Can’t Get You Out of My Head

A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, March 23rd, 2025:
Third Sunday of Lent

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Psalm 103

​R. The Lord is merciful and gracious.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits. 

​R. The Lord is merciful and gracious.

It is the Lord who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy. 

​R. The Lord is merciful and gracious.

The Lord works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. 

​R. The Lord is merciful and gracious.

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. 

​R. The Lord is merciful and gracious.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

My list of unusual but fascinating Scripture research resources is expanding by the month. My latest obsession is with a site that discusses biblical translations from lesser known global languages.

In the section on the line “and do not forget all his benefits,” this site discusses how the word most often translated as “forget” is represented in an Australian Aboriginal language. In their language, the word is dwangka-anbangbat, literally “ear-lose.”

Do not ear-lose God’s benefits. The rest of this reflection is my attempt to articulate how much that word rocks my world.

Because I am of a generation and demographic whose ears are highly prized, but crowded, real estate. Added to that, I’m a personality type prone to having things “in” my ears that I’m not currently hearing – “earworm” songs, words, phrases, sounds (I am very glad the Walmart self checkout doesn’t play a little ditty anymore…) or replaying conversations in my head, or rehearsing a potential future conversation…

Suffice it to say, I ear-lose God all the time. As the Cistercian monk Thomas Keating once said, “Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation.” From our creation, God has loved us so that we may love Him, blessed us so we may bless Him, lavished us with gifts and asked only for contrition and heartfelt praise in return. He is always asking me not to ear-lose Him, but He’s also not going to stop me, or blow an airhorn to compete with whatever else has crowded Him out of my ear’s tiny studio apartment.

So then I tried to do some research about how I could work with my brain to better ear-keep God. I know Br. Keating would probably say “find more silence,” but sometimes that’s either not realistic or not enough. I want to hack what my brain is already good at – replaying music and phrases and engaging in internal dialogues.

Research shows that you’re more likely to get an earworm if you are relaxed and associate the song/phrase with positive emotions/memories. It’s like your brain gets pleasure from processing it, so it does it by itself for fun.  Likewise, the song/phrase is much stickier if it’s repetitive and simple (makes sense… “oh Mickey you’re so fine, you’re so fine…”)

This is great news for ear-keepers! Repetitive, simple, and positive? We Catholics have that in spades, in prayers, music, and prayers-in-music, both ancient and contemporary (as our Carthusian friends will certainly endorse). There are both spoken and sung litanies, the Rosary, and chaplets. There’s Taize, mantra-based prayer, and, circling back to where we started, the psalms and canticles of the Liturgy of the Hours.

So my homework is to be more intentional about engaging in ear-keeping practices and make use of my brain’s strengths to help me stay more attentive, more grateful, and more praise-filled.

My favourite “sticky” ear-keeping aids are  the O Pure Virgin hymn to Mary, the sung Divine Mercy chaplet, and the most famous two Ave Marias. 

What about you? If you can relate to my experience or have some suggestions, share your favourite ear-keepers in the comments of this post. Let's create an Ora ear-keeping repository and help each other discover some new ways to never forget God's rewards during this second lap of Lent!




​Kate Mosher

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