Why Practice Morning Prayer

Who We Are

Why I Practice Morning Prayer

Two years ago this morning we were in a delivery room exhausted, a little scared and uncertain of our next move.

My wife, Brooke, had gone into labor around 6:00am the day before. We had taken 12 weeks (TWELVE WEEKS!) of birthing classes to prepare us for what we hoped would be an unmedicated, natural birth (I still say I should get college credit for those 12 weeks, but that’s another story). We had a midwife, a doula, a supportive obstetrician and hospital, and a plan. Brooke labored at home for much of the first day (according to our plan). She practiced breathing, walking, stretching, and remaining calm while I coached, prayed and supported. That afternoon everyone agreed it was time to go to the hospital. We made our way, checked in, settled into our room as she continued the process of bringing our little guy out into the world. A few hours later it started raining – it tends to pour buckets on all our significant life events – so we knew it must be time. The midwife said, “I think you’re ready. Let’s check and then you can start pushing.”

Our plan was going flawlessly.

Only, not so much.

Much to our team’s surprise, we had made almost no progress. It seemed our little man (with the giant head) was content to stay put even though Brooke’s body was forcefully working to evict him.

At this point we faced the choice of a C-section (something Brooke had decided she wanted to avoid if at all possible) or to keep going.

These are the moments when you realize that women really are the stronger members of the species. Brooke chose to keep going – for 12 MORE HOURS.

Which brings us back to this morning two years ago when we were exhausted, scared, uncertain and out of things to pray. The midwife had told us that 8:00am was our cutoff point. She had fought for us and held off the C-section as long as she could. She went to the hallway to consult with the Ob and prepare.

Brooke, our incredible doula, Melissa and I were in the room – out of things to pray and out of energy. When something like muscle memory made me say, “It’s time for morning prayer.”

For the previous three years I had developed a practice of using prayer books in the morning and in the night. I had been praying morning prayer from Celtic Daily Prayer. I pulled it up on my phone (as all modern monks do) and was greeted with the familiar and fitting Psalm 130

Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;
Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.
If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
    Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
    so that we can, with reverence, serve you.
I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
    and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
    more than watchmen wait for the morning,
    more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
    for with the Lord is unfailing love
    and with him is full redemption

Melissa and I began praying the Psalm over and over.

I’d like to say Oliver peacefully made his entrance into the world as we prayed.

He didn’t.

But when our midwife came back in from the hallway consultation we were calm, encouraged and ready. And he had moved – just enough.

So 2 hours and 40 minutes after that we welcomed Oliver Davis (“Peaceful” and “Beloved”) into the world.

This is why I practice morning prayer. And this is why we practice morning prayer at Brendan’s Crossing our intentional community in Cincinnati. Building a rhythm and practice of prayer develops that muscle memory and relationship for when we don’t have the words, the strength, or the insight to pray. This morning this psalm appeared again in morning prayer and brought with it the memory of Oliver’s birth.

So Happy Birthday to our peaceful and beloved guy, who remains a patient and unhurried child with a big noggin. I think it’s fitting to close by praying this Psalm for you today,

“Oliver Davis, put your hope in the Lord now and forevermore, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. Amen.”

Aaron Wright is the Program Director of Brendan’s Crossing a Young Adult Intentional Community and Service Year sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio. His wife Brooke is a Rebel Storyteller, mother of three, and an advocate for orphans and adoption.

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August 2, 2014 by Aaron Klinefelter

Brad Modlin and the Camino de Santiago

Brad Modlin

Way back in December Aaron, Andrea, and Karl sat down with Brad Modlin to hear stories of his experience on the Camino de Santiago. It was magical and now you get to hear it too!

Brad is a PhD candidate in creative writing/poetry at Ohio University and lives in Athens, Ohio where he’s involved with his parish and campus ministry.

Click here to listen to the podcast!

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August 1, 2014 by Jane Gerdsen

What I learned from the Common Friars and Good Earth Farm

In 2008, Paul and Sarah Clever moved onto a small piece of land at the end of Armitage Road in Athens, Ohio. The following summer my husband Rob took the counselors from Procter Summer Camp down to Good Earth Farm as part of staff training. I tagged along, wanting to see for myself what was happening there. It was one of those moments where I remember being both in awe and a little uncomfortable at the same time. Being there, I had the sense that everything was going to change.

