New Prayer Book Arrives !

O happy day! Now that I've retired my nearly fifty-year-old Benedictine prayer book (see the previous post), I'm so happy that yesterday the mail-lady handed me The Daily Prayer of the Church, just off the Lutheran University Press. It's wonderful! Complete with all the psalms (marked for singing), daily Bible readings that help me read nearly all of Scriptures over a two-year period, hymns for Evening and Morning Prayer, and lots more, I'm now settling in to learn how best to use it. For many years now I been almost daily going with the ancient prayer rhythm of the Church, established long ago in her history. If you'd like to know more about this very old and substantial way of praying, here are some places to visit:

• Learning the Ancient Rhythms of Prayer where a Mennonite Christian finds about the Daily Office
• The Daily Office where the Mission of St. Clare in Cupertino, California, maintains an online site for reading or downloading
• The Order of Saint Luke which publishes a series of volumes to aid individuals and/or communities to order their prayer through the traditional canonical "hours" of the day
• More comments from folks in different Christian traditions who use (and don't use) the Daily Office to enter the ancient rhythms of the church's prayer life, part of that "old-time religion"! Here, for example, is what one Methodist pastor says:

I am a United Methodist pastor and small-church consultant who's always found the daily office to be a central resource for prayer and scriptural meditation. No other resource that I know of so naturally and easily combines prayer (both personal and communal) with Scripture.