A Lutheran In Senegal

Wartburg College's Senegal Interfaith Immersion Program

For three weeks in May, five students from Wartburg College, Waverly, IA, plus a professor from neighboring Hawkeye College, took part in the Senegal Interfaith Immersion Program. This program, part of a new initiative to deepen ELCA members' understanding of Christian-Muslim Relations, focuses on Senegal, where deep respect and mutual understanding among Muslims and Christians have been a hallmark of the work conducted by ELCA and its companions over the last 30 years. A program of the Lutheran Church of Senegal (Église Luthérienne du Sénégal, or ELS), the Senegal Interfaith Immersion Program was offered this year as a May-Term for Wartburg College students.

The current program includes classroom learning, hand-on experiences, and home stays with Senegalese families. It draws on the experiences of groups who have come to Senegal from various corners of the ELCA. These include two groups from the Grand Canyon Synod, a group led by former missionary Deb Byrum, and an inter-unit ELCA task force culminating the Decade for Overcoming Violence. Similar immersion programs are planned for the future as well, with the goal of offering both academic and more general experiences for ELCA members. In addition to a 2012 version of the Wartburg May Term already in the works, Luther Seminary will offer a Senegal Interfaith Immersion Program designed for ELCA seminarians in January 2012. The Grand Canyon Synod, in its role as the ELS’ companion synod, will host additional non-academic versions of the Senegal Interfaith Immersion in the near future.

Wartburg students discuss community health with Mariame Hanne (third from right), Coordinator of the EELS’ Primary Health Care Project, and other community health workers at a “Health Hut” in Khogué, a village near Linguere.

To read more first-hand reflections on the immersion program by logging on to the May Term blog, at wartburgsenegal.blogspot.com

Teaching Leviticus in Senegal

Since the beginning of the Pastoral Formation Program in January, I have been teaching a course on the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures (or Old Testament). It’s been a while since I’ve taught in a more formal setting, and for most of the students theological education is a new adventure, too. Add to that the fact that this program is not under the umbrella of an existing university, Bible school or seminary and the result is, particularly in these first weeks, a sort of experimentation with regard to the class schedule, the course contents, the teaching/learning style, as well as the precise level of academic rigor that will be part of the program.

As part of my normal routine, I have the class start out with a more reflective or meditative reading of a portion of the text we’ll be covering in that day’s class. This is, in part, to demonstrate to the class that there are different ways to read the bible, and although the rest of the class time might be dedicated to a more academic or theological reading of the text, that these books can also be read for inspiration, reflection and meditation. For the first several minutes of each class session, we read a passage, discuss the word and images we encountered, and share with one another what might be the message God is addressing to us today, as 21st century Christians living and learning in Dakar, Senegal.

This was all well and good throughout Genesis and Exodus. The call of Abraham, Jacob’s ladder, the climax of the Joseph story, the burning bush, manna in the desert—they all lent themselves so well to the kind of Biblical inspiration I had in mind, with lessons for us today. But suddenly, there we were smack dab in the middle of Leviticus. Shall we seek inspiration in the purifications outlined for various bodily discharges, meditate on the particulars of how long to expel a leper from the community, or maybe reflect deeply on the exhaustive list of priestly vestments in search of God’s message for us here and now?

Finding myself a bit entrapped by the rigors of the model I myself had put in place just a couple weeks earlier, I chose one of the few narrative sections of the book, the “ordination” of Aaron and his sons as priests. Sure, there were still lots of lists of dos and don’ts, lots of details of the required offerings and necessary sacrifices, but at least there was a minimum of a story line, too.

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried—or at least not so much. We read from chapter 9, and reflected a bit on its contents. People talked about the details of this passage, and I was reminded again that the particulars of the sacrifices required are not that far off from what most of the students know from village life in Senegal, even though they still seem so strange to me.

But then I asked for people to share a message they might have caught for today; a takeaway, if you will, the "money quote." Anne-Marie spoke right up. “This may not be the original context,” she said, “but I see verse 6 speaking to me, maybe to us all today.” Then she read that verse out loud: “This is what the LORD has commanded you. Do it, and the glory of the LORD will appear to you.” (I'm translating directly from the French version she was reading.)

She continued, “I think this passage is telling me that if I try to live my life listening for God’s will, and if I discover one way or another what it is that God wants me to do, and if I really do it, then, one way or another, I’ll begin to see God’s glory around me, maybe even in my own life.” And so that was our opening prayer for that Monday morning: that we would come to know what God wants us to do, and that in doing it, we would know and see and experience the glory of God all around us.

