Daily Reading for November 1 • All Saints’ Day

God of grace,
we thank for the saints whom we ourselves
have known and loved.
It does not come easily to us to call them saints,
it seems as if ordinary mortals
are not good or great enough.
But you have given your people this name
and invited us into your company,
and you know how much we loved them.
So for these good companions,
whom we name before you for their love,
and for our love of them,
we give you grateful thanks: names.
In the mystery of your love,
in the power of your spirit,
we are one with them.
We give great thanks.

“Communion of Saints,” in The Pattern of Our Days: Worship in the Celtic Tradition from the Iona Community, edited by Kathy Galloway (Paulist Press, 1996).

Daily Reading for November 2 • The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost, and the Feast of All Saints

The subway car tears through the darkness of the tunnel and blasts into the light of the stations for a rapid few seconds, only to tear into the darkness again; light and dark, light and dark, the clap-and-screech rhythm of the subway. A group of Hispanic women all talking at once sit directly across from me, while a tall Hasidic Jew stands in the aisle. On my right sits an Indian woman in western dress. Her little boy, about five years old, plays between her knees. The man across from the empty seat laughs loudly to himself.

Speeding through this dark tunnel scares me. I look to the faces nearby. The women across the aisle talk and laugh; their throaty, maternal voices remind me of my friends in San Antonio. . . .These women on the subway do not know me, but I feel linked through the musical cadence of their voices. I also feel linked to the Hasidic Jew, someone called to read the Torah, to take the scroll out and dance with it. So many times I have approached the Christian altar to lift the gospel book and carry it down the aisle. My eyes stinging, I have often wanted to turn and then dance through the congregation with the book. Instead, I walk down the aisle very properly, reverently, but not reverently enough. Someday, I think, I’ll just dance.

When I see a prayer shawl, when I see a nun’s veil, when I hear a chapel bell ring for vespers, I think we will survive. Sometimes I imagine that the idea of the Lamed-Vov is true, that the world is held together by thirty-six hidden righteous people. Instead of gravity, devotion holds together the world for the rest of us who are rushing through our lives. Maybe this speeding subway car would explode into thousands of pieces if people in hidden places all over the world were not at prayer.

From “Downtown Express” in Grace’s Window by Suzanne Guthrie. Copyright © 1996, 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for November 3 • Richard Hooker

As for us over whom Christ hath placed them [bishops] to be the chiefest guides and pastors of our souls, our common fault is that we look for much more in our governors than a tolerable sufficiency can yield, and bear much less than humanity and reason do require we should. Too much perfection over rigorously exacted in them, cannot but breed in us perpetual discontentment, and on both parts cause all things to be unpleasant.

From Richard Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, quoted in Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality by Richard H. Schmidt (Eerdmans, 2002).

Daily Reading for November 4

Almighty God, to whom we must account for all our powers and privileges: Guide the people of the United States and of this community in the election of officials and representatives; that, by faithful administration and wise laws, the rights of all may be protected and our nation be enabled to fulfill your purposes; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Prayer for an Election, from the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.

Give us, O God, leaders whose hearts are large enough to match the breadth of our own souls, and give us souls strong enough to follow leaders of vision and wisdom. In seeking a leader, let us seek more than development of ourselves—though development we hope for; more than security for our own land—though security we need; more than satisfaction for our wants—though many things we desire. We pray for the grace and the courage to vote with insight and wisdom, with heart and conviction. Let us pray for the leaders who will help us create the world we envision.

Adapted from Prayer for Leadership by Joan D. Chittister, OSB.

Daily Reading for November 5

Bless our beautiful land, O Lord,
with its wonderful variety of people,
of races, cultures and languages.
May we be a nation of laughter and joy,
of justice and reconciliation,
of peace and unity,
of compassion, caring and sharing.
We pray this prayer for a true patriotism,
in the powerful name of Jesus our Lord.

A prayer of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, quoted in 2000 Years of Prayer, compiled by Michael Counsell. Copyright © 1999. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for November 6 • William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1944

While we deliberate, he reigns; when we decide, he reigns; when we decide foolishly, he reigns; when we serve him in humble loyalty, he reigns; when we serve him self-assertively, he reigns; when we rebel and seek to withhold our service, he reigns—the Alpha and the Omega, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

From a sermon at Lambeth Conference (1930) by William Temple, quoted in Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality by Richard H. Schmidt (Eerdmans, 2002).

