Tag Archives: noondayprayerservice

Concluding in the Middle

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Let us bless the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

It’s an odd thing, this conclusion in the middle of the day. I’m used to it at the end of a Sunday service (or a Saturday night one, for that matter) – it’s the beginning of the week and the end of a communal gathering. But noonday prayers are scattered throughout the week.

Perhaps that’s the whole point. Blessing God and offering thanks is a recognition of how and what life is – a gift that I neither earned nor requested. Offering these words are a way to end the chapter of the morning before beginning the afternoon’s chapter of this book that is my life.

Free Intercessions

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Free intercessions may be offered.

It’s in small print, just before the end, but it’s there – that space to pause and let joys and concerns bubble to the surface of my mind and continue their ascent to God. What a gift, this moment of rest from the focus on whatever I am doing at the moment. What a gift, to move beyond my own concerns and challenges to be others in spirit and prayer.

Noonday Sight and Blindness

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Almighty Savior, who at noonday called your servant Saint Paul to be an apostle to the Gentiles: We pray you to illumine the world with the radiance of your glory, that all nations may come and worship you; for you live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.

Was it at noon that the burst of light and the voice of God met Saul on the road? At noon that his companions had to lead a blind Saul into the city? At noon that a blind Saul was healed, transformed into a sighted Paul?

How is it that we can remain blind to what it takes to live a holy life – loving God, self, and neighbor – even on the brightest of days? Saul couldn’t see it, or didn’t see how to apply it; it took three days of blindness, the courage and grace of a stranger, and a new name for writer of so much of our New Testament.

What will it take for me to see?

[Book of Common Prayer, p. 107]

Daily Sustenance

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Give us this day our daily bread.

What’s the difference between a want and a need? What is necessary for a life well lived and loved? This question is all wrapped up in a request for daily bread – not daily five course dinner in a mansion, but what is necessary to sustain life and a roof over my head.

This is playing out in a larger sense at the moment, as I decide what to bring to a new (and temporary) home and what to leave behind. I want to bring what will make a fruitful, faithful life possible; I want to leave behind what distracts and hampers that life. I don’t want to waste this opportunity to let go of what is unnecessary and what doesn’t really matter.

Lord, help me discern what daily bread is, and what it is not. And help me pack accordingly. Amen

[For more on this, click Noonday Prayer Service above.]

Our

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Officiant and People: Our Father, who art in heaven

If you look through the New Testament, the word saints is only in its plural form – no singular saints, just a collective. This is different from the honorific Saint that is bestowed on a select few whose very human essence scattered the love of God like a prism flings light. Christianity, like its mother Judaism, is a communal affair rather than a singular pursuit.

The collective shows up again in the prayer Jesus left with us. Our father, not my father or your father. God isn’t the personal property of a single person, even one praying this prayer in solitude. God gives life to everyone, and everyone is claimed as a child of God’s love.

Our means I can’t exclude those I’d prefer to exclude, and they cannot exclude me. We are in this life together. We come before God together, even when we don’t, can’t, or won’t admit it.

What a powerful reminder, in the middle of whatever activities the day brings, that I am not alone – unique, beloved, but never alone.

That goes for you, too.

[For more on the Noonday Prayer service, click above.]

Have mercy

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Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Kyrie Eleison is the Greek form of this prayer for mercy. It’s often sung, which adds weight to the request. It’s a three-fer, guaranteeing that it can’t be skipped over as easily as a single plea might.

Have mercy, dear God, for my inability to love you, myself, or anyone else as well as I could or should. Think kindly of me when I don’t offer kind thoughts to others. Help me in my weakness and in the limits my humanity brings.

Have mercy as I pray. Have mercy when I cannot or choose not to pray. Grant that I may have mercy on others because you have so freely and often granted yours to me.

Amen.

Silent or Spoken

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A meditation, silent or spoken, may follow.

There are so many words thrown at us every day, almost every minute of every day, that they can become an indistinct buzzing more than bearers of anything important. When the words become too loud and too numerous, turning them into background noise can keep things manageable – a way of keeping our heads above water and our lives moving forward. But there’s a cost to it: life-giving words are filtered out along with the meaningless babble.

