CV NEWS FEED // A Minnesotan Catholic has set out to pray a rosary while kayaking across each of the lakes in the Twin City urban metro area.
Scott Kieffer is the director of discipleship for St. Joseph the Worker in Maple Grove, Minnesota, Catholic Spirit reported. He set his goal in 2017 and has 29 lakes left.
“I had learned that creation or nature might be one of the pathways to help me connect a little bit more with my faith and open up more easily in prayer,” Kieffer said.
He started by kayaking while praying in the lake behind his house and then branched out to other lakes.
“Then I started going on a few more and thought, ‘It’s kind of fun going and trying out new lakes, trying out new spaces and knowing I’ve prayed on each one,'” he said.
When he started the project in 2017, he researched the number of lakes in the Twin Cities and decided that the 60 lakes in the area were not enough. “But if I did the 13 metro counties,” he added, “that was going to be something like 3,000 lakes, and well, that’s too long. It’ll take me until I’m 70. So, I settled on a map of the urban metro area and said, ‘This looks like it’ll be somewhere between 250 and 300 lakes.”
Kieffer goes kayaking a few times a week. He said the challenge helps him maintain discipline in his prayer life:
I think when you’re out in nature, that’s God’s world. I think God wants every one of us to have a good, rich relationship with him and relationship with our faith, so I just hope that people don’t settle for doing the same thing they’ve always done, if there’s something more they can do to really enhance that.
While kayaking, Kieffer counts the prayers of the rosary on his fingers so he can continue to row while he prays. Despite the decreased visibility of the prayers, Catholic Spirit reports, strangers still ask him about his undertaking, and even non-Christians that he has met support his efforts. Some strangers have let him kayak on their private property.
During one of his trips, crossing a 2-mile-wide section of Lake Minnesota on an October day, a sudden storm almost capsized his kayak. He was in the water for over 30 minutes.
“I actually went down,” Kieffer said. “The kayak was going to capsize, so I made sure to get all my stuff secured. I keep my phone in a waterproof case. I started praying Psalm 23, my favorite Psalm, and then started praying louder and louder.”
He called 911 from the water and a sheriff’s boat eventually found him as he explained where he was in the water. He said the moment strengthened his faith, and even when the situation looked desperate, “(I) just started praying and asking God for help and every time, he sends a way.”
He concluded, “I think there’s really good ways for us to connect with God more easily that we might not have discovered.” He continued, “I love all other types of prayer I’ve been doing for years. I love being at Mass, adoration, everything. But it enhanced my life and my prayer life so much to realize that there’s some more unique things that really strike me.”