Daily Reading for November 7 • Willibrord, Archbishop of Utrecht, Missionary to Frisia, 739

When the man of God, Egbert, perceived that neither he himself was permitted to preach to the Gentiles, . . . nor that Wictbert, when he went into those parts, had met with any success, he nevertheless still attempted to send some holy and industrious men to the work of the word, among whom was Wilbrord, a man eminent for his merit and rank in the priesthood. They arrived there, twelve in number, and turning aside to Pepin, duke of the Franks, were graciously received by him; and as he had lately subdued the Hither Frisland, and expelled King Rathbed, he sent them thither to preach, supporting them at the same time with his authority, that none might molest them in their preaching, and bestowing many favors on those who consented to embrace the faith. Thus it came to pass, that with the assistance of the Divine grace, they in a short time converted many from idolatry to the faith of Christ. . . .

At their first coming into Frisland, as soon as Wilbrord found he had leave given him by the prince to preach, he made haste to Rome, where Pope Sergius then presided over the apostolical see, that he might undertake the desired work of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles, with his licence and blessing; and hoping to receive of him some relics of the blessed apostles and martyrs of Christ; to the end, that when he destroyed the idols, and erected churches in the nation to which he preached, he might have the relics of saints at hand to put into them, and having deposited them there, might accordingly dedicate those places to the honor of each of the saints whose relics they were. He was also desirous there to learn or to receive from thence many other things which so great a work required. Having obtained all that he wanted, he returned to preach. . . .

Pepin gave him a place for his episcopal see, in his famous castle, which in the ancient language of those people is called Wiltaburg, that is, the town of the Wilts; but, in the French tongue, Utrecht. The most reverend prelate having built a church there, and preaching the word of faith far and near, drew many from their errors, and erected several churches and monasteries. For not long after he constituted other bishops in those parts, from among the brethren that either came with him or after him to preach there; some of which are now departed in our Lord; but Wilbrord himself, surnamed Clement, is still living, venerable for old age, having been thirty-six years a bishop, and sighing after the rewards of the heavenly life, after the many spiritual conflicts which he has waged.

From Book V of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-book5.html

Daily Reading for November 8

[Acedia is] a wearied or anxious heart. It is akin to sadness and is the peculiar lot of solitaries and a particularly dangerous and frequent foe of those dwelling in the desert. . . . Once [acedia] has seized possession of a wretched mind it makes a person horrified at where he is, disgusted with his cell, and also disdainful and contemptuous of the brothers who live with him or at a slight distance, as being careless and unspiritual. Likewise it renders him slothful and immobile in the face of all the work to be done within the walls of his dwelling: It does not allow him to stay still in his cell or to devote any effort to reading.

From John Cassian (360-435), The Institutes, quoted in Acedia & me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life by Kathleen Norris (Riverhead Books, 2008).

Daily Reading for November 9 • The Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Why are so many Christians uncomfortable with the Second Coming? I think it is because in the past five centuries, the mainline churches of western Europe and North America have largely lost the sense of the transcendent. Sophisticated, modern people no longer take for granted the existence of a reality beyond what can be touched, measured, and managed by human ingenuity. The Bible and the church’s liturgy may say otherwise, but for many people, even many Christians, God is no longer seen as moving and acting in his world. If we want something done, we go to the union hall, a psychiatrist, our congressman, a lawyer, or a doctor. Then, if all that fails, we may “take it to the Lord in prayer.”

The Incarnation lies at the heart of the Christian story, and that doctrine arises out of belief in a transcendent reality. Without the transcendent, the idea that God became man, Word became flesh, is nonsense, because there is no God to become man, no Word to become flesh. Jesus becomes merely a great teacher, example, or pattern for healthy living. The reason many modern Christians are uncomfortable with the idea of the Second Coming is that their worldview doesn’t allow for any comings at all. They have lost sight of any transcendent reality that might have or could have come to earth and assumed human flesh. Those who cannot see God moving and acting in his world, whose lives have not been touched, much less transformed, by the First Coming are understandably bewildered by talk of a Second Coming.

From A Gracious Rain: A Devotional Commentary on the Prayers of the Church Year by Richard H. Schmidt. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for November 10 • Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461

Our Lord Jesus Christ, born truly human without ever ceasing to be true God, began in his person a new creation and by the manner of this birth gave humanity a spiritual origin. What mind can grasp this mystery, what tongue can fittingly recount this gift of love? Guilt becomes innocence, old becomes new, strangers are adopted and outsiders are made heirs. Rouse yourself, and recognize the dignity of your nature. Remember that you were made in God’s image; though corrupted in Adam, that image has been restored in Christ.

