If we pause to consider what are the spiritual practices that are the foundation of our faith as Christians and the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement, most of us would probably put Sunday Worship and the celebration of the Eucharist at the top of our list. The liturgy of the word and the table are where we come to be blessed, forgiven, fed, and then sent out into the world to be a witness to God’s abiding love, and an embodied presence of that love in the lives of our neighbors. But the truth is there is another practice that is co-equal in importance: prayer. Many of us have a prayer practice, and consider it to be part of our Christian identity. Maybe we were taught to pray by our parents, or just find ourselves in the midst of difficult experiences asking for God’s mercy: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” But it is also very much at the root of the Anglican faith, and arises out of the monastic traditions that are so important in the history of Christianity, but may seem a bit remote to our everyday experience of our faith. These monastic prayer practices are encoded in the Book of Common Prayer, in a section of the book called the Daily Office. It is designed to be a simplified version of the cycle of prayers that those in monastic orders follow, and it is intended to be a corporate experience: that is, it is something you do with others in the community.
My Aunt Barbara (who is nearly blind and quite deaf) was an Episcopal nun and lived with us when I was 
akid. It was mysterious to me that she would say, “it is time for me to read my offices.” She would go into her room, open a black prayer book, and read and chant. I remember thinking that this is kind of weird office work. Now I have come to understand that she was participating in a deeply faithful ritual, and in that moment, sitting in her room, she was living and breathing a spiritual practice shared by people all over the world. If she was reciting the Morning Prayer, she was reading particular psalms, readings and reciting particular collects and prayers assigned for that day out of the lectionary. And she was doing that in community with people all over the world (a cloud of witnesses that I could not see). Furthermore, she was raising up intercessory prayers on behalf of people in her life–she was in all likelihood praying for me all through my childhood every day. What a powerful and extraordinary gift, and yet I had no idea, or no need to know that she was doing this. Because she was in direct conversation with God and the wonder of creation everyday.
In a world with incredibly powerful and seemingly impersonal forces acting on us each day–a world with anxiety about climate change, violence, oppression, poverty–where one can be born by luck into a wealthy family, or a family in abject poverty–it is vital that we pray for miracles: “..it makes no sense to cling to small hopes. We are emboldened to ask God for something bigger. The same faith that looks clear-eyed at the immensity of forces arrayed against God is the faith that affirms God’s miracle-working power. Trust in miracles is, in fact, the only rational stance in the world that can respond to God’s incessant lures in any number of ways. We are commissioned to pray for miracles because nothing less is sufficient. We pray to God, not because we understand these mysteries, but because we have learned from our tradition and from experience that God, indeed, is sufficient for us, whatever the Powers may do,” (Walter Wink, 1998).
On October 20th after both the 8:30 and 10:30 AM service, please join me, Tommy Turbyville, Parish Intern, for a brief meeting. We will explore a variety of options for how we might institute the Offices into the rhythm of life at St James’. Let’s see if we can discover together something that works well with the spirit of the community. We have a number of tools at our disposal to help us, including apps and digital resources to facilitate developing a solid practice. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please feel free to email me at tommy.turbyville@gmail.com
St Francis (from the Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals)