I have started praying the Daily Office. Four times a day, I try to step away from what I’m doing and connect and reconnect with God.
I had never even heard of the Daily Office a year ago. Fixed hour prayer isn’t featured in the average Southern Baptist Vacation Bible School class. In fact, the idea of reciting written prayers and following set rituals to seek God seemed so…
So anti-Protestant.
I first heard about the Daily Office while listening to a Mars Hill podcast featuring Phyllis Tickle discuss the emerging post-Protestant Church. During the podcast, she presented the Daily Office as a practice that many Protestants are returning to as a way of connecting to God. Tickle has a rich, Southern accent that sounds like porch swings and sweet tea and it made the practice seem life a gentler way to get through the day. I was interested in the concept–but, I’ll be honest, it seemed a little extreme. OK… Very extreme.
I was drawn again to the idea of liturgical prayers after reading Lauren Winner’s Mudhouse Sabbath. In the book, Winner describes how she use the Jewish traditions that she grew up in to strengthen her Christian faith. One of these traditions is liturgical, fixed hour prayers. Winner tells a story about visiting a church with her fiancé’s grandfather. Even though the grandfather’s memory is fading, he could still clearly recite the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creek.
Winner writes, “These words of prayer are among the most basic words Dr. Gatewood knows. When he has forgotten everything else, those words are the words he will still have.”
I have started praying the Daily Office–but I still don’t understand it or know that I can explain it. The Daily Office is the practice of seeking God through traditional prayers and scripture readings at fixed hours through out the day. It is a tradition that the early Christians brought from their Jewish heritage and that was continued through the monasteries and abbeys of the Middle Ages. It is a tradition that is still common in many Catholic and Angelican communities–but not one that is common in most twentieth century American churches.
Last week, I finished reading In Constant Prayer by Robert Benson. In the book, Benson describes the Daily Office as “the prayer which Christ himself prays, the prayer that sanctifies each day unto itself and unto the one who made us.”
Here’s a confession. I used to be a chain-smoker. I marked my days and hours with cigarettes. Just got up, time for a cigarette. Just got to work, time for a cigarettes. Just had lunch, time for a cigarette…
Now, I tend to mark my days and hours with coffee. As TS Eliot said in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”
The Daily Office calls me measure out my life with prayer.
The Daily Office that I am currently reciting is a version of the traditional prayers and collects that I pulled from the recommend daily devotions in The Book of Common Prayer. The Book of Common Prayer also features a formal version of the Daily Office. A formal version featuring the recommend lectionary can also be found atwww.missionstclare.com. There are a few books that offer versions of the Daily Office as well. If you are interested, you might consider looking at The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle.
I start in the morning–which is usually pretty easy. I spend time reciting the morning office, reading, and journaling before heading to work. This is usually my favorite time of the day. Every morning, I have a clean slate and a new chance not to give in to all of my usual bad habits and bad moods.
The other offices get a little tricky. They only takes a few minutes–but in the middle of the chaos of the day, stepping away can be a challenge. These prayers can sometimes seem empty to me as I recite a few Psalms and the Lord’s Prayer. Sometimes my minds wanders off to other things and sometimes I’ll catch myself moving reading as quickly as I can so that I can get on with my day. It feels like I am just going through the motions.
At other times, these prayers gently remind me to focus in on God instead of office stress and day to day anxieties. They force me to check myself, to slow down, and to prioritize.
Like I said, I don’t think I fully understand the Daily Office. As Benson writes, though, “A life of faith is not about things we understand; it is about things we believe. It is less about the things we can know and more about the things that draw us to God.”

