Ruth gave me a rosary

On Sunday, the day before June and I left Austin, Ray Gene's wife, Ruth, gave me a rosary (Thank you, Ruth!) after we attended mass together. While I have used Orthodox prayer ropes as aids to prayer for many years, I have never used a rosary--largely because I thought its bead-work a bit complicated, not nearly as simple as praying the Jesus Prayer with a prayer rope. But now that Ruth has given me a rosary, I'm willing to learn more about it and teach myself how to pray with it. I've put Gary Wills' The Rosary on my wishlist at www.amazon.com but will see if the EKU library can get me a copy before I buy it. In the meantime, at Catholic Update, I'm pleased to note the following:

Pope Paul VI warned against exaggerated approaches when he wrote in 1974: "We...recommend that this very worthy devotion not be propagated in a way that
is too one-sided or exclusive. The rosary is an excellent prayer, but the faithful should be serenely free toward it. Its intrinsic appeal should draw them to calm recitation" (On Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, #55).

And at The Rosary I note that "many Protestants now say the rosary, recognizing it as a truly biblical form of prayer—after all, the prayers that comprise it come mainly from the Bible." so I'll give it a try, learning how to pray the rosary in the early morning hours.