As a cultural catholic I’ve often thought that there was a value to the praying of the rosary as an exercise in mindfulness. The prayers involved are among the few passages I can recite from memory but as a far lapsed sinner who is also horrified by the actions of the church in my country and internationally, it’s not possible for me to just use the words. So which words then?
Like a good little nerd I have a love of fantasy and sci-fi media and feel that genre literature provides at least as many methods of viewing the here and now as any other forms of fiction. So I’ve turned to Butler and Pratchett and Herbert for some profundities to populate my rosary. Let’s be honest; the whole idea started with Herbert’s Litany Against Fear, a prayer featured in the Dune series, that is a wonderfully grounding piece if you’ve a tendency to get het up.
If you’re new to the rosary, there’s plenty of resources available; but -long story short- it’s based on a couple of initial prayers and then 50 repetitions of the Hail Mary, each set of ten bracketed by the Our Father and Glory Be.
If you want to nerd out on it you certainly can, there’s whole completionist achievements involving the mysteries (sorrowful mysteries, luminous mysteries, etc) and specific meditations on each of those. It could be interesting as a future extension to this project to create similarly secular mysteries as focal points, but for now let’s just get a set of passages that comfort and strengthen us in the ways these prayers do for people of faith.
Check back soon for the rest of this blasphemous journey…
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