From a sermon for the Nativity by Leo the Great, quoted in Readings for the Daily Office from the Early Church, edited by J. Robert Wright. Copyright © 1991. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for November 11 • Martin, Bishop of Tours, 397

Perhaps nowhere is the overlapping of popular enthusiasm and episcopal initiative better illustrated than at sixth-century Tours, episcopal see of the fourth-century miracle-working ascetic Martin (ca. 372-97). . . . By the time Gregory became bishop in 573, Tours was already well established as “the city of Martin.” The paintings near his tomb related Martin’s life and miracles. The inscriptions in his funerary church proclaimed both his journey through the stars and his abiding presence in the tomb. That tomb, as well as certain sites hallowed by events of Martin’s life, now drew pilgrims from across northern and central Gaul. Gregory himself had once come to Tours as just such a pilgrim. Now, as the city’s bishop, Gregory immersed himself in Martin’s cult. Episcopal routines and personal piety brought him frequently to Martin’s church outside the city walls. And almost immediately he began to compile his own dossier of Martin’s contemporary miracles, believing that careful documentation might allay any doubt about the wonders worked by the living Martin two hundred years before.

The four books of Gregory’s Miracles of the Bishop St. Martin now seem a remarkable portrait of the dilemmas and hopes of his age. Gregory began his second book with an account of his own recovery from near-fatal dysentery, cured by a drink of water laced with dust from Martin’s tomb when the wisdom of the doctors had run dry. Thereafter he would continue to record his recourse to the tomb for aid and comfort. But Gregory would seldom, if ever, have been alone there. The Miracles portray Martin’s church as the refuge of the afflicted. The sick, blind, and possessed crowd in upon the doorways and lie in the courtyard. They represent every level of society. Often they arrive in wagons or carried by friends and family. They stay for days; they return annually. They favor Martin’s feast days and other holy days. The fortunate are healed or cleansed, and some stay on to become monks or nuns. Many return home with relics, a bit of dust from the tomb or a candle. Some go away with a lesson learned about Sabbath purity or charity. But few apparently departed unawed by the power of Martin, the “friend of God” (Miracles 4.Preface.).

From Late Ancient Christianity, edited by Virginia Burrus, volume 2 in the series A People’s History of Christianity (Fortress Press, 2005).

Daily Reading for November 12 • Charles Simeon, Priest, 1836

Simeon lived to preach. This was unusual at a time when most sermons were dry, learned discourses, memorized word-for-word or read from a manuscript. Many preachers used sermons written by other people, taken from books. Listeners were expected to think about the ideas expressed, but rarely were they challenged to change their lives. This was not for Charles Simeon, who saw such preaching as an invitation to a self-satisfied, lukewarm piety. Simeon not only wrote his own sermons, but spent twelve hours preparing each one, sometimes longer. And he sought to engage not only the minds, but the hearts and wills of his listeners. Although he shared the distrust of “enthusiasm” typical of the day, he did not hesitate to appeal to the emotions as well as to the intellect. His sermons were dramatic and fervent. Cambridge was not ready for Simeon, and congregations were small at first (due in part, no doubt, to the creative efforts of the wardens to keep them small). But within a decade, people began to fill the pews of Holy Trinity (new, more sympathetic wardens opened the pews in 1790), and by the early 1800s, a Sunday congregation of a thousand worshipers was not unusual. . . .

The most distinctive feature of Simeon’s preaching was his faithfulness to scripture. He rose daily at 4:00 am and spent four hours a day in Bible study and prayer. Simeon knew the scriptures—he read the Bible far more than anything else—and believed the preacher’s task was to allow the scripture to speak. “My goal,” he said in the preface to Horae Homileticae, is to bring out of the scripture what is there, and not to thrust in what I think might be there.”

From the introduction to Charles Simeon in Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality by Richard H. Schmidt (Eerdmans, 2002).

Daily Reading for November 13

Holiness, Benedict argues, is not something that happens in a vacuum. It has something to do with the way we live our community lives and our family lives and our public lives as well as the way we say our prayers. The life-needs of other people affect the life of the truly spiritual person and they hear the voice of God in that. . . .

Monastic spirituality depends on direction. It is a rule of life. Self-control, purpose, and discipline give aim to what might otherwise deteriorate into a kind of pseudo-religious life meant more for public show than for personal growth. It is so comforting to multiply the practices of the church in our life and so inconvenient to have to meet the responsibilities of the communities in which we live.

But the spiritual life is not a taste for spiritual consolations. The spiritual life is a commitment to faith where we would prefer certainty. It depends on readiness. It demands constancy. It flourishes in awareness.

The ancients say that once upon a time a disciple asked the elder, “Holy One, is there anything I can do to make myself Enlightened?” And the Holy One answered, “As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning.”

“Then of what use,” the surprised disciple asked, “are the spiritual exercises you prescribe?”

“To make sure,” the elder said, “that you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise.”

From The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages by Joan Chittister (Crossroad, 1996).

