-Saturday, June 16, 2007-11:39 PM Y
Just a sharing on what fr Henry Siew's talk about, today just after the mass and a short choir practice. The topic is on '
tuan ti qi dao de yi yi he fang si'. in english will mean, the meaning and alternatives of group prayer. He wrote a very compact booklet, suggesting that apart from using traditional printed prayers eg our father, hail mary etc, there are other ways to pray too. For eg, we can use bible readings. a member of the family can read out a scripture and the rest are free to pick out short phrases which are meaningful to them and just say it out 3 times. fr Siew shared with us quite a no of ways and all can be found in the notes. so i'll share more after i read it.
The purpose for his talk is to encourage ppl to pray. especially families. A FAMILY THAT PRAYS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER. Now as years go by, and as my family's practice of praying the rosary everynight as a family goes by, i come to understand the phrase above. thinking back, i wonder when did my family ever start this practice. perhaps 10 yrs ago? And i think is mum suggested one..look at the 3 of us.. can't possibly be us lor! aiya cant really remember la. and i'm very 100% sure that it is because of praying, that the 5 of us get ample time at night to mingle and interact with one another. especially our dearest dad who everyday brings the bacon home. so some cute things here.. haha i wonder if my ahma knows about it... anyway ya, ok, each of us is scheduled to lead in the rosary once a week. mine is on wed-glorious mystery. even when we have this so called 'schedule', we tend to 'quarrel' over who's gonna be the leader. phrases like:' tonight who lead argh, oh today not me, etc very common.haha. then in the midst of 'pushing the blame', chit chat lor... talk talk talk. But after the fun, somehow there comes the tough part, FALLING ASLEEP. omg, not to deny, i myself sometimes fall asleep too. esp after a tired day from school.. dad leh.. same la. but very understandable lah. How can we not understand??
And because of these nitty-gritty reasons, or rather excuses, I really feel supportive of what fr Siew says. The other alternatives are more lively, interesting, 'open' and most importantly, i think nobody dares to fall asleep. hor? (i'll make sure mummy daddy read this entry of mine...)
so wanna change? End of the day, no matter what reasons that our family may have (eg tmr i got test, so cannot stop studying. or now very late already, can pray tmr argh?), when everybody makes an effort to gather together and pray, there's always interaction between us. chemistry. haha. and this leads to laughter: hahahaha. lynette right?? *grin*. Therefore, this is just our family's reason for being close-knitted i would say. =) yup.