I remember seeing books piled on the coffee table in the living room and praying the daily office together and eating pizza. I remember a long, hot afternoon of pulling weeds and staking tomato plants. It was after that experience that Rob and I put in our first raised bed in our backyard and began growing our own vegetables. A year later, I felt that tugging at my heart as God invited me to begin asking what kind of communities I might be part of creating. As I began my work as Missioner for Fresh Expressions, I spent many hours in conversation with Paul and other community members from Good Earth Farm. They became friends, fellow practitioners, and wise mentors. Among the many things I learned are three lessons that I think are especially valuable.

Smallness matters – 2 and 3’s as the basic unit of Christian community

Being with the Common Friars was always a reminder of Jesus’ words that “when two or three are gathered, I am there in the midst of you”. There was a simplicity to it all, in conversation, in prayer, in communal meals, in work done with a shared intention. God was in all of it and that was enough. Kelly Latimore used to say that the work of the farm was at heart an excuse to just be with people, to cultivate deep and transformative relationships.

Although the diocese and the parish are important aspects of our life as Christians, most of us have found Christian community in smaller ways –through a friend, or in a bible study, or small group. I believe these small groups act like leaven for the church, activating change that is far bigger than their size would normally allow. I believe that God seeks out the small to influence the whole. The church has always grown this way, through a duplication of small groups of people. This was how Jesus spread his message about the kingdom of God. How can we as a church encourage the spread of these small communities of practice? Whether a family or household, intentional community, prayer group, house church, service team, facebook group, or spiritual friendships –these 2’s and 3’s are the basic unit of Christian community and Good Earth helped model for us the importance of these communities in people’s lives.

Live according to the seasons of life

Life on a farm is a reminder of the seasons. There is a time for planting seeds, a time for bearing fruit, a time for harvesting and a time for allowing the land to lay fallow. Paul allowed the days and the seasons of their life together to reflect the wisdom he learned from listening to the land. He adapted their rhythm of life to the growing season. He celebrated the growth and learning that came from new people, new endeavors, and new ministries. And he noticed when something needed to die and honored the ending that was inevitable.

I realize that part of our resistance to change in the church is our disconnection from the cycles of life we see in the natural world. We need to learn to recognize when the ground changes, always on the look out for the new life that is springing forth but also with an eye to those things that are dying. When we plant something, whether a flower or a faith community, does it have to last into perpetuity to have value? Perhaps, one of the most valuable lessons that the Common Friars have to teach us is to know when something is finished and to see the value of a community that meets a specific need at a specific time, offering something beautiful and meaningful to the world for a season and then dying gracefully to create space for other callings and communities to be born.

The Importance of a Catalyst

In this way, Good Earth Farm served as a catalyst in our diocese. The work of Paul and Sarah and Kelly and Tom (and others) served to instigate and encourage the work of fresh expressions. They inspired us and gave us permission to experiment with new forms of Christian community that existed outside of the parish walls. As they celebrated Eucharist in their dining room each week, gathered for communal meals under the trees, and grew food for those who were hungry, they reminded us what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

I am eternally grateful to the Common Friars for teaching me, for the opportunity to learn together about intentional community, for being brave enough to try something that seemed a bit crazy to everyone else. I am grateful for their honesty about the gifts and the challenges of a life in community and for the ways they invited me (and many of you) into their shared life. I was inspired by the dream that Paul shared, so much so that we began our Floral House community in Cincinnati. In Columbus, the Franklinton community and St. John’s were encouraged by the Common Friars and have begun an Episcopal Service Corps community –Confluence. Procter started it’s own working farm and diocesan CSA. I spend time talking with people young and not so young about how they long to create new households and small communities of practice together. I see this as a direct result of the work of Good Earth Farm. And a reminder of the importance of catalysts in our midst.

Catalysts are willing to help offer wisdom, ideas, energy, and values into a system. In science, they speed up the reaction and leave less waste behind than non-catalyzed reactions. As I spend time pondering how these kinds of small communities of faith and practice are changing the church and more importantly the world around them, it is this: as catalysts, they inspire and energize us to create a different kind of community. They remind us of the value of relationships, the importance of following the Spirit in new ways and the power of community to transform us all.