Bring on Numbers. I think we can handle it.

Grace and Peace,
Peter

Pastoral Formation Program Begins!

“Today we begin again, with a new generation of young people, the continuing process of having pastors—well-trained, committed, faithful pastors—to serve and to lead the Lutheran Church of Senegal.” With these words, Pastor Jean-Pierre Abdou Thiam, President of the Eglise Luthérienne du Sénégal (ELS) officially declared open the first session of the new Pastoral Formation Program or PFP. After two years of extensive planning and preparation, plus countless more years dreaming, envisioning, and awaiting God’s own time, the ELS will be training pastors in Senegal for the first time since becoming a self-governing church in 1987.

PFP Students and teachers are joined by ELS leaders in Dakar.
1st Row, (l-r): Pr. Moussa Marone (Dakar Parish), Sandrine Diatta, Saliou Faye, Mame Coumba Faye, Pr. Thomas Diouf (Director of Formation).
2nd row, l-r: Anne-Marie Dione, Jean-Noël Faye, Pastor Abdou Thiam (President, ELS), Fulgence Diouf, Pr. Peter Hanson (Coordinator, Dept. of Formation and Theology).

The PFP is in many ways the brainchild of Pr. Thiam, who served as the Director of Theological Formation before his election as president last year. Returning to Senegal in 2008, after completing a Masters’ Degree at the Protestant University of West Africa in Benin, Pr. Thiam became concerned about the fact that the church was not training pastors quickly enough to assure a continuation of the ministry once the first generation of ELS pastors began retiring. Pastoral candidates were typically sent to seminaries in Cameroon or Benin for theological education, and the limited financial resources available for such scholarships meant that in the past several years only three new pastors had been trained. The idea was to begin to offer a theological education here in Senegal, one that offered a more rigorous academic schedule than much of what had been offered here before, but one that still was more accessible than the university level formation available only in neighboring countries, and often at great expense.

After a call went out to all of the ELS’ thirteen parishes, a total of eighteen people participated in the two-day process of testing and discernment. After reviewing the applications, scoring the written tests, and speaking directly with those listed as references, ten were called back for personal interviews—similar to the candidacy intake process used by the synods of the ELCA. Finally, a total of eight students were selected to be part of this next generation of pastors-in-formation.

Among the eight, two students—Djibril Diallo and Lademda Faye—were selected to apply for scholarships to the Lutheran Institute of Theology in Meiganga, Cameroon, based on their current academic level as university students. We hope that they will be able to secure scholarships in order to begin their studies in September. Among the six others, five were selected to be full-scholarship students here in the local program, with a sixth participating as an “auditor,” attending the courses and completing the work, but not necessarily pursuing ordination at this time. The six PFP participants—Sandrine Diatta, Anne-Marie Dione, Fulgence Diouf, Mame Coumba Faye, Jean-Noël Faye, and Saliou Faye—have now begun their first two courses here in Dakar.

It’s well worth mentioning that among these eight potential pastors, two of them are from ethnic groups other than the Serer who make up the vast majority of the members of the ELS. One is a Diola and one a Fulani, representing two of the ethnicities that the ELS wishes to reach out to more fully in the coming years. Also well worth celebrating is the fact that for the first time in its history, the ELS now has women who have been accepted as pastoral candidates. While it won’t necessarily be an easy road for these women, we hope that by God's grace, and with the support of one another, their teachers in the program and the leadership of the ELS, they will be able to face up to the obstacles before them, and hopefully take their place as ELS pastors along with their male classmates.

Classes began yesterday with an introduction to the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) which I am teaching. Today was the beginning of a (re)introduction to the Lutheran Confessions, taught by Pastor Thomas Diouf as part of a larger survey of Systematic Theology. Following a modular system of one class a month (or two classes during a two-month session), the PFP is planned to last three academic cycles, with two "contextual phases" offered between academic years and a year-long pastoral internship coming at the end of the cycle. If all continues more or less as planned, most if not all of these eight people should be ready for ordination sometime in the second half of 2014.

It's an exciting time in the life of the ELS!
Rendons grâce à Dieu! Thanks be to God!

Peter

 

Patience: Localization in Process!

