Let me say up front that nothing written here is to be understood as paradigmatic. I am simply trying to describe, for my own clarity, these present experiences that are my own and no one else's. If I speak in generic terms, it is because this is my academic training.
When one's life is going well, one simply tries to observe regularity of prayer. One might try this or that added prayer. One might shorten or lengthen one's prayer rule. One might work to emphasize the "spontaneous" or "arrow" prayers that one is given occasion--or takes thought on occasion--to pray. But the orientation, it seems to me, is simply the work of regularity.
Which of course means the development of attention. So why is it that when a crisis emerges, even if such a crisis has populated one's fears for months--even if one has no illusions as to the origins of such a crisis, however deserved or not, in one's choices and acts--it is experienced with something like hurt surprise and shock? Hadn't I been paying attention? Apparently not.
But now the attention is most markedly drawn. The wound hurts and I gravitate toward its central force. And now a most difficult choice is presented to me, a decision about pathways and the sort of life one will lead in light of this present pain. Do I accept it, or do I reject it? To reject it is the "natural" course. Pain wrenches and irritates. It is a fearful thing for we know intuitively I think that the acceptance of pain need not end in its mastery. Pain can consume us. Pain portends death, though of two kinds. One is a death of po