The Witness of The Daily Office

We've been working on making the daily prayers a part of our lives. Our church uses Phyllis Tickle's compilations of The Divine Hours. We've come to appreciate the rhythms of praying them each day. We don't always get it in, but when we can we try to pray the morning, noon and vespers offices. In my schedule with the kids it usually works best to pray them after meals, together as a family. In the evening I try to get Anders to read a few of the prayers if he's interested. Once in a while Nils will even read some (if we can find short ones without big words).

We have two boys from the neighborhood who are often over at our house after school to play. They've been around at meal time before and know that we pray together. Tonight they left to head home when we sat down for supper, but showed up again before we had finished. I thought they might just go up to the boys' room to play while we finished up, but they hung around. So they ended up joining us for the Divine Hours after supper. One was interested in reading some, and they both joined in singing Our Father (we sing it every week at church, and the boys usually want to sing it at home, complete with actions).

I'm not sure where their families' are spiritually, but the kids at least have a sense of where we are. They know we go to church, have Chapter House (our small group) and pray before and after meals. I hope they've gotten a sense of our love, kindness, generosity and other aspects of our lives as we live out our faith. We haven't preached at them, but have provided a space to see what we live and hopefully find freedom to ask questions.