Mindfulness

Today at Mass the homily was about prayer, particularly the idea of persistence in prayer. The priest was relating it back to the first reading, which was about Moses' prayers over the Israelites as they fought off one of their adversaries, and the gospel, which was about a widow earning deference from an uncaring judge after she approached him enough times.

The priest talked about the notion of having to "work" at praying, at starting to "hear the voice of God through the darkness" - which means first having to plunge into that darkness. In this case, darkness is a metaphor both for finding the stillness to perceive God, and for getting over a lot of immediate selfish desires to figure out what's really worth praying for*. He extended this to the idea of using prayer to gain awareness of our own interactions with the world, with the goal of eventually possessing enough equanimity to catch ourselves before jumping into anger, spite, etc.

He could have called the homily "Introduction to Meditation" or "Cultivating Mindfulness" and it would have been the same thing.

In other news.

Yesterday I bought an album called "From the Redwoods to the Rockies" from iTunes. I think it probably falls into the category of "elevator music" from most people's perspective, but I really like it. My parents listened to it quite a number of times growing up, and it has this super warm (albeit at times strangely enhanced electronically) comforting classical guitar sound that I absolutely adore. To me it sounds like fall, and the mountains, and that makes me happy.

* I watched "Amadeus" a couple weeks ago with Colin, and this reminded me of that film.