Hobson's Choice--Having Your Stomach Rubbed

May God's name be blessed forever;

as long as the sun his name shall remain.

In him shall all the people of the earth be blessed;

all the earth shall proclaim his happiness.

72:1-2, 14 and 15bc, 17

It used to be so easy to have found some thought or inspiration in the words from Scripture that I read everyday. Or to have sat quietly with Deliah and Susie in silent prayer as if in a monastery at dawn. Susie, Deliah and me (and I thought God, too).

Since I (not we've) decided to blog our morning experience, I've discovered too many parentheses interrupting my thoughts and my energy flow. It's a totally different experience to expose thoughts to a vast hollow vacuum of electronic HTML codes which transfer thought to a series of symbols and text so different from your original thoughts.

Deliah and Susie often roll over on their backs, signaling that they want their stomachs to be rubbed. Oh, how they delight in the sensation, but they do so very hesitatingly exposing themselves and making themselves so vulnerable. Hobson's choice.

I have found blogging to be a similar experience--rolling over on my back and exposing myself--sharing my once intimate experience--my prayer life--my own interpretation of "Lectio Divinia"-with the World Wide Web--I do so hesitantly. It is certainly something I need to re-consider as I proceed.

Deliah and Susie somehow had entered into my prayer space and over the past two years, almost every morning, have become my motivation for rising and disciplining myself to pray. I collected each and every journaled response and, of course, wanted to share it with others. Now, I reflect on this morning's psalm and see that this reflection might be about the earth I missed when I didn't stop to notice it, when I didn't stop to find gratitude for all my many blessings. Maybe, there is no other purpose in it other than to let me discover this observation.

So instead of a short, abrupt, pedantic musing, I offer the reader, if there be one, a stomach to be rubbed--very hesitantly--and two small cats as a reminder that all creation is blessed and that includes me and you.

http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/psalms/psalm72.htm