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I Pray In The Bathroom

I've always had a big bathroom. Ever since I was 12 years old, I've had a giant bathroom. It comes with the territory I guess, as a person with a disability. When I moved out of my house into an apartment in the city, I got another giant bathroom. Maybe it's not as big as the other one, but it's big enough.

Most people spend a lot of time in there, for reasons both obvious and less obvious, and it got me to thinking. I remember a music video from the time I was in high school from that pop singer, Jewel. She's singing her song in the bathroom. Actually, it's a public one as I recall, and I wouldn't say the video is worth your time, on the whole. Still, someone asked her about it, and she said, "A bathroom is a sanctuary."

She's right, you know.

When Jesus said we should go into our inner rooms and close the door, and pray to our Father in heaven, it carries a deeper meaning than simply to go someplace private. After all, you can pray anywhere. Yet a bathroom is a unique place of intimacy and vulnerability. I can think of no more Catholic notion than to do with my body what I intend to do with my soul.

I'm just as weak as any man, so I don't truly understand how much God, the Creator of the entire universe, loves me. I believe it; it's something I understand by faith that is beyond my natural capacity. Yet I long to understand it, to live in it as my experiential reality. Our conversations tend to be of the postmortem variety, because I just botched something up. They're not very formal, though. They are conversations between two friends. I can say that without hesitation. As a side note, do you think that all the people who complain about "religion" are thinking about the intimacy of addressing God as a close friend, and as "Father"?

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