Daily Reading for November 14 • Consecration of Samuel Seabury, First American Bishop, 1784

Parish worship on the whole continued along prerevolutionary lines once the Episcopal Church had organized itself and adopted a Prayer Book. Regional variations persisted. Connecticut’s Bishop Seabury devoted himself energetically to his episcopal ministry, ordaining clergy for New England, making episcopal tours to administer confirmation (a rite previously unknown in a colonial church without bishops), and urging more frequent celebration and reception of Communion. When Seabury was consecrated in Scotland, his eucharistic theology seems to have been of the ordinary high-church kind characteristic in Connecticut in his day. But the Scots sent him back with a collection of pamphlets and books which set forth their own distinctive outlook, and in the next few years he seems to have adopted this outlook in its entirety. Others share with him the credit for the adoption of a variant of the Scottish eucharistic prayer in the 1789 Prayer Book, but none seem to have so consistently advocated the theology to which that text gives expression as Seabury did. He issued in 1789 An Earnest Persuasive to Frequent Communion and in 1791 reprinted the catechism of the Scottish bishop George Innes of Brechin, which lists as first of the duties of the Sabbath “to offer and receive the Holy Eucharist.” In New London, he himself adopted the practice of a celebration each Sunday. He was ahead of his time, however, and was unsuccessful in persuading others to follow his example.

From Eucharistic Celebration 1789-1979 by Byron D. Stuhlman (Church Hymnal Corporation, 1988).

Daily Reading for November 15

In work, it has always taken courage to follow a unique and individual path exactly, because making our own path takes us off the path, in directions which seem profoundly unsafe. A pilgrimage into the night and the night wind. The territory through which we must travel to make a life for ourselves is always more difficult than we could first imagine; it takes us to the cliff edges of life. The amusing part is that you can spend years preparing for the possibility of falling off the cliff and then find yourself suddenly under the cliff, approaching it from another, equally terrifying direction.

Finding a work to which we can dedicate ourselves always calls for some kind of courage, some form of heartfelt participation. It needs courage because the intrinsic worth of work lies in the fact that it connects us to larger, fiercer worlds where we are forced to remember first priorities. The farm laborer knows the toil that literally puts bread on the table. The police officer knows firsthand the invisible line between order and disorder in society. I remember a recent dinner conversation with a water utility executive who had been in the midst of a massive Turkish earthquake. Awake night after night, doing work that was not part of his official job description, he and his team brought water, medicines, and supplies to bereft, panicking communities. Once the crisis was past, he wondered if he would ever feel that aliveness and urgency again the rest of his days. He was wistful for the frontier encounter, the cliff edge. This cliff edge is a frontier where passion, belonging, and need call for our presence, our powers, and our absolute commitment. To approach work in this manner is not merely to look for constant excitement but to join a conversation with the great cycles of existence, cycles that often terrify us even as they call on the best of us.

From Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity by David Whyte (Riverhead Books, 2001).

Daily Reading for November 16 • The Twenty-seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Now we need to look at the shadow side of this parable [of the talents]: the third slave who was given only one talent and did not do anything with it. Here is a somber warning without doubt. There are two ways of being unfaithful. There is the “hot” way, which is to abuse our powers and use them destructively. This is the sin of commission. Then there is the “cold” way of being unfaithful, which is to do nothing at all and therefore neglect and abort one’s potential. . . .

[It] may have been that the smallness of his talent led him to conclude that what he did with it did not matter. If I believe anything at all, it is this: in God’s universe, there is nothing that is insignificant. The great things were first of all little things that were lifted up to God in reverence and gratitude, and then used to the fullest. It is a mistake to confuse size with value. . . . But the text itself suggests that the real problem was one of mistrust. . . . Nothing distorts our humanity quite as much as the sense that there is not enough and therefore one has to fight or flee. Of course, more than anything else, this distortion is what Jesus came to cast out. The serpent put the whole human race off track by casting false aspersions on God’s character. He projected onto God what this slave projected onto his master—that God was hard, cruel, dishonest, and untrustworthy. It was to undo this misrepresentation that Jesus entered into history. In a study group, I heard author John Killinger claim that “Jesus was God’s answer to the problem of a bad reputation.” Killinger believes that reconciliation finally occurs when we let Jesus “show us the Father” and disprove forever the serpent’s distortion.

From Stories Jesus Still Tells by John Claypool, revised second edition (Cowley Publications, 2000).