I wonder what you learned from the ministry of Good Earth Farm and the Common Friars? I invite you to share your experiences here in the comments.

After more than 5 years together, the Common Friars discerned in September 2013 that they were no longer called to life together as a religious community. Paul and Sarah Clever now have two young children and are working to cultivate a household farm for their family. Kelly Latimore has moved on to do a farm internship in California for a season and continues to develop his art as an iconographer (kellylatimoreicons.com). Tom Fehr has said goodbye to Grace Church in Pomeroy and is looking for his next call. The community moved off the land on Armitage Road in March of 2014. The diocese is so thankful for the ministry of Good Earth farm and wish the community many blessings as they move forward in their lives.

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August 1, 2014 by Jane Gerdsen

The Mystery of God Hidden in All Things

This is a part of a sermon I preached last Sunday on Jesus’ parables of the kingdom at my friend Peter Matthew’s church – Eden Chapel in Saylor Park.

In the amazing podcast interview that Krista Tippet does with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner I heard this beautiful story (among many other profound pieces of wisdom). This is a Jewish story that is told about the creation of the world (by Rachel Naomi Remen, as told to her by her grandfather).

In the beginning there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. And then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand, thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light. And then, well, there was an accident, and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness of the world, the light of the world was scattered into a thousand, thousand fragments of light, and they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day.

Now, as the story is told, the whole human race is a response to this accident. We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world…This task is called tikkun olam in Hebrew. It’s the restoration of the world.[2]

This feels like such an important story for our time. When everything in the news feels like bad news – children dying in Gaza, wars being waged, refugee families at the border seeking shelter from hopelessness, what can we do? Where is God in all of this?

Maybe in times like this, there are no words to describe who God is and what God is up to. Mystics, artists, poets have worked to give voice to the divine truth in all times and places. And yet God’s essence remains hidden among us. Little pieces of light scattered in everyone and everything. And it is up to us…

It is our job to find them. To share them, to bring them together. It is our job to tell the story, to uncover the hidden beauty in the brokenness of our world. To believe that God’s essence is hidden in the flower growing up through the crack in the sidewalk. To see the dough rising as a sign that God is at work in the simplest of things. To believe that growing carrots in an urban garden and sharing them with our neighbors is a revolutionary act.[3]

There is a Leonard Cohen song, Anthem, and the refrain says

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There’s a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

I wonder if this is not what we all need to hear. In the face of all the discord and brokenness, maybe there is a light that is seeking to get in. Maybe my small and imperfect offering to the common good will encourage someone else to offer what they have. A little like a potluck supper.[4] Maybe giving what we have is the yeast in the dough of our community. Maybe this is the way the kingdom is revealed.

Jesus’ stories invite us to uncover the mystery of the kingdom in the ordinary things of our lives. So to what can we compare the kingdom of heaven?

The place where God is present and working among us – how would we describe that reality? Jesus describes it as a tiny mustard seed planted in a field that grows into an enormous shrub taking over everything. Or is it like a woman who mixes a measure of leaven into the bread she is baking? To what can we compare the kingdom of heaven? What parable can we use?

And in fact, “How can the language of earth capture the reality of heaven? How can words describe that which is beyond all words? How can human beings speak of God?” Perhaps we do best if we use the most ordinary things, as Jesus did, and “[trust] each other to make the connections…We cannot say what it is, exactly, but we can say what it is like, and most of us get the message…” [5]

I believe that we what draws us here, what brings us together as a community is the suspicion that God is all around us, connecting us together, inviting us to bring our light together with the light of every other creature on this earth. And when we are given a glimpse of this holy possibility, we are willing to keep seeking the kingdom far and wide.

And It is up to us to tell the story, it is our job to find the kingdom that is hidden in plain sight. So, I invite you to share with one another, to tell the story of where you are discovering the kingdom of heaven? What is it like?

May you be constantly surprised by the mysterious and wonderful workings of God hidden in our ordinary, everyday world. Amen.

[2] On Being, Krista Tippet interview with Lawrence Kushner

[3] “The day is coming when a single carrot freshly observed will set off a revolution” – Paul Cezanne or as heard from our friends in Franklinton – “Carrots are the revolution”

[4] Parker Palmer – On Being blog post

[5] Barbara Brown Taylor, Seeds of Heaven.

