The notebook

Each day, a short text written from the inside — what praying does to an ordinary life. No tutorials, no sermons: a notebook, kept by the team, freshly written every day.

• October 13, 2026

  The conversation I will never have

  I have sentences ready for someone who has died. I am still revising them, years later. Tonight I wondered who I am really preparing them for.

• October 9, 2026

  The room where I don't know where to stand

  The nurse said I could stay while she changed the dressing. I stayed, standing, with no idea where to put myself. Or my hands.

• October 6, 2026

  Someone else's pace

  I walked a child home from school at his pace, tugging on his hand all the way. I often ask to be accompanied. I never say at what speed.

• October 4, 2026

  The Sunday I spent facing backwards

  One Sunday evening someone asked what I had done with my day, and I told them about Tuesday. I had had all the time in the world, and spent it behind me.

• October 3, 2026

  The line someone else added

  Someone prayed for me out loud, in their own words. One sentence said something about me I had told no one. I did not know what to do with it.

• September 29, 2026

  The ending I did not say

  When I pray aloud with someone, I am always the one who closes. One evening I stopped before the amen. The prayer ended in someone else's mouth.

• September 24, 2026

  What is left in the morning

  I took the Ephesians 4 deadline literally for seven evenings. I settled almost nothing. What changed was what I woke up holding.

• September 20, 2026

  The question I already know the answer to

  I heard myself ask something with only one box in it. And I watched the face opposite work out which one.

• September 20, 2026

  The Tense I Changed

  Praying for him, I said 'he loved that' instead of 'he loves that'. My grammar had settled a question I had not settled.

• September 18, 2026

  The request I no longer make

  I reopened an old notebook and found a request I no longer make. Nothing was answered, and I never decided to stop.

• September 17, 2026

  The load nobody gave me

  Someone asked why it is always me. I gave a reason straight away, and it was not an answer to the question that had been asked.

• September 16, 2026

  The rosary in the drawer

  I have a rosary that belonged to someone who died, and I do not use it. I thought that was respect. It turns out to be something else.

• September 15, 2026

  The date I gave

  I set a date by which I wanted an answer. It went past with nothing. What I felt that evening was not disappointment.

• September 14, 2026

  The sentence I countersign

  I say Amen at the end of prayers I did not write. For a week I said it only where I agreed. Almost nothing was left.

• September 8, 2026

  The passenger seat

  I only pray well on journeys where I am not driving. I used to credit that to being available. I think it is the absence of a steering wheel.

• September 4, 2026

  Make it stop

  I read my list of intentions line by line. Almost everything I have asked for in months is a subtraction, and I had never noticed.

• September 3, 2026

  The reason I invent

  Some mornings the anxiety is there before any reason is. I go through my departments until I find one, and then I pray for the wrong thing.

• August 31, 2026

  The evening I wanted nothing

  I tried to reproduce the one evening praise came by itself. You cannot want to want nothing, and I am no longer sure that evening was peace.

• August 31, 2026

  The rampart I prefer

  Psalm 91 promises feathers and a rampart in the same verse. I take the rampart without hesitating, and I am starting to see why.

• August 26, 2026

  With none of me in it

  I speed up in exactly the place where there is nothing to gain. What I found in the silence after the Glory Be, and it does not suit me.

• August 25, 2026

  The other conversation

  Somewhere in the second decade I notice I am talking to someone who is not in the room. And it is always the same people.

• August 24, 2026

  The ‘we’ I say alone

  "Pray for us sinners." There is nobody in the kitchen, and I am speaking in the plural. I can't tell whether that is company or a constraint.

• August 22, 2026

  The silence I'm good at

  My evening prayer is a silence, and I thought I was good at it. Psalm 4 puts the searching before the stillness, and I never did that half.

• August 20, 2026

  The place where I allow it

  I hold it all day, and it comes out at night, on the people who will not make me pay for it. My patience picks its moments very well.

• August 19, 2026

  The order I would not have chosen

  I wrote down the first sentence of my prayers for six days. Six times out of six, it was the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer.

