CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

I grew up Baptist. Southern Baptist to be specific. I'm not saying that I grew up deficient in my understanding of more liturgical and sacramental traditions, but when I got to San Antonio and saw someone with ashes on her forehead on Ash Wednesday, I said, "You have a little smudge there."

She said, "It's ashes."

I said, "Okay, ashes, dirt, whatever. I was just trying to help."

Yeah.

I've come a long way in the journey of stretching and integrating many kinds of Christian devotion and worship practices into my life. Somewhere along the way I picked up a rosary and fell in love with it. Seriously, prayer beads are the answer for those of us with attention deficit issues.

Someone gave me my first rosary. I lost it. I made one and someone stole it. I made another and gave it away because I thought I heard the Spirit say, "Give that man your rosary." He looked pretty shocked, so later I wondered if maybe I was just having indigestion. I made another one but it broke and the beads went all over the ground.

This is my current rosary. It's sturdy and simple. I just got tired of losing my fancy ones. Instead of decades going around in a circle, I just keep going up and down the string through my big beads and set of 10 little beads. I have my own prayers that I pray.

One Sunday my Bible study class asked me to share with them the journey of my rosary. Wouldn't you know it, we had a visitor that week. He was looking for a Baptist church in town. Then the pastor pulls out his rosary. He didn't even bother staying for worship.

I was fascinated this week to find out that John Hamilton has been on a prayer journey himself, learning to pray the rosary. John is a fellow Baptist, so I was greatly interested. He writes about it here and here and here.

Baptists praying the rosary. What is the world coming to?

Heck, Reverend Mommy is even getting in on the action..

Do you use a rosary or prayer beads? If so, how did you start? And what is your practice? What does it mean for you and how does it help you pray?

If you've blogged about your rosary, leave us a link in the comments and we'll check it out.

rlp