Thank you for Map My Ride. For runners and walkers there is also gmap-pedometer.com which has equivalent functionality. Many thanks also for the mention of “Inner Marathon” by Sr. Joan Sauro which I’ll pass along to my running group.

Today when my dad returned home to collect my mom’s knitting before returning to the hospital, he said, “She can’t be anywhere without it, or so it seems.” I asked if maybe her knitting was akin to a teddy bear: familiar, safe, beloved. Little did I know then it may be so much more. Thanks, Kokopelli25, for this insight.

Swimming laps, running, and walking all easily pull me into prayer. Swimming especially; perhaps it’s water’s buoyancy and symbolic weight that make it so? Other quotidian tasks, like laundry, are also prayerful moments, ranging from “Lord, thank you for all you have given us” to “Lord, please help me learn to love the stains as much as the one who built them.”

Preparing meals is also a time of prayer, but without any humility whatsoever. At some point I realized I always visualize the faces from my childhood Book of Martyrs when I’m chopping, peeling and slicing. My family says I may have spent too much time with that book.

Your reflection on prayer is beautiful. Let me sit with it a bit more and perhaps write this morning’s post on it.

LOL and wishing all my fellow “Holy Rollers” safe rolling …

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My former route (different job) afforded me about 20 minutes of protected, straight, flat, traffic-less trail riding along a river, and I usually spent that time repeating short prayers from memory. I thought I was alone in doing that!

The repetitive cadence of the bike was in rhythm with the stances and I often “lost myself in prayer” much easier than in my regular formal daily prayer and meditation practices.

When “in the groove” with prayer- whether on a bike or not- it is great feeling. The words seem to take on deeper meaning than other words, and are virtually tangible. You don’t dwell on them- everything flows smoothly- but they are particularly meaningful and they seem to permeate your entire body- not just your brain.

I wish this were my daily experience with prayer, but it has not been for me. It is very weird how easy prayer and meditation sometime come, and how forced they are at other times. I have reflected upon it often and can’t find a cause and effect. Sometimes prayer is “easy” when life is going well, I am rested, not anxious, etc. Sometimes it is the opposite.

See you TOMORROW–hooray! Peggy

Hi Augustine — I’m like that too with the Rosary. It was a prayer that I never really could get into until I started moving with it — but not too good when bike riding. Bike riding calls for either silence or 1-phrase/1-sentence prayers. It’s cool to be able to spend time with Jesus, Mary and the saints that way.

I agree that when driving, if the traffic is hectic, it’s hard to meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary, but I’ve adapted my route to accommodate my time with Jesus and His mother.

As long as one does them deliberately, I think most activities have a certain meditative character. I once read that knitting makes your brain behave the way deep meditation has…plus you have socks or gloves afterwards as a bonus.