One Deacon's Journey

Keep Faith with your Intention

Identify and commit to a prayer practice. Stay with it for a period of time to become familiar with its pattern. Only change when the pattern no longer brings you to a quiet center and a place of deep prayer and worship. Choose or create a brief liturgy for Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer. If mid-day works for your schedule, consider a rhythm of Psalms and Intercessory Prayer. Whatever it is, commit to it. Over time, your space will become imbued with your presence and transformed into a sacred place by God’s presence.

Set Up Your Space for Success

You will need a Bible, songbook or other worship resources; add a piece of fabric or other foundation, a candle, a journal to capture your history of intercessory prayer, music resources, and a memorable object or iconic image. Worship visuals offer a focal point when your mind begins to wonder. Resources at hand establish a familiar path for worship, freeing your mind from ordering worship and allowing your spirit to engage more deeply in the experience of worship. Take a moment to bookmark the biblical readings, the hymns and any special readings for the day. As you use your resources, the flow of worship should smooth out and feel as comfortable and familiar as a favorite sweatshirt. It may help to use a single Collect or Call to Prayer so that it is memorized.  As much as possible, you should read and pray out loud. It is a very different experience when alone, to hear your own voice reciting prayers and reading scripture.

Set a Reminder

Make an appointment with yourself and with God. Set an alarm if you must or a popup screen reminder to stop what you are doing and go to prayer. We seem to do a better job of scheduling our secular life than we do our spiritual life. It is simply a matter of choosing to take time and respecting your intentions.

Explore familiar prayer postures for embodied prayer  

Bend the knee of your heart

Experiment with different hand or arm positions

“My prayers rise like incense, my hands like the evening sacrifice”

Read seated or kneeling or standing

Ex. Glory Be to …..

Read and Pray Out Loud

Resources

The Northumbria Community Trust, Ltd. (2002).

Celtic Daily Prayer. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Enuma Okoro (2010).

Common Prayer, A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Evening prayer or Compline liturgy

Russell M. Hart (1991) The Icon Thru Western Eyes. Springfield, IL: Templegate Publishers.

Morning prayer liturgy (separate page)

Compline liturgy (separate page)

Order of Saint Luke – http://www.saint-luke.net/

On-Line Revised Common lectionary for the Weekly and Daily readings. http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/ 

The Taize Community – http://www.taize.fr/en

Elise S.Eslinger, ed. (2006). Upper Room Worship Book, Music and Liturgies for Spiritual Formation. Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books.

Judith Sutera, O.S.B. ed. (1997). Work of God, Benedictine Prayer.  Collegeville, MN, The Liturgical Press.