Thursday, September 21, 2006

The Office

I generally tend to espouse the philosophy that time is an illusion, for strictly pragmatic reasons -- namely, if I can convince everyone around me that time is an illusion then it won't matter so much that I can't keep a schedule. For this reason, my attempts to adopt the habit of praying the daily office have generally not been successful.

But I'm giving it another try.

I recently picked up the Glenstal Book of Prayer which has morning and evening prayers for each day of the week and fairly short "prayer stops" for mid-morning, noon, afternoon and compline. Five days in I'm doing well. Having a simple book with psalms and scripture readings inline helps a lot.

How does anyone find their way through the Book of Common Prayer?

4 comments:

LutherPunk said...

I like the Glenstal book. It is simple, straightforward. I use the "prayer stops" sometimes during the day.

As far as the BCP, I couldn't really navigate it until seminary, where I took all my liturgy courses from Anglican profs. I think Derek posted a primer on MP/EP somewhere that might help.

Anonymous said...

That is a nice little prayer book. There are other simple offices available. Celebrating Common Prayer is an Anglican version that I've used occasionally. I also have something called The Little Book of Hours published by the Community of Jesus - an ecumenical Benedictine-style community on Cape Cod.

Of course, for me the problem is really about setting aside regular time for prayer rather than sticking with a particular practice.

P.S. Why doesn't the ELCA publish some kind of easy-to-use breviary. There are orders for MP and EP in the LBW (and, I assume, in the new hymnal). Surely there would be some interest in that sort of thing.

Andy Kaylor said...

I wonder if Luther's disdain for the daily office is still with us at some level.

Maurice Frontz said...

Andy and Lee,

You might try Philip Pfatteicher's Daily Prayer of the Church for a Lutheran office which is contained in one book. You need to look up the Scripture readings, but everything else is contained in the book.

http://www.lutheranupress.org/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=49