Meditations on the Angelus (I)

For Lent, I have undertaken a number of practices -- where "have undertaken" means what it always does for me: to promise and yet fail to fully deliver (God's mercy be praised). I am taking up a daily prayer called The Angelus, which is to occur at 6 AM, Noon, and 6 PM (or, stumbling out of bed at 6:15, it happens around 10 when I remember, and so on).

I was raised a protestant. Actually, I was raised nothing. I did not regularly go to church until I was almost ten. But when I did start going to church, it was a protestant church. It was Methodist, at a time and place where there was still some old time religion present there. It was very austere: no images in our sanctuary. There was one picture of ginger Jesus, and of that ubiquitous drawing of praying hands in the fellowship hall and the singing room to the side. And that was it. 

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