Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

Both Claiborne and Wilson-Hartgrove are part of a growing stream of thought in the US and abroad that believe when Jesus said we should come follow him and take up our cross he really meant it. He is bidding us come, die and find resurrection, community in the Body, an economy of love, reconciliation, stability, hospitality, and an abundant life lived with Him here and in the hereafter. Finally we in the west can see what it means to follow Jesus without traveling to the Majority World. They and their communities, of course, are not the only ones doing this, but they have, through their writings, caught our attention and ignited our prophetic imagination in an uncommon way.Common Prayer is definitely the most ambitious book these three authors have published. The third author is Enuma Okoro, the author of Reluctant Pilgrim(2010). Clearly, they have looked to those who have gone before them. Common Prayer offers us a spirituality that grounds us squarely in the story of God and invites us to pray the prayers of the saints and angels that have been prayed for thousands of years in some cases.Common prayer books are not a new idea. Communal prayer liturgies started with the early church. Most high church denominations have common prayer books.This book is unique though in that it invites us in to the New Monastic tradition. The prayers are based on the church calendar and the marks of the New Monasticism. So while talking about Advent, Good Friday, and Easter Common Prayer explores what it means to care for the earth, love your enemy, share your things, invite strangers to your dinner table and be grounded in the traditions and prayers that have enabled the Church to be the Church.The book is also ecumenical. So Catholics, Baptists, Quakers, Pentecostals, Americans(North, Latin and South), Europeans as well as Africans can all use it. It is multi-cultural and multi-racial. For the above reasons the book is really a marvelous accomplishment in my opinion.The book is split in to five parts: Evening Prayers, Morning Prayers, Mid-Day Prayer, Occasional Prayers and a song book.CP offers an evening prayer for every night of the week. They are each very similar with confession, two beautiful songs, a declaration of faith, and a song from scripture.There is a morning prayer for every day of the year with special prayers for the unique times like Holy Week. They are all similar in format with a song, scripture reading from the Psalms and the Old and New Testament, and a short quote from a unique Christian(such as Jean Vanier), activist, missionary, early church father or sometimes a scripture. Each month is centered around a mark from the New Monasticism. The marks tend to follow important dates such as "living in the abandoned places of empire" is in December when we celebrate Christ's incarnation, the truest model for this mark. February is "racial reconciliation".There is only one midday prayer consequently it's the most beautiful prayer of the entire book. It consists of St. Francis' prayer, the Anima Christi( a very beautiful Catholic prayer), a recitation of the Beatitudes, a time of silence and a few smaller prayers.CP then has a section for occasional prayers and finally a song book for songs sung during morning prayers.I was excited to began praying these prayers. I have to admit though, when I finally got the book I was, at first...well...perplexed mixed with disappointment. The ideas and readings felt alien. I felt like I was entering in to a foreign world of prayer. There were also prayers we simply didn't like, but we decided to stick with the book and maybe do some innovation. We proposed changing certain prayers.I think we've realized that the struggle for us was two fold. First, CP has a robust spirituality with plenty of scripture reading, thoughts from true practitioners, invitations to remember God (and not us) as the Source, prayers and readings that ask for the gift of empathy and action, and confession. The book, if taken seriously, like all true spirituality leads us down the road of self-denial and in to a counter-cultural way of living. Second, CP is repetitive. It can feel confining if you're used to being the director of your own faith journey. In a culture that is always looking for that new spiritual in ingredient to make faith work it feels like maybe our authors weren't imaginative enough.It helped when we researched the prayers and we discovered that they were, in fact, deep and well thought out and some of them have been prayed ardently for well over a thousand or more years in some cases. The authors are inviting us in to a spirituality so robust and old that there's less need for imagination and more need for research, relationships with those who have been praying these prayers most of their lives, faithfulness to the unknown and the willingness to share with us what has deeply inspired them. Lo and behold, God's path is simple and narrow. For that reason we decided to learn to love them. In most cases it has worked. Now we find ourselves humming the tunes and saying the prayers throughout the day. I'm also sharing songs from CP I've learned when I lead worship on Sundays.So if you are part of an intentional community, live alone, go to a big church or a small one, enjoy high church or no church this book will interest you.Well done Claiborne, Wilson-Hartgrove, Okoro and the many others involved. This is your best yet.Go to to get a glimpse of what you'll find in the book.

I haven't ever done a regular morning devotion before, but somehow I got started on this one and am really enjoying it.What I like the most about it is that is very diverse, drawing material from Roman Catholic, mainstream protestant and evangelical sources. I also like that it makes a lot of references to the social justice tradition of Christianity: Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, etc.This book contains many resources: a short collection of songs, and occassional prayers: blessings for homes, workplaces, major life transitions, meal times, and other special occassions.The heart of the book is a set of prayer services for morning, mid-day and evening. These incorporate Scripture, historic prayers and repetitive elements and can be done individually, as a community or a family.There is just one mid-day prayer liturgy, which is short enough that it could be memorized and repeated at lunch or on a coffee break.There are separate evening prayer services for each day of the week, which I found got a little repetitive after a few weeks.I have been using the morning prayer services most consistently, as there is a new one for each day of the year. There are some repetitive elements that open ("O Lord, let me soul rise up to meet you as the day rises to meet the sun." ) and close ("May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you...") each day. Then there are unique elements which change every day: a selection from the psalms, Old Testament and New Testament, a quotation and a prayer. There is also space for personal prayers for others. Occassionally there are short descriptions of important anniversaries of important events in the history of the church or the social justice movement.Each month there is a introduction to a theme of the "new monasticism" which are not just for people who are part of that movement, but taken as a whole are a good introduction to practices most Christians share - this is why the book is called "Common Prayer" - it is a good effort at developing a set of resources that Christians from many traditions could share.The whole book is really well written with lots of great resources.On the practical side, it is pretty heavy to carry a Bible and this book when I travel, so I ended up buying a copy for my Kindle, and I am enjoying using that.