- Morning Prayer podcast (Episcopal Church of Garrett County, Maryland; get)
- Book of Common Prayer: compact | hardback | leather
The Garrett County morning prayer podcast is high on our list when considering which life changes from the Covid lockdown will continue on. We still start off our day listening together, sipping tea (Candace) and coffee (me), watching birds at the feeders, as the morning sun rises higher through the east windows. If our eyes aren’t too groggy, we follow along in our copies of the Book of Common Prayer. Thank you, Episcopal Church of Garrett County, for providing this ministry. We appreciate it so much.
Compline
And a hat tip to the Center for Worship and the Arts, Samford University, also, for their Compline podcast which complements morning prayer with an evening liturgy to close out the day.
- Compline: Evening Liturgies for Anxious Souls podcast (Center for Worship and the Arts, Samford University; get)
Liturgy as a Dance of the Word and Spirit
“To speak of liturgy is really to speak of scripture in another mode. For the most part all the great liturgies of the church are made up from loved and remembered passages of scripture, but this time it is no longer scripture flat on the page, but scripture that has been invited to get up and dance, to move us and to move with us.” – Malcolm Guite, The Word within the Words, p. 49
Psalms
Update: We now fast forward when we get to the Psalms in the morning prayer recording. Instead of the designated Psalm for the morning — which omits many Psalms — we just read through all 150 in order, so that we encounter each of the Psalms about every three months. After reading each Psalm (using the Coverdale version), we read Malcolm Guite’s poem for that Psalm — a personal response to the Psalm rather than a metrical version. Guite’s poems are a lesson in how to read the Psalms personally and in a Christ-centered way. Perhaps since they were all written during the pandemic, they have a special power and grace that move us profoundly as part of our ordinary morning prayer. Malcolm Guite, David’s Crown (2021).
Church Year
Church year (clockwise).
Source: St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Galt, CA.
“Like a great waterwheel, the liturgical year goes on relentlessly irrigating our soul, softening the ground of our hearts, nourishing the soil of our lives until the seed of the word of God itself begins to grow in us, comes to fruit in us, ripens us the spiritual journey of a lifetime.” Joan Chittister, The Liturgical Year (2010), as quoted in Steve Bell, The Pilgrim Year.
We’ve found that listening to Morning Prayer has helped us enter into the rhythms of the church year. Rather than simply reading about the liturgical calendar from the outside so to speak, in an analytical mode of cognitive learning, actually participating in the calendar through the practice of Morning Prayer has given us an inside view of the continuities and changes and rhythms of the seasons. For anyone else wishing to dive into experiencing the church calendar, starting with Morning Prayer, here are some other resources that we’ve found most helpful for newcomers like us to the liturgical tradition:
- Book of Common Prayer. Start with obtaining your own copy of the BCP — not to read cover-to-cover like a novel, but to browse and look things up in, as occasion arises. Books are patient with their readers, this one more so than others. It doesn’t matter which edition, but we use the 1979 US version the most.
- Steve Bell, The Pilgrim Year booklet series (with CD). This combination of music and devotions offers a thoughtful and accessible “way in” to the practice of the church year.
- Malcolm Guite and Steve Bell, “Seasons of Renewal,” a five-part short-course at Regent College, Regent Audio #4524E. (Unfortunately, Regent Audio purchases and downloads are currently on pause, but look for this invaluable introduction to the church year to come back online again when they complete their audit.)
- Malcolm Guite, The Word Within the Words (Fortress, 2022).
- The Fullness of Time series, ed. Esau McCaulley: Advent by Tish Harrison Warren, Christmas by Emily Hunter McGowin, Epiphany by Fleming Rutledge, Lent by Esau McCaulley, Easter by Wesley Hill, and Pentecost by Emilio Alvarez.
- Two companion books by Vicki K. Black: Welcome to the Book of Common Prayer; and Welcome to the Church Year.
- A myriad of online resources are available. One such is Dennis Bratcher, “Seasons of the Church Year,” Christian Resource Institute, www.crivoice.org/chyear.html. This helpful website is the creation of Dennis Bratcher and Monte Nabors. Bratcher is a retired Old Testament pastor and ordained minister with experience in a variety of traditions including the Church of the Nazarene and the United Methodist Church. Nabors is also an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. “While representing a particular theological tradition (Arminian-Wesleyan), the goal of CRI/Voice is ecumenical and global… CRI/Voice is also committed to the Church as an International Community of Faith united by that Faith amid the diversity of culture, nationality, and history.” (Cf. About and Motto.)
