Not that what I would say is the measure of much of anything, but that I understand enough about Catholic moral theology to recognize when I’m saying something that is or isn’t in keeping with it.

(Though by ‘accept reality’ I do not mean that one shouldn’t work to improve the reality of some situations; I mean only that one shouldn’t deny that which is real, that which is true).

Because to be honest with oneself is to be honest with reality, to see reality clearly and to accept it. And to accept reality is to honor it. Which I would say is pleasing to God.

Although, I suppose if a writer is to be in any way serious, as opposed to frivolous, he needs at least to be honest with himself, and that is near enough to a virtue that it may as well be one.

(I mention virtue as an example of what a writer needs to perceive, because virtue is the subject I was discussing, but the important thing here is the writer’s perceptive ability; that is, the fineness ((as opposed to the dullness)) of his perceptions).

A writer doesn’t need to be virtuous, after all, in order to be a good writer. He needs only to be capable of perceiving such a thing as virtue, where virtue is in fact present.

Not that I myself have ever experienced tribulation. But neither have I ever been possessed of genuine virtue. Even if I do pray for it, and can recognize it, I think, when I encounter it in someone else.

And neither is it to say that the virtue I’ve referred to as ‘counterfeit’ cannot seem to be genuine when the person who is exhibiting it hasn’t been tried in the fires of reality, which is to say in tribulation.

Which isn’t to say that prayer is unnatural, but that it is the natural way that we open ourselves to the supernatural.

Meaning, a dependence on God, rather than on self, is the difference between the obtaining of genuine virtue and the obtaining of counterfeit virtue.

Although, I suppose all virtues are within one’s nature to have, technically speaking. Only, one cannot obtain them by natural means. Not, anyway, the genuine article of them. (A very convincing counterfeit is available to us, but such a counterfeit will reveal itself to be that, if push comes to shove).

In this case earlier that afternoon, during rush hour on the highway, when I’d wanted to obtain the patience that was not in my nature to have.

So that it isn’t surprising that I would think of him, and that quotation of his, when I’m recalling a moment of prayer in my own life.

Partly because I like Søren Kierkegaard, and partly because I pray the Rosary in order to, as he suggests, change my own nature.

Which is what my mind did choose, in that moment, or sequence of moments.

I mean, they do go together, in a certain sense, but only because they both involve the subject of prayer. They would not necessarily follow, one from the other, unless a particular person’s mind chose for them to do so.

I say “only by association” because the one thought occurred to me as a consequence of the other, but not because the two thoughts necessarily go together, or should be paired together.

Another, which was related to that first one, though only by association, was: “The function of prayer, according to Søren Kierkegaard, is not to ‘influence God, but to change the nature of the one who prays.’”

One of these thoughts that I typed out, to give you an example, was: “This morning, when I left the city, I thought I had my rosary beads with me, but it turned out I didn’t.”

Then I was up in my room, on the bed, on top of the covers, with my sneakers off and my legs stretched out in front of me and the pillows propped behind me so that I could sit against the headboard and open my laptop, and could type out, into a document, some of the thoughts that had been occurring to me during the drive so far, even if at this point those thoughts were quite disorganized, and would need later to be revised, and perhaps even to be reordered, according to a different chronology.