More Bells, More Prayers, More Services

Do you recall an earlier post when I emphasized the significance of all of those loudspeakers atop the minarets in Turkey? Maybe you also recall the story I shared about helping to ring the church bell, when I was around seven years old, at the Federated Church of Busti, New York. I was trying to accent in that blog the value of these loud and undeniable calls to prayer and worship. Everyone who hears these reverberations knows they are being reminded, or in some cases warned, to create spiritual rhythms in their life.
This evening, from the window in my small but private room at Gethsemani Abbey, a Trappist Monestary in Kentucky, I can see the building where the Monks live, a parking lot and some of the grounds. And in fifteen minutes the church bells will ring calling us to put aside all work to attend the 7:30 service called Compline. The Monks will then retire to their quarters so they can wake up around 3:15 A.M. for the first service of the new day, called “Vigils.”

The offices of the day are:
Vigils 3:15 A.M.
Lauds 5:45 A.M.
MASS 7:00 A.M.
Terce 7:30 A.M.
Sext 12:15 P.M.
None 2:15 P.M.
Vespers 5:30 P.M.
Compline 7:30 P.M.

I probably will attend six of these services (between 15 and 30 minutes long) and you can probably guess the two that I will avoid. Still, the bells will ring to signal the opportunity that belongs equally to the Monks and the Guests, to organize our days around prayer and worship. What would it be like to organize our days around prayer and worship instead of around work or details or obligations or entertainment or chatter?
Well, that is what I’m here to find out, to spend five days experiencing what it is like to seek a life that centers on prayer and then to find a way, should I so choose, to elevate being in the presence of God to time commitment # 1 in my life.

By the way, Compline is my favorite office of the day. I discovered this during my first retreat at a Trappist Monestary, in 1984. Two other Baptist pastors and I went for five days to the Spencer Abbey in Massachusetts. I found the songs and prayers of Compline to be peaceful and reassuring. Here is one chanted song:

Before the ending of the day,
Creator of the world, we pray,
That with thy gracious favor thou wouldst be
Our guard and keeper now.

From fears and terrors of the night
Defend us, Lord, by thy great might,
And when we close our eyes in sleep
Let hearts, and Christ, their vigil keep.

Also, I’ve started thinking what I could do to have some kind of reminder announce to me each day when it is time to pray. Maybe there is a Trappist Monk somewhere in the world who could take it as his vocation to call me seven times a day? Would an alarm on my sort of smart phone accomplish this purpose? Could the alarm on my phone sound like Trappist bells or the bells of my childhood?