Daily Reading for November 17 • Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, 1200

It is impossible adequately to record amongst the other marks of his devotion, his great compassion and tenderness towards the sick, and even to those afflicted with leprosy. He used to wash and dry their feet and kiss them affectionately, and having refreshed them with food and drink gave them alms on a lavish scale. He often did this privately in his chamber with few people present to thirteen patients, when that number could be found in the place where he was. There were hospitals on certain of the episcopal manors, where many men and women afflicted by this disease were maintained. He made a practice of giving gifts of many different kinds to these in addition to the revenue already assigned to them by his predecessors, and frequently visited them himself with a few of his more God-fearing and devout retainers. He would sit in their midst in a small inner room and would comfort their souls by his kindly words, relieving their sorrow by his motherly tenderness, and encouraging those who were so desolate and afflicted in this life to hope for an eternal reward, combining with amazing gentleness words of consolation and exhortations to good conduct. Also if he noticed any tendency to wrong-doing, he would exhort them not to give way to it, and if they had done so to repent, and from henceforth neither to dare nor desire to do wrong. Before his address the women withdrew at his command and he went to kiss the men one by one, bending over each of them and giving a longer and more tender embrace to those whom he saw worse marked by the disease. . . . He declared such to be blessed, and called them the flowers of Paradise and the lucent pearls in the crown of the eternal king. These, he said, could confidently await the coming of Our Saviour Jesus Christ who would transform their vile bodies into the glory of His risen body.

From Magna vita Sancti Hugonis by Adam of Eynsham, edited by Decima L. Douie and David Hugh Farmer, Volume 2, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford University Press, 1961).

Daily Reading for November 18 • Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, 680

Why some of the Irish and also some of the English differed from the new Roman missionaries about [the date of Easter] was not a matter of alternative symbolism or theology or biblical study, but of calendric calculation. . . . When we look at who said what and why, it was all more mixed-up than at first appears. It was not a matter of the arrogant men from Rome baring their teeth at the simple Irish at all. At the Council of Whitby, who supported which side? There was no clear-cut division in terms of nationalism. An epitome of the mingling of traditions is seen in Hilda, the hostess on this occasion.

Hilda was an Anglo-Saxon princess (614-680). . . [and] was thus by birth one of the Saxon invaders, and her first experience of Christianity was of that brought by the Roman missionaries. In 647, when she was 33, Hilda decided to be a nun and went to her nephew in East Anglia for a year, planning to go to join her sister in the Gaulish convent at Chelles. But she came to know and revere the missionary from Iona, Aidan, and he persuaded her to stay in England, first as part of a new group at Hartlepool. Then, when the abbess Heiu left for a life of greater seclusion, Hilda became abbess.

She was given charge of Aelfflaed, one-year-old daughter of King Oswiu of Northumbria, after his success at the battle of the Winwead. Two years later Oswiu gave her more land at Whitby, where she ruled a new monastery. She was greatly revered and loved: ‘All who knew her called her mother.’ She made the royal monastery of Whitby, the place of the burial of the rulers of Northumbria, a place of serious Christian education, where she trained five bishops including the saintly John of Beverley. There also the first English poet, Caedmon, became a monk and there the earliest Life of Pope Gregory the Great was written. Hilda was hostess to the Council of Whitby where, under the influence of Aidan and Colman, she inclined at first towards the Irish side. . . . Hilda died in 680, the year in which Bede entered Wearmouth. In her life there is a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, Roman and Irish elements which blended together imperceptibly. . . . Almost everyone at Whitby had close and friendly contact with both Roman and Irish missionaries; it was not a clash of opposites, but an argument between friends on a matter the importance of which united them far more than the details divided.

From High King of Heaven: Aspects of Early English Spirituality by Benedicta Ward SLG (Mowbray, 1999).

Daily Reading for November 19 • Elizabeth, Princess of Hungary, 1231

Lord Jesus, as God’s Spirit came down and rested upon you,
may the same Spirit rest upon us,
bestowing his sevenfold gifts.

First, grant us the gift of understanding,
by which your precepts may enlighten our minds.

Second, grant us counsel,
by which we may follow in your footsteps
on the path of righteousness.

Third, grant us courage,
by which we may ward off the Enemy’s attacks.

Fourth, grant us knowledge,
by which we can distinguish good from evil.

Fifth, grant us piety,
by which we may acquire compassionate hearts.

Sixth, grant us fear,
by which we may draw back from evil
and submit to what is good.

Seventh, grant us wisdom,
that we may taste fully
the life-giving sweetness of your love.

A prayer of Bonaventura (1217-74), General of the Franciscans, quoted in 2000 Years of Prayer, compiled by Michael Counsell. Copyright © 1999. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for November 20 • Edmund, King of East Anglia, 870

Did I find solace in reading? Yes, but not at first. . . . Isola gave me a book called Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle, and a tedious thing he was—he gave me shooting pains in my head—until I came to a bit on religion.

