https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Y4P8nUCvzYk
Well, we can, yeah, maybe start with the idea of the rosary itself, let’s say, how it functions. You know, one of the things that you can see people do with rosaries, you know, they wear them, they put them up in places, they’ll have them in places where they can see them, you know, they’ll receive them from their grandmother, from their mother, from, you know, from some special event. And so all of this is definitely part of what the rosary is doing, which is that it becomes a locus of memory and a locus of participation. It becomes like a talisman almost, you know, not in a negative sense, but in the sense that it reminds you, right, just by seeing it or by having it in your pocket or by wearing it around your neck, it’s a reminder of this world of prayer that you use the rosary to engage with. So it’s also a place, it becomes a place of memory and of connection between you and your spiritual practices, between you and the people around you, the people that gave it to you, the people that taught the rosary to you. All of this is already a kind of binding, a binding place, which is, you know, in some parts what our spiritual life is about as well, you know, which is binds us together, binds us with God and connects things, connects different things together. And so I think that that’s important. And it’s interesting to see that some people who don’t even pray the rosary will have rosaries, you know, hanging from their, their, you know, their car mirror or have them in the house somewhere. And even though they don’t even pray it, it’s as if it’s this little thing, you know, that maybe if they don’t even practice much, it’s still a little connection to something and a little memory of something, which they have precious to them, even though it might be small, you know. So I think that that’s, it can help people understand also the role of these memento objects that we have, you know, some people find them superstitious, but they’re not superstitious. They really are about memory and about connection and about having objects that are infused, you could say, that have, that are more than just the banal objects that we use, but that are full of, full of something a little more, you know, and obviously that can become dangerous if it goes too far, but it’s something which helps us see how meaning actually works, right? Meaning is not, the world isn’t flat, some things kind of shine and are brighter. And the way that people use these prayer ropes or these rosaries, or it could be something else, right? The cross that you’re on gave you, or the baptismal cross, or all of these objects that we kind of carry with us that have significance. For sure, the rosary is an important part of that. And so I don’t know if you’ve had that experience, like did someone ever give you a rosary, let’s say at the beginning when you started and that you, you kind of keep it as this also, not just for the prayer, but almost also memory of, of, of learning, of connecting to the person who taught you the, the prayer. Well, when I was in the hospital, a friend brought me a rosary and we prayed every day for five weeks when I was in the hospital. That rosary I gave to my sister. My cousin, when she found out I’d been ill, she didn’t know that until I was better. She had a rosary that she’d inherited from my great grandmother and the great, my great grandmother died when she was 104 and she held it every day. And that went to my grandmother who died at 98 and she gave it to my cousin whose parents had passed away. And I don’t know, my cousin never told me if she held it or not, but she, but she did keep it. So it was, it was obviously it was precious to her, but she sent it to me. So this, this rosary, I was thinking the other day has been carried around now for nearly 200 years. And I don’t know, there’s, well, there is something to that. It’s like people collecting antique furniture. You know, people feel at home, more at home in something that’s been sat in for 50 years rather than something new. I know we renovated our house and I got all new furniture and, and Jordan was appalled. He was just appalled that it didn’t have everything old. In fact, I kept an old couch that has got to be 70 years old now, but it’s, it’s quite a couch because it actually is still holding together. So I kept that and he just got his maps of meaning painting hung up in his office at home, which is making him feel more at home. And so, yeah, you know, the, having something that is old and this memory, like you said, I mean, my grand, my great grandmother died. I remember her in the nursing home, but that’s really almost the only memory I have of her yet. That’s from my childhood, right? So it, it, it attaches me back to the beginning of my life, which is that’s maybe that that’s really something. Yeah. So it does really have meaning for me. And even if you didn’t know your grandmother, your great grandmother, what it does is it also reminds you that you’re in a, that you’re in a line, that you’re part of a story, that you’re in this flow that’s a, that that’s happening. And so it’s obviously very subtle. And so, but it can help people understand how objects are magical, you know, and we tend to think that it’s in the object, right? It’s not, it’s not necessarily physically in the object. It’s in the subtle aspect of the object, which is that it’s through us and through the way in which we recognized that something is used, right? We, it’s very subtle, but we can, you can see the difference between stairs that people have walked on for a hundred years and stairs that have just been built. And there’s something about that connection and the perception of humanity in objects that is to us very reassuring, right? And very touching. And I think that has to do with this old couch that you’re talking about. We have a subtle capacity to perceive that objects have been imprinted by intelligence, you could say, and because of that and, and history and story and all of that, and we’re able to kind of simulate that. And this is, has to do with tradition too. And this is something, and this is what the rosary is, right? It’s also entering into a tradition, which is beyond you, which is something which has been kind of handed to us, given to us through the centuries. And so the connection of the beads, see, we want to talk about the actual shape of the rosary, right? This idea of beads that are connected together, right? Through a string, it has something to do with that as well. There’s like a meta version of the rosary, which is this string that we are participating in, whether it’s family, whether it’s being connected to ancient traditions, to the sense that we’re, we’re the continuation of something, which, which, which has kind of brought us forth. And so this is the meaning of the prayer rope in general, which is the idea of the manner in which little things are brought together, how they connect, how we are able to connect things together, whether it’s, like I said, a story, an image, a stream of history. And for us, like in prayer, it happened, it manifests itself as succession of attention. And so it’s like little, you can understand it like little worlds, right? Each bead is like a little world, whether you see it as a prayer or you see it as a, as a mystery, whether you see it as, you know, a life, all these different lives from which we received the past. So you go through the, you know, you thumb through the beads and each bead is a, is a kernel of attention. And so that is what makes it like a cosmic part of doing something like the rosary is like, it’s like really like a cosmic meditation, you know, more than just in terms of your personal life. It’s about how, how attention is strung together for it to, to make sense and how a world holds together, you know, and it makes sense too, that it’s a, that it’s a circle, you know, and it has, it’s like, it’s fractal, right? So there are little prayers and then there are big prayers and there are little parts of it and big parts of it. And then it all kind of comes together in this, in this, this bigger pattern, let’s say.