Prayer and Fire!

On this most auspicious day of the 28th of September, I joined a gathering of Catholic youth at a local university.  We began by praying the holy Rosary and singing a song of praise to God and then playing a game of "Do You Love Your Neighbor?"  When I failed to find a seat, I decided to pick on people wearing black shoes.  Footwear is a fallback for me, I guess.  Thankfully I was not without a seat for the rest of the game... if truth be told, it was not very long because our icebreaker was interrupted by a fire alarm!
The whole group therefore migrated to an alternate location and began our discussion in earnest. The topic of the night was... you guessed it! - prayer.  We looked at many Scripture verses from the Christian Scriptures to see what Jesus taught about prayer and we shared our experiences and insights with each other.  It was a great way to enter into the culture of our faith together as young Christians, to encourage and lift up one another.  We ended the night with the Newman Prayer - a style of group prayer in which all join hands and each person can voice their prayer intentions one by one, squeezing the hand of the person to the right to pass the prayers around the group in a circular fashion.  After a few announcements and greetings, we headed home.
Shout-out to the folks tonight: Matt, Charlene, Steve, Adrienne, Violet, Greg, Jane, Daleth, Shannon, Lisa Marie, Omar, Johnny, Gerardo, Noel, Anna, Cristina, Sofia, Arthur, Patrick and anyone else I didn't get the chance to meet personally.
Will I be back?  I certainly hope so.
I'm going to listen to a recording of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos before going to sleep.

After all, life is too short to die.