2 Epiphany, Monday

Daily Office Support Group

Four of us met this morning in the chapel at St. Thomas for Morning Prayer and a conversation about the practice of the Daily Office.

The structure of the Office is bewildering at first, so we started with bookmarks so that we could all find the Daily Office lectionary, the Collects, the psalms, the table of canticles, and all the other material that the Office requires.

As we prayed through a sort of "Instructed Morning Prayer," we talked a bit about the shape of the Office:

The Invitatory and Psalter

The Lessons

The Prayers

All the page-turning back and forth through the Book of Common Prayer can obscure that relatively simple pattern -- praying psalms, reading portions of Scripture and responding with canticles, and praying the three Collects that give the flavor of each specific day.

Handouts and discussion may have helped; we'll see what everyone's experience is as they try Morning Prayer on their own this week.

Here's to the three plucky members of the Daily Office Support Group who are diving in to this new practice!

Second Sunday after the Epiphany

The Epistle appointed for this morning reminds us that in God's promises "we have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul" (Heb. 6:19).

Please pray for the people of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Menasha, WI -- my new parish -- as we begin to practice the Daily Office together in this Epiphany season.

Our "Daily Office Support Group" will say Morning Prayer together at the church on Mondays beginning tomorrow. Each week, we will also have some instruction in how to incorporate the Daily Office into our personal prayer lives.

As we sing God's praises, may we take to heart God's promises and build one another up in hope.

2 Christmas, Monday

Not Quite Ordinary Time

Now that the frantic Christmas and New Year's holidays are past, many people are sighing with relief that things are "back to normal." As a neighbor said after we devoured the spread at yesterday's Packers/Bears football game, "Now I can go back to eating salads for dinner!"

But let's not settle down too much, too soon. According to the liturgical calendar, we're still in Christmastide -- yes, the Twelve Days begin, not end, with Christmas -- and it'll only be after the Feast of the Epiphany this Thursday that we enter into Ordinary Time.

The Church Year follows two cycles of feasts focused on celebrating the mysteries of Incarnation and Resurrection. In each cycle we have a season of preparation (Advent/Lent), the celebration itself (12 Days of Christmas/50 Days of Easter), and then a season of Ordinary Time in which we reflect on the meaning of the mystery (Epiphany/Pentecost).

The Old Testament reading appointed for Morning Prayer today gives us a foretaste of Ordinary Time. Jacob is traveling, as many of us do, and stops for the night in "a certain city" which could really be anywhere. That night he dreams of a ladder between earth and heaven, with angels ascending and descending upon it. When he wakes up, he says, "Surely the Lord is in this place -- and I did not know it!" (Gen. 28:16).

Ordinary Time is like that. We emerge from our celebration, look around our everyday lives with new eyes, and say, "Now I recognize that God is here!" Wherever our travels may take us, we see the presence of God in the normal places, the everyday experiences, the colleagues, family, and friends all around us.

So don't stop celebrating just yet -- this miracle of God with us, Emmanuel, is still worth pondering for a bit longer.