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July 15, 2014 by Kelly Latimore

An Icon of St. Nicholas for Grace Church, Pomeroy

by Kelly Latimore

Harlan Hubbard, a painter and naturalist, along with his partner Anna, spent 48 years living right on the banks of the Ohio River. When another local river town church asked him to paint a mural of the Jordan River above their baptismal, he instead painted a picture of their own Ohio River instead.
I think Harlan was telling this small church, and the Church at large, that this is their sacred river. He was saying that as beautiful as the Jordan river and the Holy Land is, and as important its historical significance is for us and many religions, if flying the several thousand mile journey, or seeking out these images and artifacts, are the only tangible signs that make us feel the closest we could possibly be to Jesus, then we are missing the point. And more broadly, that the reason the Holy Land is holy is not because of the historical significance of that place, and what has happened there, but because the holy land is a part of all the world.
For those in Pomeroy, or In Ohio, this is your Holy River. The Baptism of Christ, its tension of death and life, of calm and the storm, flows into all that you do. As St. Nicholas, the Patron saint of Mariners, became a sign of Christ’s friendship and love in Myra (a Greek port town) may you too be a sign to those who work on, play, fish and live near these waters.

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July 8, 2014 by Karl Stevens

Stephen Colbert and Christ Pantocrator: A Week in a Second City Improv Intensive

I stood in Piper’s Alley, in the hallway of the Second City Training Center in Chicago, and looked at a photo of Stephen Colbert. It was taken twenty years ago, when he was a student there. He looked very young. His hair was in a messy part, and there was something unruly about his jacket and tie. His grin was manic but his eyes were shy, the same expression that he often wears now that he’s very, very famous. I was staring at his photo because I admire him and what he represents. For a segment of the population, he is America’s most public Christian. And he’s very different from other media Christians, because he combines deep faith with a sense of play.

I enrolled in a week long intensive at Second City because I wanted to learn how to live this combination. I thought that I was bringing the faith with me, and wanted to learn the play. Kevin Reome, our instructor, didn’t talk about faith, and I don’t know if he has any religious belief at all. But he taught us an ethic that compliments and amplifies the ethics that the church has taught me, a social ethic based on mysterious and interpersonal graces. “Improv is love,” he told us. Its tenants work best when its practitioners love each other.

I had read Sam Wells book, “Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics,” and was already familiar with many of these tenants. I’d been trying to live them for more than a year, but without a spiritual practice to sustain me. Could actually doing improv be that practice? Sam Wells had taught me not to block, to accept other people’s ideas without automatically thinking that they wouldn’t work or, more usually, that they’d take too much of my time and energy. This has been immensely helpful in my church work, which is all about trying new things and not worrying about the possibility of failure. But I still find myself slipping into the negative mode, automatically rejecting other people’s ideas or pitting my own ideas against them in a kind of interpersonal contest. I wanted to learn how to let this go, how to accept the gifts that other people offer through their passions and their hopes.

I was worried that we’d be asked to explain our reasons for being there, and that when I told my classmates, who were mostly improv-loving college students, that I was a priest, they would either start censoring themselves or try to shock me. But Kevin didn’t have us do any traditional kind of introduction – he got us up and moving around and learning the techniques right away. The trust and intimacy that we developed throughout the week emerged from the practices of improv. “Be the person who everyone want to play with,” he told us, meaning that the people who would do best were the people who were most able to set their egos and their need for attention aside, and give gifts in a scene. He cautioned that this didn’t mean editing away our ideas or being shy about contributing, but instead meant bringing whatever we had and sharing it without fear, letting someone else take it and play with it and change it. This was a grace-filled process. “Don’t try to be funny,” he told us. “Trust that the funny will come.” Funny, in other words, is a free gift of improv practice, and grace is like it, something that we can’t work for, but which appears anyway in the midst of Christian practice.

