The Drone Pilot's Guide to Eucharistic Adoration

I didn't want you to miss this article I wrote for the MY SISTERS blog.  Here's the first part, and you can continue on over at MY SISTERS. (Don't forget, using this link>> you can join MY SISTERS<< a private Facebook community, for the special Nunblogger discount of $8.95/month--but the first month is only $1 so you can see if this form of spiritual accompaniment is for you.)

If you can fly a drone, you already have a basic outline for a fruitful period of adoration.

Not all aspects of drone piloting lend themselves to the life of prayer, of course. (For example, we kid ourselves if we think we are the pilot when it comes to prayer.) But there a few of the key elements to flying that really can offer some guidance when it comes to how we might approach Eucharistic adoration (or other regular practices of prayer).

1. Establish a home point.

This part is automatic for the convent drone. The tablet or phone is GPS-enabled and so calculates just where the craft is positioned before take-off. It even announces it: “Home point established.” After take-off, no matter how convoluted the journey, the drone can always return to home point and land there, even if I’ve completely lost it from view (been known to happen).

In prayer, I have found that having a personal “pattern” or rhythm establishes a home point for my heart. Nothing elaborate: just one or two set prayers or psalms that set the stage for all that will follow.  Just as the drone doesn’t take off from the same home point every single time, my first formal prayers of the Hour of Adoration aren’t absolutely invariable. I might use the same set of prayers for several months or in alternation with another set. But I don’t come up with something new every morning. I have a home point.

This is what the Church does, too, in the Liturgy of the Hours: the “Invitatory Psalm,” the first psalm of the day, is almost always Psalm 95, although Psalms 100, 67, and 24 may also be used. If in the course of your Holy Hour you find yourself mightily distracted, you can “return to home point” to renew your recollection and focus. Good news: a meaningful song or image can be a great “home point” for your prayer, too!

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Read the rest (there are four more points!) on the MY SISTERS blog.  I need your input: I'm thinking of formatting the article as a printable PDF that can be distributed in adoration chapels. What do you think?