Video Diary: 14th Saturday in Ordinary Time

(Posting note: This was recorded on Saturday July 14th, but I didn’t find time to edit, transcribe and post until today, Friday July 26th.  I apologize for the poor audio quality.  Between the cars going by on the road and I think a weak connection between my microphone and the smartphone, it isn’t my best audio.)

A blessed 14th Saturday in Ordinary Time to you and your family.  I’m Deacon Ken Crawford and this is my 11th video in my series as a newly ordained deacon.  As expected I did make it back to the cabin today.  Perhaps you can see behind me here, I’m no longer on the trail or in my tent.  It was a lot of very difficult hiking to get here.  My youngest son Peter did exceptionally well in very difficult hiking environments.

A question people may have had is how do I keep up with my prayers while on the trail?  Do I bring my full book along?

This is one of the rare cases where I actually resort the phone and particularly the iBriviary app.  I have to bring a phone for other reasons on the trail.  It’s how I take pictures.  It’s how I do satellite communication and a number of things.  I think it’s worth it to have it all in one package.  I’m very weight conscious on the trail.  Normally I’m very opposed to the idea of doing the breviary out of the phone.  A lot of people like it because it automatically organizes everything.  You don’t have to worry about all your ribbons and getting everything straight.  And that’s a reasonable concern.

But for me, that’s a big distraction having that on my phone.  A text comes in; an e-mail comes in; anything like that, and it really breaks my prayer concentration.  So I’ve decided long ago that for the most part I never use the app.  I use the book.  That way I can focus on prayer and not worry about the interruptions that come along with trying to do your prayers on the phone.  It is nice how they organize things.  You don’t have to worry about what day it is and setting the ribbons and all that kind of complicated stuff.  But I just don’t think it is worth the penalty that comes from having to be connected to your phone.

Now on the trail, I’ll use the app, in part because of the weight, but also because there’s no e-mails coming in.  There’s no texts coming in.  I’m in the middle of nowhere where there’s no cell reception or wifi or anything like that.  So it’s not a concern out there.  Kind of a win-win in that situation.  Not only do they have it all organized, but you can download a whole week’s worth of it, which is what I did in this case, and still keep up with your prayers.

Now, a little bit of a mea culpa, for the first time this morning, throughout the trip, I didn’t do my morning prayers.  I was so consumed with getting here to my destination that I overlooked it.  I think it’s the first time since I’ve been ordained that I’ve missed my prayers.  I’m not sure exactly how I’ll deal with that.  Tonight I’ll do some sort of make-up prayer.  Maybe I’ll do both evening and night prayer as kind of a compensation.  Maybe I’ll do morning prayer as well as evening prayer.  I haven’t decided.  But I do think it’s important to keep up your prayer routines and find some way to make up for it when you don’t.  Even though technically it’s not fulfilling the letter of the law, I think it is following the spirit of the law.

I’m very glad to have finished the trip successfully.  I’m very proud of my boys for having done it.  We did 54 miles in 4 days.  That’s a lot of miles and a lot of up and down.  They did great.

Now I have a few days at the family cabin that you see behind (me).  I won’t be posting anything still yet for a number of days.  I won’t be posting tomorrow or making a video tomorrow because Sundays I try to take off.  I will try to do one Monday and Tuesday before returning to the home studio Wednesday.

Hopefully the background noise of vehicles passing by having completely ruined this video (no such luck!).  The great news about being out on the trail, again, none of those distractions.  But here we have vehicles driving by and what have you.  We’ll see when I get home how bad that’s been for the video.  Hopefully it will work out fine.

In any case, hopefully you like the clean version of me.  A nice (clean) shirt here and all of those sorts of things over the very grimy person you saw growing every day on the trail.  But in either case, God bless you.  God bless you and your family.  I will pray for you.  I ask for your prayers for my ministry and safe return.  There’s no need to pray for the trip anymore because we’re done.  By the glory of God it was a wonderful, wonderful trip and we got home safely, to the cabin safely.  So thank you for watching, and God willing, I’ll be able to post one of these on Monday.

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