EELS set to become Senegal Lutheran Development Services (SLDS)

In most countries where the ELCA is active in global mission, its work is done primarily through the accompaniment of a local organization, most often a local Lutheran Church. For years Senegal has been an exception, thanks in part to the way in which the ELCA chose to engage in holistic Christian witness and service, particularly among the Fulani. That “exceptionality” began to change in 2008, when the ELCA-directed programs in Fulani evangelism, Bible translation, and congregational ministries were turned over to the Église Luthérienne du Sénégal (Lutheran Church of Senegal, or ELS). At the same time, the ELCA’s West Africa Desk, along with Senegal-based mission personnel and their Senegalese colleagues, began exploring options for localizing long-standing community development programs in education, health care, and agriculture currently functioning within an organization called the Église Évangélique Luthérienne du Sénégal (EELS).

The process is underway for these programs to be brought under the umbrella of the Senegal Lutheran Development Services (SLDS), either through a restructuring of the EELS itself, or else through the creation of a brand new entity. In addition to changing a confusing name (though not a church, per se, EELS stands for “Evangelical Lutheran Church in Senegal” in French) the SLDS would no longer be an ELCA-directed ministry, but rather a Senegalese organization which the ELCA would accompany as it does other churches and organizations around the world. While the programs will not noticeably change, the organizational leadership of the SLDS will shift to committed and competent Senegalese.

Among them are two of the EELS’ longest-serving employees who have proven to be good and faithful servant-leaders. Aly Ndione, currently the Director of Community Centre Galle Nanondiral, will serve as Co-Director for Programs, while Philipe Badji, currently the EELS Administrator, will serve as Co-Director for Administration and Finance. Together, Aly and Philipe bring over a half-century of service to the programs that will make up the SLDS. As a Muslim and a Christian respectively, Aly and Philipe themselves embody one of the foundational values of the SLDS—interfaith dialog and cooperation for the well-being of a shared community.

Some hurdles still need to be jumped, particularly as concerns the systems of governance and oversight allowed by Senegalese law. As one person recently noted, we won’t be able to toast the newly "localized" SLDS on January 1, 2011 or any time soon after. We are confident, however, that the witness and service provided both by ELCA missionaries and their Senegalese counterparts for over 30 years will be continued and expanded by the arrival of the SLDS as a truly Senegalese organization accompanied by ELCA Global Mission.

We ask for your prayers for both patience and perseverance, as this already long transition process enters what we hope is the home stretch.

Ndank, Ndank...

Peter

 

A Tale of Two Taxis (or maybe even three or four...)

Sarah and I each take taxis from time to time, either when the other has the car, of if we’re going somewhere that’s a little complicated to get to or hard to park in. What I love about taxis here—and what I never fail to point out to visitors, especially if they’re from New York or somewhere else where people use taxis a lot—is that here in Dakar, you don’t hail taxis. Taxis hail you.

Taxi drivers here seem to “troll” for customers. They drive looking for people to take somewhere. They slow down at intersections, crawl through crowded areas, and honk at potential clients. Since prices are all negotiable, many taximen tend to target people they think they can get to pay more. It probably comes as no surprise that we Toubabs (the Wolof word for white people) fall into that category. Taxis honk, slow down, flash their lights, and even pull over when they see me walking down the street. In the one block walk from our house to the main road, a typical morning will see three or four taxis hailing me, even though I walk the three or four blocks to work.

Now, I could take a detour into a discussion of what it means to be a Toubab here in Senegal. I could write about the internalization of racism and colonialism, how it feels to be constantly reminded that I’m from the group that holds power in a global sense. We could get into how I imagine it must feel to know that truth from the other end, and the sense of desperation one must feel to seek out the rich foreigner so that the day’s earnings increase by some percentage or another.

But I’m not going to do that.

Rather, I’m going to just tell two stories about taxis that hailed me each in a rather extraordinary way.

First, about a year ago, I was walking home from work, when a taxi honked once, twice, three times, flashed its lights and then pulled over. At first, I just ignored him, but then I turned and looked, and trying to be polite said, “no, merci.” But just as I was about to continue walking, and before the taxi had pulled back into traffic, a second cab pulled over: “Taxi, monsieur?” So I started to explain to the second driver that I didn’t need a taxi, that’s why I said no to the first taxi, the one that was now honking at the second one to get out of his way. Just then a third taxi slowed down, honked, and pulled over. Catching me in mid-eyeroll, the third taxi man leaned out the window and shouted, “Peter! Ça va?” Turns out it was Cheikh Ndione, the younger brother of my co-worker Aly, who I’ve known nearly all my time here in Senegal, but hadn’t seen since the previous holiday. I went over, shook his hand and struck up a brief conversation, while the other two cab drivers looked on in disbelief. “I though you said you didn’t need a taxi,” one of them finally said. To which Cheikh replied in Wolof: “he doesn’t need a taxi, he just lives across the street!” But it wasn’t until Cheikh drove off and I walked on that the other two pulled back into traffic, finally convinced I didn’t need a taxi.

