praying the hours 2

i posted on praying the hours before. our 'reflection pool' that works on issues of faith as a way of life is going to consider faith and work at our april 2005 gathering. so i've assigned them the shared practice of prayer. but that, complained catherine brunell, who is a young catholic lay minister in the group, that is waaay to general. pray what when how where why? and my response to them is pray during the day, at specific times. don't necessarily pray the divine office, but pray the hours in the sense of keeping a daily schedule of hours when you stop to pray. it is an ancient christian practice, and before that jewish. muslims do it, too. but too many of us just barge right through our week without any discipline whatsoever in our prayer life. just now, it was lunch--12:00 noon--and i heard the carillon from down on the main yale campus bonging out the hour. i stopped my frenetic paper shuffling and emailing and went over to my other chair. i think it helps to have another space and here is mine:

it is no more than three feet from my desk, but the distance makes a difference when your desk looks like this.

i use the three volume prayer book titled 'the divine hours' edited by phyllis tickle. she's prayed the hours for 30 years as a protestant lay women. hmm. she calls it 'fixed hour prayer' which is a pretty good description of what i'm after. as i do the fixed hour prayer, i am also slowing reading through two devotional books (literally one paragraph each time i stop for prayer: 9, 12, 3; plus i pray with my family every day at breakfast, at dinner, and at bedtime, and those times i don't read--try reading benedict to a 4 year old who wants to read about 'little pony' or 'd.w. beats up her older brother, arthur'.) the two books are 'the rule of st. benedict' and 'living faith day by day' on using ancient rules for living faith today (by debra k. farrington).

farrington says that rules work on us by 'balancing our lives and ordering them around god' interesting. too often i hear longing to find balance in order to find time for oneself. here, the reason is to find time for god.

work and prayer. labora et ora.

much more on this to come. find another blog if you're not into it.

anon, and +peace

Comments

[Chris(tine)]

Christian - just stumbled on your blog for the first time, through a link at Bob Carlton's blog, and it's a strange coincidence!

Right before reading Bob's blog, I was reading about another young man's recent experience at a monastery, and he wondered how he could learn to bring some of that "rhythym of life" back into his daily life... and I immediately thought of Debra K. Farrington's book, which was sitting on the table beside me. I looked at it, picked it up, and thought about how much I have loved this book (which I have simply because I was drawn to the title, on the Barnes and Noble book shelf a couple of years ago), but still am working to incorporate much of her suggestions into my daily life. I keep coming back to the book though, drawn to her prose and her challenging yet encouraging outlook.

Next thing I did was to go read at Bob's blog, and followed his link to your entry here. You are the first person I have "met" to mention this book, and I am very encouraged to read what you have written. I have been wanting to get Phyllis Tickle's books, but have not yet done so, hopefully I will be able to soon.

So I wanted to say "hi", and thank you for the encouragement. I look forward to reading what you post about praying the hours.

[Sivin Kit]

I've been thinking about how a kind of "fixed-hour" prayer would be good for me, especially because I find myself so unstructured. I agree with having a different space for prayer ... makes a load of difference for me.

I got linked to your blog through Tony Jones. I got the impression your with the Lutheran church (ELCA)? Well, I'm serving with the Lutheran church in Malaysia! That's quite a distance from where you're at.