Practices: The Daily Office

For many monastics, praying the daily office is quite literally their work.  They show up, they take out the tools of their profession - Bible and Prayer book - and set to it.  The routine varies with the days and seasons of the year, but routine it is, much the way those of us "in the world" go to our offices, boot up our computers, and begin the routine tasks of the day.

How, then, to shape a Daily Office suited to a secular monastic living a hermit's life?  Some might say the question itself is narcissistic, that The Daily Office is set forth for us, and that a commitment to a life of prayer within a given community or denomination simply requires obedience to the practice of the common prayer.

With great respect for the virtue of obedience, I have chosen another way.  I am drawn to pray with the Psalms, for centuries the backbone of the Office, but I do not wish to speed-read through 150 psalms in 30 days, month after month, never sitting with, or absorbing, any of them.  I am drawn to some of the collects and intercessions that are assigned to Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, but I do not wish to run through a series of 7 collects, one for each day of the week, week after week, by rote.  Above all, I am drawn to silence, the spaces between the words, the echoes within the prayers, the cracks through which Spirit may seep through the page and into the heart.

So I have created a new Office.  Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer each consist of three prayers:  the Prayer of Jesus (Lord's Prayer or Our Father, emended with inclusive language), a collect setting the intention for the day or evening, and the Metta Prayer in the morning, and the Phos Hilaron (also emended as needed) in the evening.  That's the bare bones, for days where there is not much time.  When there is more time, I pray the psalms, sometimes only a verse at a time, and rest in the grace of blessed silence.

That is my Office.  I may not get there every morning and every night, but I aspire to, and I pray that for now, it is enough.