The second story first happened just a couple of days ago. I walked out of the house to get some eggs and bread at Mamadou’s little shop across the street. No sooner had I closed the gate behind me than a taxi, spotting me from the main road a full block away, honked, pulled over and gave me an inquisitive face as if to ask: “taxi?” I ignored him as best I could, although I must say I still tend to turn and look when someone honks at me. I continue across our narrow street to the shop, where I told Mamadou’s nephew, Mohamed, what I needed. As we were talking, behind me pulled up a shiny yellow taxi, and the driver, having positioned his car exactly between our house and the boutique, honked again. “Taxi, monsieur?” he asked, sweeping his hand across the driver’s door like one of the women on “the Price is Right” to show me how nice his cab was. Mohamed started laughing out loud, shaking his head and then shouting to the driver, “Taxi? Does he need a taxi? He lives across the street!!” We later joked that I could have just gotten in the back door on the driver’s side, and then just get out on the passenger side, asking how much I owed him….

If there are lessons I learned from these two tales, I think they are these:

1. It's a good thing that here in Dakar I can find a taxi pretty much anytime I need one (and even when I don’t).
2. It’s good to make eye contact with the taximen who honk at me, just in case one is an old friend I haven’t seen in a while; and
3. I need to take a cue from Mohamed, lighten up and laugh a little about all this. After all, they’re just trying to do their jobs, I am a good (and likely higher paying) client, and like it or not, I do stand out here.

Jamm ak Teranga (Peace and Hospitality),
Peter

...When September Ends

A day or two ago, I got a message to this blog site wondering if "A Lutheran in Senegal" had been discontinued, since the last entry was in April.

Touché!

It’s true that I’ve been differently busy—with the end of doctoral studies, preparations for nearly four months away, then graduation, church visits, missionary conference, medical visits, family time, and all the other wonderful and at times challenging parts of a Home Assignment. I’ve never been big on blogging during home assignment—the blog is called a Lutheran in SENEGAL, after all—but then again, I’ve been back here for just over a month now. I could cite lots of reasons for the delay, all of them justified, in my humble opinion; but all of them excuses in the less positive use of the word. 

• It’s hot. Really hot. Africa hot…
• It’s rainy season—the season when it might rain—which means showers that come out of nowhere, leaky windows and doors, flooded side roads, crowded main roads (people tend to avoid the flooded side roads), muddy cars, muddy shoes, muddy floors.
• There are power cuts every day, sometimes for 6, 7, or 8 hours, often during the hottest part of the day.
• Our home computer is not working and the only (reliable) Mac repairman in Dakar is backed up about 6 to 8 weeks.
• Roughly a third of Senegalese Lutheran pastors take July off, a third take August off, and a third take September off, meaning many of my activities (which involve getting pastors together) end up taking all THREE months off.
• Since being back I’ve had to do a bit of running around—out to Yeumbeul to get the car, around town for school supplies for the kids, downtown (several times) to get a new regulator for the washing machine (and to try to return it two weeks later when it suddenly stopped working), to Fatick for meetings with the leadership of the Lutheran Church of Senegal, and about five full days at the parish center in Dakar, since I’m now on a committee that is re-writing the constitution and by-laws for the church.

Like I said, excuses; but all of them have conspired to zap my energy and my motivation—so that when I actually do have time (and power and internet connection) I’m feeling so crabby that I don’t think it would be helpful to write.

All that stops today.

For several years now, I’ve adopted the title phrase from a song by Green Day during these last days of the rainy season (which is of course also the hot, muggy, power-cut, low motivation, bad mood season): “Wake me up when September ends.” 

Today is the last day of September. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to rainy season (sorry about that mixed metaphor). The government has promised no more power cuts by the middle of October. Kids are back in school. Pastors are back to work. Cooler nights are on the way, with cooler days to follow.

October will bring a visit from our Regional Rep, November means a site visit from our new companions from Wartburg College Study Abroad. December is Advent, Christmas, and hopefully a family trip to Cameroon. January marks the beginning of a new Pastoral Training Program here in Senegal, including for the first time up to three women among the ten pastoral candidates.

