Good simile/analogy for a stale prayer life?

[katholicos]

Hi everyone,

Searching for a good simile for a stale prayer life - i.e. someone who simply repeats exactly the same prayers every night and considers that ‘all they need to do’.

I’m sure Augustine, Francis de Sales etc. have come up with loads of really good expressions.

Something like: trying to get better at the piano by always performing the same exercise (not great, obviously, but that sort of thing).

An analogy involving food doesn’t seem to work as you’re still going to get full, whether or not it’s always from the same food…

I’m sure you’ve got some good ideas!

 

[Margita]

St Thomas More uses “key-cold manner of meditation” in his last prayer. Very expressive.

A quote from his “On the Sadness of Christ” may be useful:

“For if someone, just as an experiment, should make a determined effort to make his mind touch upon as many and as diverse objects as possible, I hardly think that in such a short time he could run through such disparate and numerous topics as the mind, left to its own devices, ranges through while the mouth negligently mumbles the hours of the office and other much used prayers.”

In the same book, he compares an idle, restless, inattentive praying person kneeling and supporting himself on cushions to “a propped up house that is threatening to tumble down.”

(Saint Thomas More: Selected Writings. Together with The Life of Sir Thomas More by William Roper. Ed. J. F. Thornton and S. B. Varenne. Vintage Spiritual Classics, New York, 2003.

 

[leonie]

I’m rolling this one over in my mind.

here’s two thoughts:

Praying rote prayers without meditating is like reading your child Good Night Moon every night even as the child outgrows it.

And, it’s like exercising with 2lb dumb bells. You never grow stronger.

But, really prayer is about growing closer to God. So, how about it’s like always discussing the weather with your spouse.

Or, maybe it’s like telling your spouse over and over how much you love him, but never letting him tell you back.

 

[Cari]

Someone who plants their flowers in sterile dirt, then wonders why the neighbors get such great results with compost?