a rhythm of being in my place in Church on time.

Ruth (Guest): Did you? Interesting. What happened?

Ruth (Guest): My grandnephew Drew wanted to go to a Catholic School, too. I think that the family decided that they could not afford it. He is now about to graduate from his public high school. Recently he completed the requirements for his Eagle Scout qualification. Quite an accomplishment!

Ruth (Guest): Yes, Brian, in our family money was a big issue, too. After 9th grade I decided I wanted to go to a Catholic High School, because I was sure I wanted to attend a Catholic College and that I would not get any encouragement from home.

Ruth (Guest): A neighbor who had a large family, all attending Catholic Schools, talked with me about it, took my report cards to the principal, got me admitted. I had to pay for it myself, but by then I’d been working for a couple of years, at least, part time during the school year and full time summers.

Ruth (Guest): Yes, I was quite frankly disappointed in St. Mary’s H.S., Manhassett, NY and willing to admit that I’d made a mistake –– not invest in a (required) uniform.

Ruth (Guest): The Principal, Mother Paul Joseph, told me that I had not been there long enough to make the judgement. She told me: Go ahead and buy your uniform; if you decide later not to stay, I will buy it back from you for what you paid for it.

Ruth (Guest): And she gave me a little, shoulder-to-shoulder hug. (I did not remember ever having been hugged by my mother. I was in college when the mother of a Hispanic friend greeted me and her daughter with hugs and sent us off with hugs. I thought that was some kind of a Hispanic custome! “

Ruth (Guest): Well, without Judy we did not stay on the topic very closely –– and this is one of the few times I didn’t print out the questions (need a new color cartridge for the black one to work!)

Ruth (Guest): SOUR Advent Mass. Tell us about that, if you have a moment. I never heard of that.

Ruth (Guest): But we did share quite a lot.

Ruth (Guest): Dawn has her 3 year old granddaughter with her.

Ruth (Guest): Opps, Sr. Susan’s gone again. She manages to stick to a schedule like clock work. Amazing!

Ruth (Guest): Brian, I’m a hugger now, too, whenever I am sure that the other wants my hugs. Many of my substance abuse patients got used to it from AA and NA meetings, and some would initiate it, generally at the end of a session. Of course I would not turn them away, even though, in residency training we were told to not even shake the hand of a patient.

Ruth (Guest): The reason was clear; SOME would find that “too close” or somehow threatening. But can you imagine refusing to take the hand of a patient who reaches out to shake yours, especially when you’ve established a good relationship. I let the patient lead in such matters. And explain that if I see them on the street or in a store in town, I will not greet them –– for the sake of their confidentiality –– UNLESS they greet me first.

Ruth (Guest): In a relatively small town, many people know that I’m a shrink and might wonder “How does he/she know Dr. Ruth . . . “ One former patient though, from the next town, gave me a big hug on the sidewalk in town and introduced me to her friend, saying, “She was my psychiatrist! She helped me –– and [husband’s name] soooo much. Sure helps me, too, to feel that I’m doing something right.

Ruth (Guest): You too, Dawn, Brian, visitor. And thanks for the invitation, Brian. I guess I’ll e-mail you if it looks like I might be able to get to a Kairos meeting. Winter camping? Hmmm. Come to think of it, in Germany, when I was on the retreat team for Charismatic retreats, we “camped” between Christmas and New Year every year for several years in a row. And sometimes it was even wintery –– with deep snow –– up on Triburg even for the Holy Week retreats.