• August 16, 2026

  The Superstition I Still Have

  I pray that everything goes well so I don't have to name the rest, as if saying it might invite it. What my vague prayer is really protecting.

• August 13, 2026

  Not Yet

  What I keep putting off with God, telling myself it isn't the moment yet. Augustine prayed the same way, and knew it.

• August 12, 2026

  The Sentence I Know by Heart

  I repeat the same line whenever I have no head left for praying. I did not choose it, and I do not know whether it counts.

• August 11, 2026

  Saying It Out Loud

  Blessing someone in my head costs me nothing. Saying it to their face, I failed — and I think I know why.

• August 10, 2026

  The Comfortable Verses

  I listed the verses that come to me unbidden. They have one thing in common, and the line immediately after names the price.

• August 9, 2026

  The Name I Do Not Say

  There is a name I have never written on my list of intentions. It isn't an oversight, and Psalm 139 showed me what I was really protecting.

• August 8, 2026

  The List of Names

  My list of intentions has turned into an inventory I recite without feeling anything. A line from Isaiah showed me what it is, and never was.

• August 7, 2026

  The Corridor

  I spent more time in the corridor than in the room. A line from Matthew showed me what I was really after when I go to visit someone.

• August 6, 2026

  The Two Sentences at Night

  For a few weeks now my evening prayer has been two sentences. What I hand over, and what I did not do. The second one arrived much later.

• August 3, 2026

  The Inbox I Keep Refreshing

  I am waiting for an answer. I refresh my inbox twenty times a day, and I have finally understood what that gesture does to my praying.

• August 1, 2026

  Page Four

  I buy a new notebook instead of reopening the old one. Always at the same page, the fourth. What I have finally understood about that habit.

• July 31, 2026

  The Verse I Skip

  There is one line of Psalm 103 I have been skipping for months. I eventually understood that the psalm is not the one with the problem.

• July 30, 2026

  The Hour I Did Not Fill

  I kept one hour empty, on purpose. I did not expect doing nothing to take such effort, or the tiredness to arrive afterwards.

• July 29, 2026

  The Space of One Breath

  I started taking one breath before answering. What I am finding is that the next sentence is not softer: it is a different sentence.

• July 27, 2026

  Naming Three Things

  For a week I have named three things every evening. What I did not see coming is that the exercise started to bleed into my days.

• July 24, 2026

  The Version Where I'm Right

  I have been rewriting an apology for three days. Each version comes off a little better — and drifts a little further from what I meant to say.

• July 23, 2026

  The Room That Isn't Mine

  Away from home, my morning prayer collapses. I finally understood that what was missing was not faith, but the armchair.

• July 22, 2026

  Lifting My Eyes

  A psalm begins with a gesture I had never really made: lifting my eyes. One morning I tried it, for real. It shifted something.

• July 21, 2026

  Three in the Morning

  I wake at three and fight to get back to sleep. One verse taught me to do the opposite: stay awake a moment, with the One who was awake already.

• July 20, 2026

  The night workshop

  Our prayers are prepared while everyone sleeps. For a long time it troubled me. Then I reread how the manna came: by night, with no witness.

• July 19, 2026

  The three seconds

  One evening I counted: between seeing and scrolling on, barely three seconds remain. That is where thank you, or sliding past, is decided.

• July 18, 2026

  The monochrome

  I long believed a prayer app had to add. One prayer from the corpus taught me the opposite: take away, to leave room.

• July 17, 2026

  The Set Table

  This week, a prayer stopped me on an image from Psalm 23 I had long avoided: a table set in the presence of what threatens.

• July 16, 2026

  The Prayer I Keep Putting Off

  There is a prayer I know I should pray, and every day I put it off until tomorrow. A journal of a delay I am only beginning to look in the face.

• July 15, 2026

  The Same Hand

  The gesture that scrolls and the gesture that prays are the same. A journal of a contradiction I no longer try to resolve, only to inhabit.

• July 14, 2026

  The first morning

  Why an app, why manna. The first morning of a prayer notebook kept in a low voice, with its contradictions owned.