Life Rhythms and Anglicanism

One of my favorite parts of caring for young children is how your life takes on a certain rhythm.  There's the daily rhythm of naps and snacks and playtime, and it can start to feel like Groundhog's Day because every day is so much the same - except that the kids are going through seismic changes in the first few years and the routines and dependable rhythms can be very reassuring (to both kid and adult) as you transition through constant change.

Then there's the seasonal rhythm, where so much of what you do with kids is tied to the time of year - picnics in the spring, sandcastles in the summer, pumpkin patches in the fall, snowmen in the winter.  Every holiday, every birthday, every day of celebration is a big deal.  (When I think back to my own childhood, so many of my favorite memories are tied to these seasonal events - watching the Big Bang Boom firework show over Skyview Lake in the summer; going to Husker football games in the fall; sledding precariously down the hill at Mahoney State Park in the winter; dyeing Easter eggs at my Grandma's house in the spring.)

As adults, we necessarily lose some of this focus on the daily and yearly rhythms because there's so much to squeeze into the day however you can - work, household chores, caring for others, fitness, etc. - but I think people still find ways to recognize the seasonal rhythms and you see it all the time.  Some examples:  if people are posting daily Facebook statuses about what they are thankful for, what month is it?  If every single product in the grocery store comes in a pumpkin spice version, what season is it?

I think we love the seasons and seasonal traditions so much because we are built to live our life in a series of rhythms (daily, weekly, yearly, and the different seasons of life).  And now I'm finally going to connect all this "rhythm" talk to the title of the post - Anglicanism.  I attended an Anglican church for awhile in Virginia, and learned that it's a great denomination for people who are Protestant and looking for a liturgical church with a deep and rich history.  One of the most important distinctives of Anglicans is their use of The Book of Common Prayer*, which provides:

• Daily prayers:  There are morning, noon time, and evening prayers.  You can pray some or all of these, and you can pray them individually or with a group.  
• Seasonal prayers:  There are special prayers for church holy days (such as Easter, Christmas, etc.) and also for secular holidays (like Independence Day).  These give you beautiful, deeply thought out words to pray to commemorate the annual events of the season.  
• Prayers to honor special occasions:  There are prayers for the birth of a new child, marriage, sickness, the loss of a loved one -- all the occasions that are the most important parts of life, and where it's sometimes hard to find exactly the right words to try to match the importance of the event taking place.  
• (There's a lot of other kinds of prayer contained in the book, but I am beyond unqualified to give an exhaustive list. ) 

The Anglican church also observes the church calendar very faithfully, and so each year you have somber / contemplative times (like Advent and Lent) and celebratory times (like Easter, which it turns out is more than just the one day when the bunny shows up).  There is an elaborate celebration of Holy Week.  There is recognition of days that I had never paid much attention to before, such as All Saint's Day.  And there is the acknowledgement that, even with all the special days and special seasons, most of the church calendar (and most of our lives) are lived in "Ordinary Time".

The predictable rhythm of spending a few minutes each day in The Book of Common Prayer can provide great stability and reassurance in the middle of the ups and downs of life.  And the seasonal rhythms of the church calendar remind you to honor life's ups and downs - to celebrate during the good times, to mourn during the hard times.

One other thing I absolutely love about the Book of Common Prayer is that it gives you good direction in how to pray.  Growing up, I was taught that prayer should consist of  Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.  It's very easy to miss a LOT of things in every single one of these categories, as we tend to make our prayers all about us rather than about God.  The Book of Common Prayer can be a big help in deepening and broadening your prayer life.


*I wrote in my Resolutions blog post that I planned to use the Book of Common Prayer regularly this year (which is a resolution I've mostly stuck to, unlike some of the others) - this post explains why.