Here we are, just about halfway through Advent and only two weeks away from Christmas. Does it feel like it for you? If I'm thinking like a proper Catholic, I should be asking myself if I'm fully in the Advent spirit. After all, Advent is the time before Christmas. The Christmas season doesn't actually begin until Christmas. But since I'm not a very proper Catholic, I end up asking myself if I'm really in the Christmas spirit.

The period of my life from Novemberish 2003 through Decemberish 2004 was the worst time of my life. I was a wreck of a person--and I was trying to take everyone down with me. Truly, I don't understand why some of my friends are still my friends after that time in my life. I was a crummy roommate, a crummy pal, a crummy boyfriend (to the patient and kind woman who is now my wife, Laos Deo!). There was this time in December 2003 where I was really in the Christmas spirit--in the crummy Christmas spirit. It was Christmas and I was sad about it. May I suggest my December 9, 2003 post from my old blog to explain what I mean? (Language note: there's an f-word in the middle of that post. Just in case you're easily startled.) Man, I was a really good writer back then. *pats self on back*

It was sometime after I wrote those words that life really started to bottom out for me. I'd go on a string of broken jobs, rubber checks and empty bottles of wine. It's hard to remember, exactly, how I got to that point and why I didn't just *snap out of it*. I didn't want to snap out of it. Eventually I decided that I'd failed at everything I tried to do by myself--and looked for some help from above. When I started this blog, I briefly wrote about that moment in the post where I tried to better introduce myself. I didn't tell anyone about it in 2004, probably because admitting out-loud to the world that I was sitting alone and sobbing in a quiet and cold adoration chapel while fumbling through rosary beads was a little more than I wanted to tell people. But it was true nonetheless. Those days began a humble start of getting me back on the good path that would take me to finishing college, getting a stable job and eventually proposing to and marrying my wife. So it's only with a little distance can I empathize and chuckle with this blog post from 2004 about trying to find a decent parish to attend. If I had a time machine, I'd like to go back to then and give myself a pointer or two. Heh heh.

But this is the season of Advent, not the season of Christmas, and it's the time where we're getting ready to receive Christ our Lord. The churches are getting ready right now, they've got little envelopes in the pews and notes in the bulletins that they're accepting donations for Christmas flowers and poinsettias with which they will decorate the church. Catholic Relief Services sure has been preparing to get some money out of me. And yet in all of this external preparation, it's time to do the internal preparation as well. On December 2nd, I noted that I was adding a day of fast and abstinence to my regular routine, as well as planning an extra trip to confession. Progress report: mixed results. Confession, check. Fast, well, notsomuch. Mmmm... food... I also hoped to spend a little time in quiet prayer as well.

A couple of months ago, I was telling a friend of mine that I was not a very good pray-er. He looked at me with quick glance of strange puzzlement and said that he didn't know that some people could be good or bad at praying. Indeed. I didn't know that people could be good or bad either--until I tried to do it on my own over and over. So I take a little comfort when I read the "Conversion Diary" blog post last month where Jennifer F. relates learning how to pray: (reformatted)

Up until my late twenties, I'd never said a single prayer in my life. I tried to follow advice like, "Start by committing to only five minutes of prayer per day!" but I actually managed to fail at that. Maybe it's that it was a brand new habit or that I have some strong ADD tendencies, but my efforts at five minutes of prayer tended to go something like this:

Is this thing on? No, kidding. Hi, Lord, it's me. I guess you knew that though. Anyway, I am grateful for all the good things in my life today, and sorry for the things I did wrong. (What can I say, I just don't know where those f-bombs came from. At least it wasn't in front of the kids.) Anyway, I ask you to strengthen my faith, and to help me be a better person...

72 seconds later:

...and when they say "dolla' dolla' bill, y'all" in Sweetest Girl, I wonder if that would be considered sampling WuTang. Let's think here about what technically constitutes sampling: to use a portion of a recorded song. So since they did not actually play anything originally recorded in C.R.E.A.M., it would probably be more accurate to say that Wyclef Jean was "drawing upon the wisdom" of Wu rather than "sampling" Wu. That reminds me of Busta Rhymes lifting Dangerous from a public service announcement. You cannot tell me that was an accident...

That is about a direct transcript of my first attempts at prayer. Trying to read the Bible for five minutes didn't go much better. I'd end up getting hung up on some technicality, getting lost in the footnotes and wandering over to the computer after about 45 seconds to Google questions about some verse.

And I should also admit that I'm not very good at the practiced prayer which has defined Catholicism for centuries. I can read and recite the words just fine, but I'm hardly in the habit of putting prayer into my everyday life. I don't say a daily rosary, I'm awful about saying nightly prayers, and it truly doesn't occur to me to say grace before meals. It doesn't make a very good Catholic role model, I know. Confiteor! God bless you contemplatives out there. Really, I don't know how you do it. One day, I'm going to pray the Liturgy of the Hours in my regular life, but I don't know what day that'll start. I'm not making any plans.

Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make straight the path.

I'm working on it. Preparation. Penance. Prayer. Pray for me, gentle reader. I'll pray for God's blessing on you. And so I don't forget, I'll pray for you right now. Just as soon as I hit the "Save" button here and post this entry. Oh, that reminds me, I've got to look over those emails I've been neglecting. Which reminds me that I've got some real mail sitting at home. I wonder if I remembered to unplug the Christmas Lights at home? I need to change that light bulb in the garage, don't forget that Joe. Arrgh. The garage is a mess. And I've got to take the recycling up to that bin at Church. Oh! Church! That's right. I'm supposed to pray. Right. Right after I hit the "Save" button and post this entry...