A couple of months ago I revisited the Sacred Space website of the Irish Jesuits, and downloaded the Pray as You Go app onto my tablet. I read before going to sleep, and download my reading materials onto the tablet. So I started using the Pray as You Go app as the last thing at night. One of the first dates I listened to had a Taize chant that literally lulled me to sleep. I now use Taize chants every night to calm my spirit so that I can sleep after a day reading so much upsetting news.
https://pray-as-you-go.org/
Taize chant is probably not to everyone's taste, especially among the music experts on this forum.
But,perhaps some might find some of the chants soothing and calming. One that is very appropriate for now is the Taize chant of the prayer of St. Teresa of Avila, "Let Nothing Disturb you"
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=
Peace to all.
Since it’s on my tablet, I put in earbuds to listen and close my eyes. Asleep in no time. It stops my mind from going in anxious circles, ruminating on all the awful news of the day.
ReplyDeleteAnne, what a wonderful practice! My wife and I also fall asleep to music each night, although we're a little more secular: I have a clock radio that is at least 40 years old but still keeps ticking. I keep it tuned to the local FM classical music station, and it has one of those buttons that plays for an hour and then turns itself off. I have a difficult time falling asleep without music; if I am on the road and staying at a hotel, I have to tune in the classical station on my laptop and have it play in the room to lull me to sleep.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I am a music expert, but speaking as a musician, I think the Taize chants are wonderful. Jacques Berthier composed many of them. He was brilliant.
I love the Taize hymns. I have two of their CDs. You are right that they are very soothing to listen to at bedtime.
ReplyDeleteMy mother, who would have turned 102 yesterday, used to keep a rosary under her pillow and silently say prayers to help her fall asleep. She said she had once told a priest that, and he said, "The rosary was not meant to be a soporific!" But she kept it up anyway.
ReplyDeleteI can't fall asleep to music, and I can't fall asleep on my back no matter how long I lie there. For those who leave the radio on to sleep, what happens if they play The 1812 Overture or the Anvil Chorus?
David, my grandma used to say that if you fall asleep while saying the rosary, the angels finish it for you.
DeleteMy sister once had to have an MRI and was afraid, because she is claustrophobic. Said she got through it fine by saying the rosary during it. I think people who are helped by the rosary during sleeplessness or anxiety are in good company.
Don't know if you have ever tuned in to "Hearts of Space". Now it's on YouTube. It's very good falling asleep music.
"For those who leave the radio on to sleep, what happens if they play The 1812 Overture or the Anvil Chorus?"
DeleteThat does happen :-). Sometimes, if it's too peppy to help me drift off, I turn it off.
I think your mom was wiser than that priest. The Liturgy of hte Hours envision that we pray as we fall asleep - praying, among other things, that God allow us to wake up the following morning! The rosary has a sort of relationship to the Liturgy of the Hours - I believe it was embraced centuries ago by people who didn't have the requisite books or musical training to pray the Hours (and may not have been literate) so has functioned traditionally as a sort of "People's Hours". Night Prayer is the Hour that is prayed at bedtime; some people who pray the Hours individually pray Night Prayer while they're lying in bed. So praying the rosary as one is drifting off to sleep has a broader context in Catholic prayer.
I was introduced to Taize prayer by a group in our parish. It used to do exactly one hour of the chants (everybody sing!) and two readings, usually but not always from the Bible, in a blaze of candles, on the first Monday of every month. It had a small but devoted following for a few years before dying out.
ReplyDeleteI use Taize in the morning sometimes (and Pray as You Go, especially for the breathing exercise). But as for falling asleep, as soon as I close my eyes I'm out until the cell phone plays Bach.
People who like Taize may also like John Michael Talbot (there, doesn't that read like an Amazon ad?) His rendition of the Pentecost sequence is a favorite of mine. Likewise his version of Psalm 95, Come, Worship the Lord.
ReplyDeleteJMT spoke and played in our parish two years ago. His beard by then was down to
Deletehere.
Yeah, he looks like Father Time.
DeleteAnne and Tom both mentioned Pray-As-You-Go, which interested me, so I was planning to download the app. However, when I went to the site, there were a lot of recent comments about problems with the app buffering, etc. Have any here experienced that?
ReplyDeleteI don't use the app; I take it straight on my laptop. In the last retooling, they hid a lot of good stuff. You have to go up to the right top corner and click on the whatever it is box with the three lines, and then go to "prayer tools" to find it.
DeleteOur parish stopped streaming daily Mass when it returned so we have been looking for a daily replacement. All I can say is the pastors are idiots who believed it when they were told "Mrs Soandsor is always on her computer, so she knows how to do it" or "Joe the insurance guy runs a nice site for the Knights" -- and, of course, both would be free because they are doing it "for the church." I've never seen so much promise for so little result. Our diocese has links to all the parish on-line Masses that no longer exist since the churches reopened. Well, whoever runs it is a good Catholic and "doing it for the church," no doubt.
Tom, if you don't mind watching a livestreamed Mass that isn't in your location (because it is in mine) try this one: https://www.newschannelnebraska.com/story/41906785/ncn-to-broadcast-daily-morning-mass-statewide
DeleteI haven’t had any problems. I downloaded it to my iPad- not the latest model but only a year or so old. iOS 13. It’s 6th generation.
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten about John Michael Talbot. I used to listen to him a lot. Probably on cassette tapes. I will have to look for them.
Most of his music is on youtube now.
DeleteGoing to try Pray As You Go on my Kindle Fire.