Prayer Book: In prayer, whether I’m alone or at church, my mind wanders, especially if I’m worried about arriving at some choice. I’m inclined to rush to a decision, or else I make detours through scary options. But the prayer book, with its familiar deliberate phrases, puts guidelines up and the brakes on: invocation and praise of the Lord of the Universe certainly puts my little world in perspective, and a Scripture reading always injects something I hadn’t thought of in awhile. By then, I’m ready for prayer, but even that starts way high and carries me through concerns for everyone else before finally, it says, “Let us pray now for our own concerns, and those of others.” Then I can free-form my prayer, and by then, the message I’ve already received is, “This decision isn’t that big a deal, God supports you, and you have time.”
Since I wrote that, I've posted many other essays lauding other features of the Episcopal church that I appreciate. See my page, Those Crazy Episcopalians!
Update, 25 January 2015: Friend Kemper Anderson, recently ordained, sent this link to friends, for 11 Things I Love About the Episcopal Church. Very well done!
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