Noted with Distress

Thomas More on praying, from The Sadness of Christ:

Would God we would sometime take so much pain, as soon as we have finished our prayers, as forthwith orderly to call to our remembrance again all things that have passed us in the while we seemed to pray. Lord, how foolish, how fond, and how filthy matters shall we many times there find? We would, I assure you, wonder how our mind could possibly in so short a space stray so much abroad into so many places so far severed asunder, and about so divers and sundry, so many and idle occupations. For if a man would even of purpose for a proof do his endeavour to occupy his thought upon as many and as manifold matters, as by any possibility he could devise, hardly could he, I trow, in so little a while think upon so many things, and so far distant asunder as our idle unoccupied mind wandereth about, while our tongue at adventure pattereth apace, upon our matins and evensong, and other accustomed prayers.

So true and so characteristic of our fallen nature: yet what else to do but keep at it, in the hope of doing a little better next time?