Poet/author Mary Karr : Why Pray?

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It's Thursday night, and I have more writing deadlines. I'm late on my professional blog post at GoodTherapy.org (again), and I have a sermon to do for Sunday. For the first 12 years of my parish ministry life, I preached about 46 Sunday sermons a year. I had time away for vacation, and occasionally for continuing education, or a bout with laryngitis, or a special guest preacher, but otherwise, I had a deadline every week. In addition, each year I had a half dozen Lenten sermons to write, a dozen or more funeral sermons to prepare, half a dozen wedding sermons, and a dozen or more newsletter columns to do. When I joined a staff for my last 8 years in the parish, the rhythm slowed to about every third Sunday plus the added services which I led. That's a lot of writing to the clock. That's a lot of writing, period . I know I learned to cope with this demand while an English major in college. What I remember most about my Major are the piles of papers I had to produce in...
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