Spiritual detours
Sometimes prayer takes us where we don't intend to go.
Excerpt:
I carried these questions with me, as I tramped from the lake up the hill, to the abbey, for five o’clock prayers with the monks. Happy to be someplace warm, I filed into the choir and sat down in one of the heavy oak choir stalls. There are four daily prayers in the liturgy of the hours at St. John’s. But on the shelf in front of me were seven prayer books: seven little blue plastic binders, the kind with three holes and silver rings. Which book? Morning, Midday, Evening, Book of Song, Feasts, Common, or Responses/Canticles? I chose Evening, and a thin, black-robed monk behind me immediately came up and pulled out the Book of Song. “This is Mass 8,” he said quietly, and opened the book to the Psalms for Monday, Week 1 in Ordinary Time.
https://www.christiancentury.org/article/first-person/spiritual-detours
