good reasons for minimizing or even opposing the formal distinctions between them, reinterpreting what they designate once one recognizes the ways in which they overlap. It is not that theology as “theory” in an abstract sense gets formalized apart from “practice” and then simply dominates it; instead, more modestly, this sketch of theological reflection offers a pattern for thought, a set of rough-and-ready rules of thumb with which to pursue prayerful contemplation once one is already in the midst