This summer, the Executive Director of ELCA Global Mission, Pastor Rafael Malpica-Padilla, shared with us a great phrase he heard from Pastor Wayne Weissenbuehler, the former Bishop of the ELCA’s Rocky Mountain Synod. He said:

“Hope is the ability to hear the melody of the future.
Faith is the courage to dance to its tune today.”

This will be my new slogan for October (and beyond) by God’s grace.

Jamm ak Jamm,
Peter

Last Friday in Foundiougne

Last Friday, I had the privilege to facilitate a retreat for the national Church Council of the ELS—the Lutheran Church of Senegal. This new council was just elected in March, and with the exception of the General Secretary and the Treasurer and one elected member, the entire council was new.  The new ELS President, Pastor Abdou Thiam, decided that the group needed to get away to Foundiougne for the day away—without an agenda of church “business”—in order to do group building, bible study, prayer, and discernment of what exactly their work together would be and how exactly they’d do it.

As the one non-council member along for the ride, I was able to make some observations, some of which really struck me as important and impressive:

1.    The Church Council had a retreat. I’m not sure if it was the first, but it was certainly the first in a long time.  To me, the medium was the message: the fact that this group got away simply in order to be together, without work to do, per se, but to work on how they’d eventually do their work, the magnitude of this cannot be overstated.

2.    It’s a young group. One of the communication exercises we did began with the group simply getting themselves into a line by birth date, with the oldest on the left and the youngest on the right. When I put myself into the group, I was second from the left—the second oldest in the group. Now, I know I’m not as young as I used to be, but would a person still three and a half months shy of his 45th birthday be the second youngest in many ELCA parish councils, or in the ELCA Churchwide Council? I doubt it.

3.    It’s a group with visionary leaders and participating members. Often with such groups as church councils, the newcomers hold back and watch the others before deciding how to enter into conversations. That probably can’t be the case when 7 of the 10 are new. But everybody entered in, and far from dominating, the President invited comments at every turn.

4.    People appreciated the concept of a council retreat, so much so that they said they needed to do it again. More than that, the ten all agreed to start contributing to a retreat fund—money withheld from their check if they were church employees, or collected from them each month if they weren’t—to make sure they could get away once or twice a year. They understood the financing of the church, that there was not “extra” money in the budget to do this more than once a year, so they chipped in themselves for a second or even third retreat per year.

The following Wednesday, I was able to sit in on the council’s first business meeting. It would be great to say that there were no glitches, no communication problems, and that the agenda was followed succinctly, with everything dealt with in an hour and a half. That was not the case. But, everyone of the ten members were on time, each person raised his or her voice and entered into the conversations, and a comfortable, respectful, engaged and participatory group process held sway for the entire time this group was together.

I know this is just one down, many more to go. But I am hopeful that this council set a high standard for those who follow; I’m hopeful that they will be an example to the whole church of how to serve and lead at the same time.

Easter Hope and Expectation,
Peter

A Month of Visitors

Beginning on February 2, a group of ten people from different levels of the ELCA spent ten days immersed in the realities of interfaith engagement in Senegal. This trip was part of the work of an ELCA inter-unit task force supporting the Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV), and sought to make connections between interfaith dialog and understanding, community development, and peace-building. It was a very diverse group, a very interesting and interested group, one that asked lots of questions and wasted no time getting to know things and people here in Senegal.

Just a few days after they went back to the US (a day late, as it turns out, thanks to a snowed-in Washington/Dulles Airport) my mother arrived with two of our oldest, dearest family friends. They stayed a good two weeks, during which time we visited some of the same places we had with the DOV group (Gorée, CCGN, La Brioche D’Orée…), and a few places we hadn’t (Thiadiaye, Mar Lodge, Keur Moussa, Toubab Diallaw). This was my mom’s fifth trip to Senegal, but Dave and Andrea’s first. They, too, were quite adventurous, getting into bargaining, chatting with lots of different despite language barriers, and asking lots of good questions.

As nearly all of the visitors said to me at one time or another, one way or another, it is indeed tiring to have visitors—and even more tiring to have them two very different groups practically back to back. There are arrangements to be made, cultural explanations to be given, and near-constant translations and interpretations to be offered.  Having visitors pulls me out of my routine—makes me put off certain things that usually I would do, triage certain activities, let some “regular” stuff go to make time for things they want to do.

