The blessings of gathering with others for daily prayer

It is still dark outside when I make my way down the block, keenly aware of the January frost that bites with my every step. I arrive just after Hilary, dropped off by her husband on his way to work.

Julia and Jennifer have the warmest commute: They only need to make their way from bedrooms to living room (sometimes basking in the luxury of pajamas).

After defrosting and a spate of heartfelt greetings, I sit in my usual spot while someone lights a candle and we divvy up who will read the prayers and who the Psalms.

Just as the first hints of morning slip through the blinds, we quiet and begin.

Awake, my soul.
Awake, O harp and lyre.
I will awaken the dawn.

We’ve been gathering like this, with varying layers of blankets and space heaters greeting us in the morning, since mid-fall. I had returned from a summer with the contemplative and ecumenical Sisters of Grandchamp, where I’d been formed in contemplative prayer, and before that had flirted with morning prayers in a few ways.

Missing the rhythm and regularity of monastery life, I was delighted when Julia approached me and asked if I might have interest in gathering to pray in the mornings and then carpooling to Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), Ekhart, Ind., together.

On one level it was as much a practical suggestion as a spiritual one. Too often we ended up following each other to school, which felt, at best, wasteful and, at worst, pretty stupid, since we lived a half-block from each other.

The idea of forming a women’s morning prayer group had even more practical implications as we proposed it to Hilary, who needed a way to get to work at the Mennonite Church USA offices next door to our seminary. At least one of us (as yet unnamed) welcomed the motivation to stop sleeping in too often.

So we gathered, knowing that beyond the practical, there would indeed be certain spiritual grace, connection with God and with each other. In four months of regular meeting, this grace has emerged in varied ways, sometimes more clearly than others.

Unquestionably, group morning prayer has been as much about cultivating the discipline of seeing each other daily—checking in, being authentic, griping if need be or sharing ecstatically the prior day’s joys—as the prayer itself. The act of gathering, even prior to Julia lighting the candle or Jen opening us with Scripture and silence, I find to be a prayer in itself.

If prayer can mean “a request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God,” then our gathering is indeed an expression of thanks: for the faces and hugs of dear friends, for homes and hospitality, for community, for a new day.

What of the prayers themselves? From the beginning we’ve used a prayer book familiar to all of us from a class Marlene Kropf taught at AMBS: Celtic Benediction by J. Phillip Newell.

The book allows for the kind of openness and silence that I craved after returning from the monastery. The prayers themselves, in the form of poetry, follow the movements of creation and are grounding in their earth imagery while challenging in their call to “dispel the confusions that cling close to our souls.”

On Fridays, to connect with others who also practice morning prayers and to take advantage of the wonderful Anabaptist prayer book published by the Institute of Mennonite Studies, some of us migrate a block over to join a longstanding Friday morning prayer group of folks a little older than ourselves.

In a world where a thousand daily distractions, technological or otherwise, vie for our attention, the practice of interspersing prayers with silence is an important part of our morning discipline. For some of us, it is a natural way to connect with God, grounding ourselves in intimacy with our Creator through centering prayer. For others, it is about all we can muster at 7:30 a.m. And for others, the silence itself is a discipline that truly takes cultivation.

Hilary freely admits: “Spending time in silence is a struggle. It doesn’t feel spiritually enlightening to me, but it does feel important. The fact that I don’t get immediate gratification from beginning my day this way has helped me develop an intentional commitment to the process of daily prayer and to the people.”

To begin the day with the tripartite gift of time with God, friends and a well-placed space heater is truly a practice that for us is orienting.

In this same world of distractions, it becomes all too easy to forget my own “true North,” to forget amid seminary assignments, lunch meetings and too many appointments that I am here, on this earth, to enjoy friendship with God and with God’s people. Morning prayers, and all spiritual practices, are not the stuff of life itself, but they are the latticework, so to speak. Latticework may not be the focus of the rose garden, but ultimately makes it strong and possible.

“It’s not like it’s magic,” Hilary reminds me, “like now that I’m praying in the mornings, I find myself infinitely spiritually grounded, but it’s an acknowledgement that little things make a difference over the long haul.”

Julia lights the candle this morning. The stone candleholder is fittingly a depiction of friends holding hands around the light. Jen takes Celtic Benediction and opens to this morning’s prayers. Hilary chooses a Psalm to read aloud for us all to hear and meditate upon. I cuddle under a blanket, closing my eyes and taking my first truly deep breath of the day. It is a breath of gratitude: for this space, for these friends, for this time of prayer and for another day to appreciate all the little gifts that indeed make life rich and blessed over the long haul.

Awake, my soul.
Awake, O harp and lyre.
I will awaken the dawn.