The Liturgy of the Hours

From the Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 16:

As the prophet says, "Seven times in the day I have given praise to Thee," so we shall observe this sacred number of seven if at the hour of Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Complin we fulfill the duties of our service. Therefore, at these times let us give praise to our Creator for the judgments of His justice.

Lauds

“O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.”

5:50 am – The alarm goes off and I turn in my warm bed of red sheets under a white feather duvet. It is still black out the window and the announcer on the radio is blathering on about the pre-dawn weather as if weather, as if anything can really exist at this hour while the world sleeps on. But I am not ready for forecasts or dawn or God, and so I grant myself ten minutes more, banking on God’s mercy and on his memory of a warm bed on an early morning.

And then, I am up, grinding the beans, boiling the water - four minutes to brew the coffee in the press until it is thick and black with a foam on the top, and I pour it into my warmed brown mug. I sit on the couch with the windows that face the street, the dripping leaves beyond my front porch, the trash cans, the wet lines of dropped brown cedar needles, the dying grasses. I balance my coffee with my lectio divina, my sacred reading, my daily meditation: a verse, a sip, a thought, a sip, a verse, a sip, a thought, a sip, and I poke at the God that is hanging in the air around me. But I am tired and easily distracted, and most of my prayers are grafted onto lists of things to do and ways I should stop worrying or women I should become. Until I have only five minutes left. But then, I sit looking out the window at a small orange spot on the trunk of a skinny maple across the road. It is so bright and out of place that I wonder for a moment if it has been painted onto the bark, except that I can see now that it is growing. The orange moves upward like a spreading blush along the trunk and into the leaves, so that for a moment it is glowing and golden while the rest of the trees sleep in quieter colours and the sun pulls itself into the sky and into another day. I watch and inhale the light’s movement and the blooming of the colour across the morning.

Prime

“O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.”

Waking her is the worst and sweetest thing I do. Her folded six-year-old self with it’s sweaty curls, sprawling limbs and parted lips sleeps so unaware and open, like a love letter left lying on the table. I sing to her and she smiles. I whisper to her that it is time to get up and she smiles still with her eyes closed. She moans and hides under the blankets to stay longer. So I practice some mercy and let her take her waking slow. But at 7:20 when the breakfast table is full of crumbs and she is talking or dancing or daydreaming more than she is eating my patience bashes up against the wall of its boundaries. “You need to hurry up, sweetie.” “Come on. A little faster.” “Get going.” “You’re going to be late. Now hurry up or you won’t get to finish your breakfast.”

7:45 am – Teeth brushing.

7:50 am – Her in the shower.

8:00 am – Both of us dressing.

8:10 am – Hair brushing.

8:12 am – Lunch made, bag packed, shoes on.

8:15 am- Out the door.

We arrive at her school at 8:20. Kiss. Hug. The bell rings. She smiles at me one last time and follows the line of wandering first graders inside. I’m not used to her being away from me all day, or of the way the school swallows her up whole and leaves me empty-armed standing on the pavement alone.

Terce

“O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.”

Now, I am running. Up Church Street, toward the river, down the hill and across the bridge. I think as I cross the river, as I do every morning, of the man that ran in front of me here once, bare chested, shirt in hand with the early morning sun already hot, and of the way he all at once unfurled his arms as he crossed the bridge, crossed the water, and flew down the sidewalk like a bird riding the wind, and of the way that some blue sky, a brown river, and an early hour can gather together and loosen the string to a heart’s unwinding.

I cross over the bridge and am down past the houses, the theatre, the same older couple that I see most mornings with the woman that smiles at me as I run by. I leave them all behind me and slip into the cool green trails of a treed park. My lungs rage, my legs burn, my skin is slick like a fever, and as I round a corner with gravity heavy on my back I am stopped by the cool liquid movement of a deer, two light brown deer as they slide from one green jungle to cross my path and back again into a greener side. I take off my headphones and peer into the undergrowth after them, but they have already slipped away into the secret world of animal.

Sext

“O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.”

I have rushed from my run back home again. Showered. Dressed. Checked my email. Cursed at the time and at my impossibly tight schedule, and then raced out the door to the type kitchen, and now I am setting type: one silver letter at a time without even the possibility of a shortcut; my fingers cannot cheat; they smell of ink. I love the drawers of tidy letters, the sound of the roller, the white sheets of paper, the language of typeface and picas and slugs that I am just learning to speak, that I’m slow and awkward, that I fumble like a four-year-old with a pencil in her sweaty fist, that attention must be paid.

None

“O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.”

When I started applying to graduate schools, I held my daughter up to the map of the world that hung on my bedroom wall, and I pointed to the places where the different schools were: British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, and then some that passed over from the orange coloured form that was Canada into the dark green space of America. And though she was only five I could see her calculating her quantity of fear from distance to distance.

I broke something then when I told her we were crossing over that boarder line. I held her when she lay in her bed night after night as she sobbed and begged and cried with her face to the wall saying that she couldn’t move to that other country, away from all her family, her friends, and that no, it wouldn’t be alright, and no, she couldn’t trust me.

So now, I am crying in the media lab of the English Philosophy building on the university campus. I am crying in part because I am tired and rushed, because I have to leave to pick her up from her school in an hour, because I do not know when I will get my work done if I don’t finish it now, because I don’t have a damn clue about how to record my voice track for this assignment, or how to add music to it or, hell, mostly how to save the entire thing. I can’t even figure out how to save my work, and so I am crying in the media lab of the English-Philosophy building, but mostly because she still cries at night and I broke her for something I wanted and I can’t even figure out how to save my fucking assignment on this stupid fucking computer while the sacred moments tick past like a time bomb and where the hell is my lectio divina now?

When I finally knock on the studio door beside mine and confess to the woman working inside, like a sinner to a priest, that I’ve got nothing, am coming up empty, my voice catches on my failure and I do not want to cry again, but think that I might. And she saves me. In a moment. In five minutes. With grace, and with her pretty white teeth in a tidy row smiling back at me.

Vespers

“O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.”

On Friday nights we wash our hands, put on our aprons, and she pours and mixes while I measure and read from the recipe my mother used when I was small. While the pizza cooks we put on our pyjamas and then eat on the couch and watch a movie that we’ve rented from the library and that I will probably return late because I can never keep track of due dates. She tries her best not to spill, and I try my best not to overreact when she does. We do alright, though she spends most of the movie on my lap wiggling because she scares easily, and I let her stay because I snuggle easily.

Complin

“O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.”

It’s night. I lie in bed with her and the cicadas saw outside the open window while she chatters away about her day and the movie and all the things she’s thinking of, until I tell her again, for the forth time, to go to sleep. When she does, I stay and watch her for awhile. My days are bookended with me in my pyjamas, with the darkness draping the outside world, with my tiredness, God’s closeness. Her lashes are so long, I think again for the hundredth time. Her lips so sweet. I wait. And listen. I watch the sacred reading spread out and sleeping before me.