I’ve decided to do a series of blog posts and I’m calling it “Inside Jon Katz,” I borrowed the title idea from Amy Schumer.

When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a stand-up comedian, a friend told me that’s what the smart and tortured and depressed kids did, and it sounded right to me. I gave up that idea for writing, I think writing was safer and more detached. I’d still love to do stand-up, but I’m a writer now and perhaps am not  tortured and depressed enough any longer to make it work.

But I love this voice and Sound Cloud format, I like the idea of learning to speak extemperaneously again and having something to say that is not formal and prepared. I decided my increasing interest in the nature and meaning of prayer was a good place to start, and I brought my friend Thomas Merton along. Nobody understood prayer better than he did.

I don’t see my prayers as coming from God or even directed at God. I like the idea that my life is my prayer – my love, my work, my dogs, my farm, my blog, my photos. I read from Merton in this voice recording and I especially loved his belief that the true contemplative is one who has discovered the art of finding leisure even in the midst of his work, by working with such a spirit of detachment and recollection that even his work is a prayer.
And so, I think, is mind. It sometimes seems to me that many of our hearts are turning to stone, and I don’t want mine to turn to stone.

I believe in compassion and empathy, I believe it will return to us, and prayer helps me keep it close. Come along and listen Inside Jon Katz, and thanks for bearing with me as I try to learn this new and engaging way of story-telling.