Welcome to daily prayer for Wednesday and our practice of the most ancient form of prayer in the Abrahamic traditions—fixed hour prayer, or The Divine Hours, with a user-friendly version of the same, complied by Phyllis Tickle (available in three volumes if it floats your boat.) We’re not using our own words in this form of prayer but the words of the people of antiquity who experienced the divine in their own way. These words come out of their experience and accompanied them through many dangers, toils, and the wicked rulers of heartless empires. Here’s a tip: in this form of prayer, let the words affect you, wash over you, and bother less with the question, do I believe these words? Relax into the words of these mostly marginalized and oppressed people who spoke them out of the depths of their vulnerable humanity. In hard-edged forms of faith seeking dominance, it’s always about believe, believe, believe, as though the words are spoken by finger-wagging belief enforcers. Instead, let the words, first, be human words, finding inspiration in a God more powerful than their seemingly all-powerful oppressors.
And now The Divine Hours…
To access the online version of The Divine Hours, they are available day by day on explorefaith.org: http://www.explorefaith.org/prayer/prayer/fixed/pray_the_hours.php