But what really struck me after having nearly an entire month of visitors is how refreshing it is to have new eyes to see things through, new ways for putting responses or reactions into words, new appreciation for Senegalese life in general and the work of the ELCA and its companions here in particular.  And it couldn’t have come at a better time. Call it the seven-year itch (although I’m closer to the end of year eight) or maybe the just normal “senioritis” of being in month nineteen of what ends up being a twenty-one month cycle between home assignments. But so much here was starting to annoy me, to frustrate me, at times even to make me mad.

Then come these groups of visitors, almost all of whom were coming for the first time. They see what I’ve failed to see in my familiarity, my fatigue, my frustration. They see honest-to-goodness hospitality where my cynical self wonders what people are up to. They hear real live interfaith dialog and mutual understanding, where I have come to hear only party-line rhetoric about everyone living in peace and harmony. They experience the faith-filled witness of members of a minority faith, speaking a minority language—both of which they proudly claim as their own, while I roll my eyes that we’re doing hymns #12 and #15 again.

Through these visitors, through these newcomers I have the opportunity—the privilege, really—to experience Senegal for the first time all over again. It reminds me of how special a place this is, and how incredible it is to actually live here, to be involved in the exceptional work here. A month of visitors has helped me imagine several more months of life and ministry here. New eyes, new ears, a renewed spirit—I’ve received a dose of each these past two months.

So keep coming, you visitors! Keep bringing your fresh perspectives, your new twist on the oft-asked question, your legitimate excitement to be able to experience that which I too often take for granted. Keep reminding us what brought us here in the first place.

Grace and Peace,

Peter

How'd it get to be Holy Week Already?

Even I can’t believe how long it’s been since I wrote in this blog. Long like the entire season of Lent. I guess I should have just said back on Ash Wednesday that I was giving up blogging for Lent; then I'd end up looking all spiritual and virtuous. But of course, that’s not what happened. I didn’t give it up in any laudable attempt at spiritual simplicity (much less a spiritual attempt at simple laudability). I just didn’t have the right combination of time and energy—mine or Senelec’s—during this past, well, nearly forty days.

 And it’s not like there’s nothing going on—in fact, it’s really like the opposite. Visitors and Meetings (and even the occasional Meeting with Visitors) more or less non stop for the months of February and March, with brief interruptions for an annual Church Assembly, electing a new President of the Lutheran Church of Senegal, finishing of my DMin thesis, the total reorganization of the church-based development work here, and several trips to Linguère, Gorée, Fatick, Mbour, Thadiaye, Loul-Sessene…well you get the picture.

So here’s what I’m thinking: in the next few days, I’d like to take a look back at last two months—February, the month of Visitors, and March, the month of Meetings. After that, this particular Lutheran in Senegal will try to live in, and report on the present, with an eye toward the immediate and more long-term future that’s been starting to unfold for quite a while within our modest participation in the missio Dei here.

Thanks, as always, for your patience and understanding.

 Peter

Ash Wednesday

For Christmas this year, my friend Paul Messer gave me the “pocket edition” of Phyllis Tickle’s “Divine Hours.” It’s a scaled down version of her three volume set of daily offices—prayers, litanies, and scripture readings for various times of the day. The pocket edition has one full cycle of offices for each day of the week. There are prayers to be offered at midnight, night watch, at dawn, morning (matins), noon, evening (vespers), and before retiring for the night (compline).

I’m a person who has struggled with maintaining strict disciplines in prayer. Usually it’s because I set myself up for failure, biting off more than I can chew. Like a New Year’s resolution to lose 25 pounds by March, or giving up beer and wine, sweets, and all snack foods for Lent…after a few days I find I’m not doing well, and I just throw in the towel. With prayer, I typically get all ambitious—like I’m going to knock out all seven offices each and every day!—and after matins the first day I’ve misplaced the book.

What I’ve found with the pocket edition of Divine Hours is that I use it more as a travel edition. It fits better in the pocket of my backpack than in any pocket I might actually wear. I tend to be alone a lot when I travel, certainly at night and in the early morning. It’s a great comfort and a welcome moment of calm to read an office alone, out loud, in a guesthouse or hotel room by myself. As often as not, I do so to the tune of a Muslim call to prayer—a very interesting juxtaposition.

I think what I’ll do for Lent this year is simply pick up that book more often, especially when the contextual cues remind me that God is also calling me to prayer. 

Lenten Blessings,

Peter