I was not a religious man, though not for want of trying. Off I’d go, like a bee among blossoms, from church to chapel to church again. But I was never able to get a grip on Faith—till Mr. Carlyle posed religion to me in a different way. He was walking among the ruins of the Abbey at Bury St. Edmunds, when a thought came to him, and he wrote it down thus:

“Does it ever give thee pause, that men used to have a soul—not by hearsay alone, or as a figure of speech; but as a truth that they knew, and acted upon! Verily it was another world then. . . but yet it is a pity that we have lost the tidings of our souls. . . we shall have to go in search of them again, or worse in all ways shall befall us.”

Isn’t that something—to know your own soul by hearsay, instead of its own tidings? Why should I let a preacher tell me if I had one or not? If I could believe I had a soul, all by myself, then I could listen to its tidings all by myself. I gave my talk on Mr. Carlyle to the Society, and it stirred up a great argument about the soul. Yes? No? Maybe?

From The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: A Novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (Random House/Dial Press, 2008).

Daily Reading for November 21

The wild goose is a Celtic symbol of God’s Spirit. Hundreds of migrating wild geese alight on Holy Island each year. They include Canadian Brent and Pink-footed geese. A BBC TV programme entitled Hidden Forces stated: ‘We’ve only just begun to unravel some of the magnetic senses which guide the geese across the world.’ Some geese return to a place after over thirty years of absence.

On Easter Day 1996 I lingered, with some sadness, outside my house with two friends. The church community which had been my family for many years had just said farewell to me. Now I faced a day of packing before moving to the unknown quantity of Lindisfarne. There was a great cry overhead. It was a wild goose. I had neither seen nor heard a wild goose in all my years in that place. The Holy Spirit was saying, ‘I am going ahead of you to Lindisfarne.’

Great Spirit, Wild Goose of the Almighty
Be my eye in the dark places
Be my flight in the trapped places
Be my host in the wild places
Be my formation in the lost places
Be my brood in the barren places.

From “Midday reflection at Cuddies Beach” in A Holy Island Prayer Book: Morning, Midday, and Evening Prayer by Ray Simpson. Copyright © 2002. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for November 22 • C. S. Lewis, Apologist and Spiritual Writer, 1963

In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by theology. I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, “I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!”

Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

From Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis (Macmillan, 1943).

Daily Reading for November 23 • The Last Sunday after Pentecost (Christ the King)

The whole point of Jesus giving us the final exam in the middle of the course is not to frighten us into failure, but to inspire us to recognize and begin to actualize our true identities. The purpose of this parable [of the sheep and the goats] is not to scare us into contriving a lot of humanitarian acts in order selfishly to acquire salvation. If we start feeding the hungry and clothing the naked simply to gain a reward, we have missed the whole point. Jesus came to change the way we understand ourselves and our relationship to God. The most important truth of all is this: God’s love is gift-love, not need-love, and we are made in the image of that reality. There is an artesian well in everyone whose source is the abundance of God. We are what we are because of who our Parent is, and once this identity becomes deeply rooted in our being, then an unself-conscious giving of self will become a way of life. This in another way of saying that we “inherit the kingdom prepared for us from the foundations of the world.”

From Stories Jesus Still Tells by John Claypool, revised second edition (Cowley Publications, 2000).

Daily Reading for November 24

Julian lived in a time of great upheaval. The Black Death swept through Europe several times, killing millions and almost certainly touching Julian’s family and neighbors. The Catholic Church was in schism, and the theology of the day was that God was angry with a world of sinners and inflicted these ills as punishment. Yet Julian’s most famous saying and prayer was that “all manner of things would be well.” . . . For Julian, God was in everything, even the bad things, working to bring about the best end. “God is more nearer to us than our own soul,” she wrote. She planted herself not in the darkness, but in the light. For that reason, I find praying her words on prayer beads to be a rallying cry in the darkest of times, a way to trust God to bring peace and love, hope and redemption.

On the Cross
I am that which is highest,
I am that which is lowest,
I am that which is All.

On the Invitatory Bead
The Lord’s Prayer

On the Cruciform Beads
God of your goodness, give me yourself
For you are enough for me.
I cannot properly ask anything less to be worthy of you.
If I were to ask less, I should always be in want
For only in you have I all.

On the Weeks Beads (on Every Bead)
All shall be well and all shall be well,
And all manner of thing shall be well.