Built into this mid-day service is a pause, a space for a meditation. It might be filled with words, it might be an intentional respite from words. In the middle of the day’s activities, in the middle of this service, is this pause. Silent or spoken, a time to ponder life and love and holiness and fear, this is opening our hearts and souls to God – if only a crack.

What would life be like if we took time in the middle of every day to pause? If only for a moment, a few breaths in length, we welcomed God into the middle of our commonest of activities?

I can’t say I know, but I think it’s worth giving it a try.

It Could Have Been Otherwise

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People: Thanks be to God.

[An Order of Service for Noonday, BCP, p. 105]

For the first time in almost exactly twenty years, cardboard boxes are forming a wall inside the walls of my home. My husband and I are making lists of things to bring, things to leave, tasks that must be done before moving day, and tasks that must be done upon arrival at the town that will become our home. We are leaving many friends and two sons behind us, setting out on our own for the first time in almost a quarter century. For whatever reason, it’s time to leave the familiar and loved to embrace the unfamiliar and soon-to-be-loved.

It’s a time for saying goodbye, for saying thank you to so many people for being a part of our lives these past two decades. It’s time to tidy up the work we’ve done here, preparing as best we can for the ones who will bring their own gifts and ideas when we are gone. I’ll miss the rhythm of my daily life here, but it’s someone else’s turn – while no one can be replaced, someone else can take on the work and move things forward.

Thanks be to God for that.

Thanks be to God for my time in this very particular place with these particular people. Thanks be to God for the challenges and the joys native to this time and place. It was in this place, in this time, that God walked with me through twenty years of life. It could have been otherwise, had my husband and I made different decisions. But it wasn’t, because we made the decisions we made and lived our lives within the space they created.

Thanks be to God for everyone who welcomed us to this place, who loved our sons as they grew, who prayed with us and for us, for whom we have prayed. What a sacred privilege we’ve been given.

It could have been otherwise, had we made different decisions – and such an otherwise would have brought its own uniqueness. It could have been otherwise, but I’m glad it wasn’t.

Thanks be to God.

It’s Always Pouring

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The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. Romans 5:5

It’s been a summer of drought. High humidity and temperatures, but not a drop of water to bring this parched land life-giving relief. Many afternoons, the air has been so saturated that it seemed impossible that the rain wouldn’t come down. But with a couple of welcome exceptions, the life-giving raindrops never made it to the ground.

Spiritual droughts have come to my inner landscape more than once, when my spirit was straw more than a green and growing vine. At such times, I choked on these words because they felt something like an aspiration more than a statement of the obvious and true. When I most needed to pray, when quieting my inner voices to be in God’s presence was most necessary – that’s when I was least able to do either. I turned away from the very sources that offered my soul refreshment and life. When desert times came, I chose to remain in that dry place when I could have moved into a greener, life-giving place.

But true these words remain. God pours love into us, and remains with us in the Spirit. When my own small reservoir of love is inadequate, I am filled again and again from the infinite sea of God’s own love. If I fully accept these words as truth, I could offer love to every living thing and never worry about running out.

Speed and Haste

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Officiant: O God, make speed to save us.

People: O God, make haste to help us.

[An Order of Service for Noonday, Book of Common Prayer, p. 103]

The middle of the day doesn’t usually lend itself to extremes in the same way that the middle of the night might – or early in the morning, for that matter. The day is moving along its usual course, leaving the extremes in favor of moderation. By noon, there doesn’t seem to be enough time or energy to change the general direction of the day; such things can be put off until the next day.

I wonder if this lull in awareness, this willingness to aimlessly keep to the task and the direction already begun might not be the very peril that endangers me: this willingness to disengage from the only holy life I’ve been given as if I had an eternity of days to enjoy the beauty of the world and offer thanks to the loving creator that included me within it.

Minot Forest Path, photograph by Jared Fredrickson