Hurry Up and Pray Already

So I've been away for a while, haven't I? Do you want to hear my excuse? I got busy - mum with cancer, stuff with cats, stuff with studying, my own depression. I got busy and I got distracted. A couple of days ago, my computer died and has only been revived by some major decluttering and the purchase of a new storage drive. But it's now working beautifully and I have the space to do some of the things I've been wanting to do for a while. One of those was to try the Google browser, Chrome. And, of course, using a new browser means going through links, looking at the websites one uses and trying to find more efficient ways of doing things. Well, it does for me, at any rate. And that brought me full circle to about this time last year and the year before and straight into Blog-Land via Google Reader. So I cleared out my folders and just jumped right back in.

What's going on in my life? Well, my mum's been doing really well on a chemo-break although she's not quite so well just now. I've gone back to my voluntary work with Cats Protection. I have two fosterlings just now: Figaro and Maggie. And I'm expecting a third, Tina, on Wednesday. I now have clear hours of work which includes two full days off each week and it's working really well and keeping me fairly sane and productive. Today is a day off, incidentally.

Faith-wise? I still have a lot of questions about my identity and that encompasses my faith-life. My Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN D) has arranged some counselling for me which should help with this. At the moment, I'm very interested in Catholicism and have been attending Sunday Mass at the local parish since the beginning of the year. I particularly like what they call 'Youth Mass' - basically, your regular Mass with good music. But it seems to me that it's everything that 'Church' should be. So I'm trying to learn more about the Catholic faith as I go along, week by week. I've signed up to an online Catechism Class which is good but somewhat dry. And I'm reading and praying ... Which brings me to the real reason for this post.

I've found this blog posting today. Basically, the lady writing was too busy to pray with her son at the start of a day's homeschooling. And it's gotten me to wondering: How often do I skip prayer and Bible reading in order to get on with other, 'important' things?

As I've been learning about Catholicism, I've discovered Universalis and have been making some effort to pray the Litany of the Hours. Or, at least, the Office of Readings because that fits with my search for information. But it's not really working - I think I'm trying to do too much, too soon and am ending up doing not a lot of anything. Especially on 'work' days. Even today, my official day off from CP, I haven't looked at it. I did mean to go to Mass but slept in and then got on with housework and playing online and visiting my mum and shopping ... But God really hasn't entered into the picture. So I'm thinking I'll forget about the Litany for a while and concentrate on just a short time of prayer and Bible reading in the morning and evening. I have the Catholic Truth Society's 'A Simple Prayer Book' and like using that. And I've some Bible reading notes that follow along with the Mass readings for each day. I also have the One Year Catholic Bible. So my thought is to do the Morning and Evening Prayers from the Prayer Book and the Mass reading in the morning and the day's reading from the One Year Bible in the evening. That sees like something I may actually stick with. And, when I can stick with that, I'll think about the more elaborate plans I've made again.