it is confusing.
yes, at caldey it is possible to 'stop' praying in that effortful way that had developed and to pray 'with' the monks: prayer happened by itself, but only because I was just one in the boat and we were rowing together. effort actually made it harder. (wrong rhythm perhaps?)

but here, alone, it must be a much more wilful affair.
any complacency and I drift aimless back towards the shore.

caldey has also raised all sorts of dreams in me again - which I had thought I had put behind me.
I am already wanting to visit somewhere again:
'vocation' dreams. . . . .
although my food problems have decided for me that I cannot.
perhaps these dreams should fade:
they are certainly a present hindrance because I can only find you here.
while I am here, so are you.
the dreams can only prevent me from being fully here.

I find it hard to talk coherently about the gospel but will try tonight.
mass reading is mark:

As Jesus was teaching in the temple area he said,“How do the scribes claim that the Christ is the son of David?
David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said:
The Lord said to my lord,
‘Sit at my right hand
until I place your enemies under your feet.’
David himself calls him ‘lord’;
so how is he his son?”

my first problem with this passage:
it isnt only the scribes that claim that Christ is the son of David,
don't the gospel writers fall over backwards trying to do this as well? Isn't it Luke who starts his gospel with the rather tenuous genealogy actually trying to prove that Jesus was indeed a son of David?
But this passage suggests that Jesus was trying to explain that the fact that he wasnt actually a 'son of David' didn't necessarily preclude him from being the messiah.
[Did Jesus ever actually claim to be the Messiah? The gospels seem confused on this as well . . . . after the subject is raised, he often urges the disciples not to whisper a word about it. (why?)
I know He does all the time in John but that is because the words that he 'speaks' there don't seem to me to be words that he actually spoke but the means by which John unravels for his readers the nature of Jesus' messiahship. I used to find this problematic, but now I see that this is John seeing himself as a means by which the truth of the gospel can be unravelled. Jesus' curiously circular monologues are not so much the words of Jesus himself as the words of the Spirit about Jesus and spoken through John.
[The alternative makes Jesus an insufferable bighead.]

Going back to the mass reading, another part of me wonders whether the main point that Jesus is making to the scribes is just how deep their misunderstanding, or perhaps underestimation, of the very nature of the messiah actually is. In this way, I find the passage challenges  me too, and yet, at the same time, I quite often seem to glimpse what he is driving at - without quite being able to understand clearly enough . . . . .
this seems to be the nature of scripture . . . . . always reaching towards us out of darkness.