Prayer That Meets the Road

I can't seem to keep my mind off traffic. Which isn't surprising, I suppose, as many of us spend lots of time in the midst of it. It only follows that if we're 'cloistered' at all, we must be cloistered there.

Right there. Right where the rubber truly does meet the road, where drivers lose patience and horns blare and lines of cars come to standstills and roads get slippery and we must remain alert.  And where, all the while, no one around us suspects that our vehicle is a traveling chapel, a monastery on wheels.

Can we maintain a prayerful attitude throughout our day?  Can we, ourselves, be traveling 'monasteries' - places where God is loved and served in the very midst of the world?

I have a feeling that if we can manage this in our rolling sanctuaries, we have a pretty good start.

'It is written of St. Vincent Ferrer: Whether in the streets or in the choir, or his own cell, or preaching,
or on a journey, or whatever he did, he was always tranquil, because he had made an Oratory in his heart, and there conversed uninterruptedly with God, without any outward thing disturbing him." (from Sheltering the Divine Outcast, compiled by A Religious, The Peter Reilly Co, Philadelphia, 1952, p. 90) 

'We are, each of us, a Living Cathedral. Each is his own chapel. And provided we are in a state of grace, God lives and dwells within us… we must live and act as if we were dwelling in a church in the presence of the Tabernacle.” (The Living Pyx of Jesus, Pellegrini & Co., Australia,  1941)

Painting: Camille Pissarro, The Boulevard Montmartre at Night, 1897