Breakfast in bed, says Amanda for today's prompt. The closest I get to that is taking Corky her morning coffee in a Thermos tumbler so it will still be warm when she finally gets to it. Corky is on medical retirement thanks to chronic migraines, which are, thankfully, much less of an issue now that she has the freedom to take a slow start in the morning instead of having to dash about getting ready and off to work, hopefully but not necessarily, awake and coherent. The car approves of not being driven by her in that state. Corky and the car and the world get along much better a bit later in the day.

Thomas Merton says "The climate in which monastic prayer flourishes is the desert, where the comfort of man is absent, where the secure routines of man's city offer no support, and where prayer must be sustained by God in the purity of faith." (Contemplative Prayer, ch 1)

In the early history of the church and sometimes even now, the desert was literal. In all cases it is symbolic, a withdrawing from the externals of the world in order to focus on God and serve God and the world more purely.

That withdrawing typically happens in community, where one bumps up against imperfect others with ones imperfect self and learns to love and serve in patience and humility, seeing the face of Jesus in the faces of those God brings ones way.

For those outside the monastery and married, the community that makes or breaks our prayer is first of all our marriage. If we can serve each other faithfully and cheerfully (or at least willingly) in the everyday ordinariness of marriage, we are a long way to being able to see the face of God in prayer.

I got dinner at my desk this evening. It was delicious.