The class ended on Friday, and that evening I went with my family to a Taize service at Fourth Presbyterian church in downtown Chicago. There was time built into the service for personal meditation, and there were icons set-up in a corner of the room. One of them was the icon of Christ Pantocrator from Saint Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. It’s the oldest known icon of Christ. The two sides of the face are painted differently – the left side has a drooping eye that looks away from the viewer, and a shadowed cheek; the right side stares straight ahead and the cheeks are clear of shadow. I’ve always been more attracted to the drooping, shadowed left side. I used to joke that I wanted to belong to the Church of Eternal Lent. I appreciated the sorrowful, mourning part of the church. I trusted it because it fit my nature. But looking into the right eye of Christ, I realized how much I’d changed, how ten years of serving the church had taught me joy and a spirit of play.

Which brings me back to Stephen Colbert. He uses his improv training every night on The Colbert Report. Sometimes his guests are trained in improv and know how to accept his gifts and say yes to his suggestions, lifting his interviews with them into the realm of absurd, joyful abandon. But often his guests refuse the game. They block ideas and remain self-serious. Faced with this, Colbert doesn’t give up the practice of improv – he continues to offer gifts, to accept the other person’s ideas and spin them out into hilarious, delirious webs of humor. I believe that by doing so he isn’t just practicing improv, but also practicing his Christianity. A Christianity that plays, that waits for grace, and that constantly invites others to join in the game.

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June 20, 2014 by Jane Gerdsen

New – Monastic Community in London

An article in the London Times shares the story of the Moot community in London, one of the amazing fresh expressions communities in the UK who I have been learning from for the last few years. The 900 year old church of St. Mary Aldermary is offering sanctuary to busy city workers. I find hope that the simple act of offering hospitality and learning spiritual practices together is creating a new community. You can read the whole article here.

It is this Rhythm of Life that has enabled Moot to connect with busy executives and city workers. Many who have no church background come to the weekly Wednesday evening meditation group as a space where they can experience stillness and silence with others. Workers have opened up about how dehumanising the city work culture can be, stating that the church provides a unique space where they can openly express themselves. Vanessa suggests:

“The world is looking for integrity. At Moot we seek to be open and honest about our own journey, how we haven’t got it all together, how we are novices, very much beginners in practices like meditation and contemplation, and others are attracted to this. We are not trying to push people to God, but help them realise that God is present in their lives and we simply help them discover God working through them.”

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May 22, 2014 by Aaron Klinefelter

Praxis Podcast – Brianna Kelly interview

Brianna Kelly playing at The Comet

Listen here!

Aaron sprung this interview on Brianna one day this spring. You are in for a treat! Be sure to check her out on Bandcamp and this summer at Wild Goose Festival.

If you still need to buy your ticket for Wild Goose be sure to use the promo code: LYDIA – you’ll save 10% and Lydia’s House will get 5% to support the good work they are doing for women and children in need.

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April 25, 2014 by Jane Gerdsen

Taking the Church into the Streets

Our friend, Jason Evans, Missioner in the Diocese of Washington DC wrote a great post this week about how to take the church out into the streets. He shared our Flash Compline movement as one example! You can read the whole article here!

Ashes-to-Go is a movement that has spread across North America in which Christians take the imposition of ashes out into their neighborhoods on Ash Wednesday….This experience of being with, and touching, our neighbors has increased our desire to be present with our communities, share our traditions–indeed, share the Good News!–and make the Church more accessible to the spiritual seekers we are surrounded by.

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April 23, 2014 by Aaron Klinefelter

Praxis Podcast – Introduction to Embodied Spiritual Practice

Aaron on mic

Listen here. DG, Andrea, and Aaron introduce a new theme for a series of podcasts on embodied spiritual practice. What does it look like to live our spiritual practice in our bodies? We’ll talk with practitioners of yoga, personal trainers, massage therapists, and others about how they live and incarnate spiritual practice in their lives.

If you are in the Cincinnati area, join us for A Moveable Feast! Cincinnati Taekwondo Center, Sunday, April 27 at 6:00pm. Dinner, conversation, and informal Communion to follow! We will join Paul Korchak, master instructor and owner of the Cincinnati Taekwondo Center. Paul will share how he is striving to integrate his Christian faith and his practice of martial arts. We will reflect together on where we find our identity. What would it mean to be visibly Christian? How can we integrate our work and our faith? Join us as we explore the many ways we give glory to God with our lives.

Moveable Feasts create a community of practice and a place for imagining a new way to be church. All are welcome. Please bring a dish to share!

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