Our Thursday night meeting (Feb. 8) of the Daily Office group assembled at Our Saviour Episcopal Church. We changed our tradition slightly this week by opening with a service of Evening Prayer from The Book of Common Prayer, led by Fr. Birch. We then discussed "The Shape of Daily Prayer" based on Dwight Vogel's article of the same name. (This article is available elsewhere on this blog.)

The discussion also involved a little history of The Book of Common Prayer, and the efforts of its principle author, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, to create a book that would center itself on readings from Scripture. In particular, we discussed Cranmer's collects, which are tiny gems of prayer that have influenced generations of English-speaking Christians.

We closed our meeting with a Compline service taken from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer. This service was beautiful, but somewhat different from the standard prayer offices we've been studying. Fr. Birch led this also.

We look forward to seeng everyone at First Presbyterian Church on Thursday, February 15.

January 18, Our First Meeting

Last evening seven parishioners met to encourage each other in Daily Prayers. After each briefly shared her or his own personal prayer life, we previewed our eight weeks together, provided one another with phone numbers, email addresses, and prepared ourselves to worship God in Evening Prayer. We began by singing the Church's old "Lamp-lighting Hymn," the Phos Hilaron, and later St. Ambrose's "O Trinity, O Blessed Light," shared Psalm 80, listened to Jim read from Ephesians 5, and at the end before Fr. Birch blessed us, we prayed the Litany, asking among many petitions that God bless Grace Gutekunst who could not be with us.

Several of us took home a copy Robert Benson's Daily Prayer, an especially good book for anyone wanting to use the Daily Office, and perhaps next week we'll hear how it went from those of us who are trying it out.

Telling one another that we'd like to meet again next Thursday, the following went home with lots to remember and two essays to read (The Rise and Fall [and Rise Again] of the Daily Office and Learning the Ancient Rhythms of Prayer):

• Tom Bryan (328-3334) Tom_bryan@bellsouth.net
• June Harnack (626-8535) rjharnack@yahoo.com
• Leslie Farris (228-0277) momfarris3@aol.com
• Jim Farris (228-0277) momfarris3@aol.com
• Mason Smith (623-0692) mason.smith@eku.edu
• Carol Poson (985-5572) casposton@yahoo.com
• Fr. Birch Rambo (623-1226) tbrambo@bellsouth.net
• Andy Harnack (582-3368) andrew.harnack@eku.edu

Next week we--and others with us, we hope--will meet on Thursday, January 25, at First United Methodist Church, the corner of Main and Lancaster Streets, at 7:00 p.m. in the Hartmon Room to talk about "The History of Daily Prayer" and to worship the Holy Trinity together during Evening Prayer.