My Home-Made Prie Dieu (Kneeler)

Here's a shot of my recording studio (and hopefully  prayer room) in the basement. I found the picture of The Sacred Heart of Jesus in a junk shop in Titusville, PA this past winter for 7 dollars. The kneeler is a project I was working on for months and finally finished. 
      I have found that many Catholics have an area set aside for prayer and they call them their "family altars" or "home altars." Kneeling during prayer is a way to get our body in correct alignment with our soul in order to pray more effectively. It's all about ultimately being in the right frame of mind. Since our flesh is intimately tied to the soul and spirit, we have these gestures in Catholicism, genuflection, bowing, kneeling etc. to  improve our ability to commune with God. These are not dead rituals, but beautiful expressions of our desire to place our bodies along with our hearts and mind in position to worship, intercede and give thanks.
   Now back to a "family altar." Just to clarify, we don't actually sacrifice anything of course other than offering up our sacrifice of praise and sufferings as well, but  it's a sacred place we can set apart to pray. I find it less distracting to be able to get away a bit. Some folks have candles they light in front of icons or statues they use as touch points of prayer and the image of the sacred heart is one of those for me. I don't worship this image (since that would be breaking one of the big ten) but I use it to direct my thoughts to Him when I get distracted in prayer, which is not an uncommon phenomenon in our overstimulated society.*
    Do you have a favorite place to pray when you can't be in Church before the Blessed Sacrament?


*The top of the prie-dieu  is cedar that I had left over from my last hammer dulcimer and the sides are scrap pine I had laying around in the garage. So when I am praying the smell of a yellow #2 pencil comes wafting up to my nostrils and I think of elementary school and hammer dulcimers...ooops there I go getting distracted again!