Christ, as a light
illumine and guide me.
Christ, as a shield
overshadow me.
Christ under me;
Christ over me;
Christ beside me
on my left and my right.
This day be within and without me,
lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.
Be in the heart of each to whom I speak;
in the mouth of each who speaks unto me.
This day be within and without me,
lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.
Christ as a light;
Christ as a shield;
Christ beside me
on my left and my right.
- The Canticle of the Northumbria Community’s Morning Prayer in the Daily Office.
Go in Peace.
WK
This entry was written by , posted on October 24, 2008 at 7:21 am, filed under Spiritual Disciplines and tagged Christianity, Daily Office, Prayer. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Man, it is hard to change one’s daily routine.
For the last 2 weeks, I have been actively pursuing this new Rule of Life that I have adopted. What has risen as the backbone of the rule is the Daily Office.
The Daily Office, that is daily time-set prayer, is one of the oldest disciplines used by Christians. The Psalms refer to it (e.g. Psalm 119:164), Luke writes about it in Acts (e.g. Acts 3:1), The Didache (the oldest Christian Liturgy) mentions it, The Church Fathers wrote about it (e.g. Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Tertullian) and move into the Roman Rite and Eastern Church to Now.
The Office I’m working from is the Celtic Office, found online at the Northumbrian Community’s website , a community devoted to living a monastic lifestyle. Being an ethnic Celt, I thought this one would work – plus it is free and introduced to me by my local monastic sounding-board, George Sweetman.
Devotion to the Daily Office is hard, and I’m only at 2 of the hours (there’s like, 7). What I have found is this: I’ve found that in adopting this rule, I’ve had to start going to bed earlier, because having to focus for about 30-45 minutes of day-starting is a tough task, especially when you are a night-hawk that works in the mornings. I think I might start doing this outside to help wake me up. But here’s the thing: structuring a daily life around set prayer times really helps orient your thinking. I’m someone whose first hour of being awake greatly influences the rest of the day. Every morning I finish my first hour awake with these words:
May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you,
wherever He may send you.
May He guide you through the wilderness,
protect you through the storm.
May He bring you home rejoicing
at the wonders He has shown you.
May He bring you home rejoicing
once again into our doors.
Being well-rested and going forward into the world with these words around me really centers my spirit for the day. These words just hold me in a way that moves beyond cognition. It moves me beyond sentimentality. It moves me into vision.
WK
This entry was written by , posted on May 26, 2008 at 9:51 pm, filed under Life, Spiritual Disciplines and tagged Christianity, Daily Office, Prayer, Rule of Life, Spiritual Discipline. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.