From “Praying the Anglican Rosary with the Saints” in Bead One, Pray Two: A Guide to Making and Using Prayer Beads by Kimberly Winston. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for November 25 • James Otis Sargent Huntington, Priest and Monk, 1935

For something short of ten years, the two priests, then constituting this small religious group, carried on the work at Holy Cross Mission Church, which afforded them an unparalleled opportunity amongst the poor and depressed. They had large numbers of children under their care. The boys and young men were a special charge, as the Sisters taught and trained the girls. The work was very engrossing, visiting, day and night, teaching, carrying on the guilds, keeping up the choir offices and the public services and in summer conducting a Fresh Air work for boys in a barn-like building put up for the purpose and known as “St. Andrew’s Cottage,” on a lot next to the Mission. When in New York they rarely left the East Side and had few acquaintances among “up-town” folk. All along, however, they had many visitors, and almost always one or two priests and laymen living with them. Many years afterwards Father Huntington wrote:

“We came gradually to understand something as to the attitude of mind of those among whom we laboured. We knew how they ate (or starved), toiled, slept (often on the floor), sickened (tuberculosis was rife), and died. Yet I think that we never succeeded in realizing how they felt,—what it must have meant, for instance, to grow up without having ever been out of the presence of other people, so crowded were the conditions. One thing was to us surprising and significant. Poor as our people were, always on the edge, at least, of utter destitution, they scarcely ever came to us for material assistance. They had the pride of their race, honest German peasants or craftsmen, and they wanted to feel that what they had of religion was not spoiled for them by mendicancy and material dependence. When we had a two weeks’ Mission at Holy Cross Church, under the Cowley Fathers our people gave, from their scant earnings, nearly five hundred dollars for the expenses of the Mission.”

Those who know the pathos and tragedy of work amongst the poor, haloed as it always is with something close akin to romance, can understand the life that the Order lived on the East Side. It was a drive, but a happy drive. In and out of the lofty tenements, day and night seeking out the sick, the poor; ministering incessantly to bodies and souls—in such a work every day offered opportunities for cementing sacred spiritual relationships that filled life with a satisfaction which those who have not ministered under such conditions can never know.

From An American Cloister: The Life and Work of the Order of the Holy Cross by Shirley Carter Hughson, O.H.C. (West Park, N.Y.: Holy Cross Press, 1948). http://anglicanhistory.org/religious/hughson_cloister1948/02.html

Daily Reading for November 26

We are all of us judged every day. We are judged by the face that looks back at us from the bathroom mirror. We are judged by the faces of the people we love and by the faces and lives of our children and by our dreams. We are judged by the faces of the people we do not love. Each day finds us at the junction of many roads, and we are judged as much by the roads we have not taken as by the roads we have.

The New Testament proclaims that at some unforeseeable time in the future, God will ring down the final curtain on history, and there will come a Day on which all our days and all the judgments upon us and all our judgments upon each other will themselves be judged. The judge will be Christ. In other words, the one who judges us most finally will be the one who loves us most fully.

Romantic love is blind to everything except what is lovable and lovely, but Christ’s love sees us with terrible clarity and sees us whole. Christ’s love so wishes our joy that it is ruthless against everything in us that diminishes our joy. The worst sentence Love can pass is that we behold the suffering that Love has endured for our sake, and that is also our acquittal. The justice and mercy of the judge are ultimately one.

From “Judgment” in Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith by Frederick Buechner (HarperSanFrancisco, 2004).

Daily Reading for November 27 • Thanksgiving Day

Give thanks to the Lord who is good.
God’s love is everlasting.

Come, let us praise God joyfully.
Let us come to God with thanksgiving.

For the good world; for things great and small, beautiful and awesome; for seen and unseen splendors:
Thank you, God.

For human life; for talking and moving and thinking together; for common hopes and hardship shared from birth until our dying:
Thank you, God.

For work to do and strength to work; for the comradeship of labor; for exchanges of good humor and encouragement:
Thank you, God.

For marriage; for the mystery and joy of flesh made one; for mutual forgiveness and burdens shared; for secrets kept in love:
Thank you, God.

For family; for living together and eating together; for family amusements and family pleasures:
Thank you, God.

For children; for their energy and curiosity; for their brave play and their startling frankness; for their sudden sympathies:
Thank you, God.

For the young; for their high hopes; for their irreverence toward worn-out values; for their search for freedom; for their solemn vows:
Thank you, God.

For growing up and growing old; for wisdom deepened by experience; for rest in leisure; and for time made precious by its passing:
Thank you, God.

For your help in times of doubt and sorrow; for healing our diseases; for preserving us in temptation and danger:
Thank you, God.

For the church into which we have been called; for the good news we received by Word and Sacrament; for our life together in the Lord:
We praise you, God.

For your Holy Spirit, who guides our steps and brings us gifts of faith and love; who prays in us and prompts our grateful worship:
We praise you, God.

Above all, O God, for your Son Jesus Christ, who lived and died and lives again for our salvation; for our hope in him; and for the joy of serving him:
We thank and praise you, Eternal God, for all your goodness to us.

Give thanks to the Lord who is good.
God’s love is everlasting. Amen.

