Rosary

Have I mentioned? Lifelong Protestant though I am, I have in fact for many years said the rosary. Yes I know, I'm a Protestant tinged with Catholicism. Nonetheless I'm a lifelong Protestant, and I doubt I'll ever convert. But I do, I honestly do say the rosary. I've been doing it for 35 years, ever since my late teens. At some times less regularly, at times more regularly. But I honestly do say the rosary.

There are family reasons for this, and also (the proximate cause of my taking up the rosary) there was a good friend of mine back in college who had a big impact on me spiritually. He was a devout Roman Catholic. We used to discuss our faith, he the Catholic and I the Protestant. He gave me a rosary. He taught me how to say the rosary.

And, miraculous to say, I took him up on it. He never pressed me, never asked. But privately, on my own, I took to saying the rosary. Kept it up pretty faithfully through my mid 20s, then more sporadically for a number of years, then once again more regularly these past several years.

Immediate family know, or at least used to know, of my practice. Apart from that, as with many of my quasi-Catholic inclinations, I've been pretty clandestine and under the radar.

Don't ask me the whys and wherefores. Yes, I could get into that, in elaborate detail, but as I get older I find myself less and less inclined to air such matters.

Still, I do leave me scratching my head sometimes...