The Gift of Sacred Time: Books for the Church Year

(OR, FINDING A SPIRITUAL RHYTHM)

I LIVE TO THE CADENCE of church bells now. Elizabeth Goudge called Wells the “city of bells,” but that description could easily describe Oxford; you can hear a chorus of them striking at the oddest times. Sometimes a single dramatic toll to mark the hour; sometimes great, waterfalling crescendos ringing through the streets. Now, though, with my front-room window facing the golden brick of a church tower and the bells humming out on the quarter hours from 6:45 in the morning to 11:00 at night, the bells are personal to me, deep old voices warbling a call to prayer, singing my every day into a kind of structured music.

In a way, those bells and the cadence with which they frame my hours are part of the larger rhythm I’ve learned during my time in Oxford as I’ve increasingly (if erratically) adopted the practice of morning and evening prayer and the marking of the year by the seasons of earth and church. There is a clear sense in British culture and in my church here of both time and space as realities you mark and claim, made sacred by the way you see them, the words with which you frame them, the actions with which you fill them.

I encountered communal evening prayer my first month in Oxford, and as I began to attend regularly, hearing Scripture and prayer at a set time each day, I found the liturgies forming my thoughts, comforting me in stressed moments, giving me a cadence of worship in which to live the crazy rounds of my days. Then I found the glory of the church year, with its high days centered on the core events of Christ’s life: not just Christmas and Easter, birth and death, but Ascension and Pentecost, feasts that remind me of Christ’s return to the Father to prepare a place for all who love him, and of the Holy Spirit coming among us. What these prayers and feasts, these liturgies offer me is not only a mind formed by reverence but a deepened sense of identity, a fuller knowledge of who Christ is and the hope and glory to which he is drawing me.

What the church year and its liturgies have allowed me is the sense of my life, my one story of faith, my ordinary moments as caught up in the great narrative, the ceaseless coming of God. In an age where time and season are increasingly lost to the unsleeping pace of the internet era, the church year has helped me to draw my own days back into a rhythm of prayer, thanksgiving, wonder, and hush: a rhythm of grace by which I am learning to recognize God’s reality in every aspect of my life.

Even if you (like me) did not grow up experiencing the practice and beauty of liturgy or thinking much about time itself as sacred, I encourage you to peruse the following books. Several of them have been helpful to me as introductions to the whole topic of liturgy; others are companions to certain seasons (Advent or Lent); others are imaginative and poetic in their interaction with the church year. What is common to all is the way they have enriched and deepened my worship.

The Rhythm of God’s Grace: Uncovering Morning and Evening Hours of Prayer by Arthur Paul Boers

This was one of the first books I read that introduced me to the idea of daily, fixed-hour prayer. The simple explanation and persuasion of this book was immensely helpful to me as a beginner in the realm of liturgy as it explains the ancient rhythms of the church and how common prayer is a way of joining my voice with Christians all over the world.

Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry by Hans Boersma

A contemporary theologian who works in the evangelical tradition and draws deeply on the writings of the early church, Boersma has made it one of his main goals to revive an understanding of “sacramental ontology,” what he considers to be the profoundly Christian way of perceiving the created world and our embodied selves as participating in the life of God. His book Heavenly Participation has been crucial in helping me to understand the significance of beauty, liturgy, and tradition.

The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year by Kimberlee Conway Ireton

A book by a writer I count as a friend, this is an introduction to the world of the church year. Winsome and personal, woven through with stories, explanations, and ideas that illuminate the theology driving each season, this is an excellent introduction if you are new to the liturgical arena.

Every Moment Holy: New Liturgies for Daily Life by Douglas Kaine McKelvey

Years ago, I was delighted to discover that the early Celtic Christians had liturgies for everything from the coming of spring to the laying of a hearth fire. I loved the way their shared prayers reveal God’s grace amid the ordinary, the way the prayers join us, in the glory and grit of our ordinary days, with the movement of heaven itself. This book is crafted in that lively tradition and pointed toward the modern reader, offering prayers such as “A Liturgy for the Morning of a Medical Procedure” and “A Liturgy for Feasting with Friends” and even, happy thought, “A Liturgy for the Ritual of Morning Coffee.” Accompanied by marvelous woodcut illustrations, this is a book to treasure and savor.

You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit by James K. A. Smith

An insightful book arguing for a definition of humans as “desiring creatures” rather than “thinking things.” Using examples such as the liturgical structure of a shopping mall (read it and be amazed), Smith demonstrates our need to consider the way in which our moral character and our beliefs are shaped, not just by thought or doctrine, but by what we love and learn to love through habit, ritual, and liturgy.

The Divine Hours Series by Phyllis Tickle

Tickle’s collections of prayers and Scripture passages draw novice disciples into the rhythm of fixed-hour prayer so integral to medieval monastic rhythm. Creating a book of hours for the modern reader, Tickle draws on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, as well as the writings of the early church fathers, to help modern believers enter the ancient rhythm of daily prayer.

Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas and Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter by Plough Publishing

This is one of my favorite resources, a collection of daily readings designed to accompany a reader through the two great seasons of the church year, Advent and Lent. With entries by many of my most-loved writers, ranging from early church fathers and medieval poets to contemporary theologians, these books invite readers into a soulful journey, into that excavation of the heart that is one of the gifts of the Advent and Lenten seasons.

God with Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas and God for Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Lent and Easter by Greg Pennoyer and Gregory Wolfe (Editors)

Another set of favorites whose beauty I have savored for years, these books provide daily readings along with daily works of art for the four weeks of Advent and the season of Lent. With reflections written by recognized theologians and Christian authors, they offer a rich, thoughtful, often challenging immersion into the yearning and beauty of these seasons.