“Litany of Thanksgiving” from the Book of Common Worship (1993), quoted in The Wideness of God’s Mercy: Litanies to Enlarge Our Prayer, revised and updated edition, compiled and adapted by Jeffery Rowthorn with W. Alfred Tisdale. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for November 28 • Kamehameha and Emma, King and Queen of Hawai’i, 1864, 1885

In 1860 the King and Queen sent a request to the British Government for a Bishop and clergy to be sent out to them. After considering the claims of the Congregationalist form of church government, hitherto the only one officially recognised in the island; after weighing the matters which were wanting in them—the comparative dreariness and heaviness of their services to . . . a people, who were gradually, it seemed, being attracted to the Church of Rome by the greater relief to ear and eye afforded by the services of that Mission—they came to the conclusion that the Church of England had the form of worship which would be most suitable to them, together with the great truths held in common with other Protestant bodies, which the Romish Church could not give them. In 1862 Bishop Staley was sent out to Hawaii as Missionary Bishop of Honolulu.

But just before his arrival, the joy of the King and Queen had been changed into mourning; the little prince, now four years old, had been attacked by disease of the brain, and had died after a few days’ illness. He was their only child—they never had another. In the trial the sympathy of the Bishop and his wife was very grateful to the bereaved parents, and thenceforth to the King, who, if not a professedly religious person, had for some time been living respectably, and steadily attending to the duties of his office, became a true and earnest Christian man. He devoted himself to his royal duties more assiduously than ever, and spent his spare time in translating our English Prayer Book into Hawaiian. But a tinge of sadness was thenceforth cast upon his mind. . . .

On one occasion . . . the King and his party attended a little meeting-house of the Congregationalists, served by a native preacher, who preached a strong Calvinist sermon, in which his zeal outran his discretion, and, no doubt, involuntarily caricaturing the doctrines of his teachers, he descanted at large upon the subject of eternal punishment, apparently losing sight of the general drift of the Bible, and of the aspect in which our Father in heaven is there presented to us. The King could not bear to think that his people should be taught no better ideas of the truth than this, and he announced that he would hold another service in the afternoon. The chapel was crowded with natives, and the King, putting on a white surplice, mounted the pulpit, and preached another kind of sermon, taking for his text the words, “Jesus wept.” Instead of trying to terrify his hearers into holiness of life by startling imaginary descriptions of future punishment, the King spoke of the love of God constraining us, and of the hope and of the incentive to goodness which that idea gives. He spoke from his own experience, and his people listened in awe and reverence. That evening he had the first attack of a disease which a few months later released him from a life which had become very weary to him. He died on the 30th of November, 1863, watched over by his devoted wife with tender care to the last.

From “The Four Kamehamehas” in Mission Life, Vol. VI (March 1, 1869). http://anglicanhistory.org/hawaii/kamehamehas1869.html

Daily Reading for November 29

The Cry to God as ‘Father’ in the New Testament is not a calm acknowledgement of a universal truth about God’s abstract fatherhood. It is the Child’s cry out of a nightmare. It is the cry of outrage, fear, shrinking away, when faced with the horror of the ‘world’—yet not simply or exclusively protest, but trust as well. ‘Abba Father’ all things are possible to Thee.

By Rowan Williams, quoted in Celtic Daily Prayer: Prayers and Readings from the Northumbria Community, introduced by Richard J. Foster (HarperCollins, 2002).

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Daily Reading for November 30 • The First Sunday of Advent

Almighty Father
your Son came to us in humility as our saviour
and at the last day he will come again in glory as our judge:
give us grace to turn away from darkness to the light of Christ
that we may be ready to welcome him
and to enter into his kingdom;
where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit
one God, for ever and ever.

Collect for the First Sunday in Advent, from An Anglican Prayer Book 1989 of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa.

‘Peace to you,’ says Revelation 1:4, ‘from him who is, and who was, and who is to come.’ We should expect, ‘. . .and from him who will be’, since according to Greek ideas the presence of God in all three modes of time is an expression of his timelessness and simultaneous eternity: Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus will be: Zeus is eternal. The gods exist in the eternal present of Being, and everything that was, that is, and that will be, is in their eyes present. But here instead of the future of the verb to be (einai), we have the future of the verb to come (erchestai). The linear concept of time is broken through in its third term.

This has a considerable significance for the understanding of God and of time. God’s future is not that he will be as he was and is, but that he is on the move and coming toward the world. God’s Being is in his coming, not in his becoming. If it were in his becoming, then it would also be in his passing away. But as the Coming One (ho erchomenos), through his promises and his Spirit (which precede his coming and announce it) God now already sets present and past in the light of his eschatological arrival, an arrival which means the establishment of his eternal kingdom, and his indwelling in the creation renewed for that indwelling. The coming of God means the coming of a being that no longer dies and a time that no longer passes away. What comes is eternal life and eternal time.

From Jürgen Moltmann’s The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, translated by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996).