The Divine Office 7/1/21

On June 26th we celebrated our first full month on the road. And what a month it has been. As Jason joked this morning, “it sure feels like it has been more than a month”!

But we are finally getting into a rhythm, figuring out the structure of our days, and how to move around each other in such a tight space.

You would have thought we had it all sorted out ahead of time - we did live in Betty for 5 1/2 months last year - but somehow, not having a house to go back to makes the space feel even smaller. There is no “out”. No condo to return to if this doesn’t work out the way we want or if we get too uncomfortable.

We are all in - and are working hard to put patterns in place to make it not just doable, but enjoyable.

And this week has been a step in the right direction. We are in Sioux City for the week. At first I wondered what in the world we would do here for a week but it has turned out to be a great stopover spot. A place with near perfect summer weather that allows us to be outside more often, and gives us the space to work out our new routines - even working outside from time to time.

One of the projects I returned to this week was my excavated found poetry series. I am going back through my twenty one year old journal and creating poems out of the words on each page. I started it as a way to peruse through my old journals and see if there was any interesting writing project ideas, but it has turned out to be an exercise in healing.

Each time I reach for one of the pages I find my older (and I hope a bit wiser self) talking to the young mother on the other end. The one that wasn’t sure of herself, the one that was full of fear, the one that had so many dreams that were not possible at that time in her life. I have waded through words about broken friendships, about not belonging, about my awakening passion for the Divine, and the exploration of what it meant to be a contemplative, what it meant to be Benedictine.

Today, as I pulled out the page I stumbled upon a quote that I had copied onto the page from Joan Chittester’s book, “In the Search of Belief”. It said: “To the contemplative, the mundane is the stuff of immortality. The daily is the residence of the Divine.”

And under this I had written “Divine Office” followed by a question mark.

As I sat and reflected on these words I was brought into a moment of gratitude. Little did that younger version of me know when she wrote those two words on the page, followed by her question mark, what it would mean to find the Divine Office. That it would become the rhythm by which she patterns all her days.

And that those simple words, printed out of a book by one of our modern day theologians, would help her to discover that it was in the muck of life - the dailyness that sometimes overwhelms us - that the Holy would most often be found. I sat with the page in front of me and took a moment to just be, and to thank God for leading me to this place of questioning and discovery.

For those of you who might not know - the Divine Office is the order of daily prayer that Monks all over the world pray each day. It’s structure is outlined in the Rule of St Benedict, but many communities have adjusted and altered it to fit their own rhythms - Including my own community of Saint Brigid of Kildare Monastery.

There are seven daily “offices” but many communities often focus on the biggies such as: Vigils (the first prayer of the dawning day), Lauds (morning prayer), Vespers (evening prayer) and Compline (that last office of the day). Other offices include Text, Sext and None which happen throughout the day and are often referred to as the “little offices”.

At its heart (at least for me) are a few things. First and foremost are the Psalms - which are the words we pray in each office.

Also for me it is the constancy - that process that happens as you repeat the same words and rhythms again and again, and they begin to seep into your soul, becoming part of your DNA

And of course, the silence - the praying of the offices is punctuated by silence, giving me a chance to listen and to be still - something that much younger version of myself craved and needed.

I have also learned that praying the offices in community is about deconstructing ego and letting go of your singular voice in honor of the community. No voice is to be too loud, to present, too much. We read slowly. We don’t rush. We don’t try to be the leading voice but instead find our rhythm in the rhythm of the community in which we pray. We turn our focus to the Divine, to the other, and away from our own needs for just a little while.

My life has been blessed by the discovery of this rhythm of praying each day. It was doubly blessed when I became part of St Brigid’s Monastery and discovered a community in which I could be in daily prayer - even while living on the road. Little did that young version of me realize what those two little words might mean when she wrote them down and went searching. Not only did she find a way of life that gave meaning and structure to her days, but she found a community in which she could belong - one that understood her passion for the Divine, and her desire to live in a different way.

As we figure out our new patterns on the road I am comforted by those little words on the page. I am reminded that there is something larger at play here - something unseen but still present. Something guiding us along the path’s we should follow, giving us breadcrumbs to find our way. We are not alone.

I am also reminded that I can trust the unfolding of it all. That I can trust even in the rough times. And, I can look to the structure of the Daily Office to give me the structure I need as we build our new life on the road.

And on the tough days, I can remember that it is the mundane moments of life where the sacred is most often found. That as the quote said, “the daily is the residence of the Divine.”