This week.

One who sings prays twice.
–St. Augustine

Do you like to sing?  Do you sing when no one else is around, in the shower, in the car, in your room with the music loud enough so no one else can hear and you can’t hear yourself?  Or is singing out loud, anywhere, just natural; you feel like breaking into song when you’re happy and feeling good, or find yourself attached to a slow and moving song when you’re down?

What about prayer?  Do you pray when you’re along and by yourself, when you can remember to do it?  Or is prayer a regular part of your day; is it something that begins your day, something said on the way to class or at a meal, or do you finish the day taking stock over what happened and what it means as you say a few prayers?

The church, long, long ago established an order to the day which included set times for praying.  From our earliest Jewish roots, prayer and music went together and prayers were sung, or chanted, rather than said.  In the middle ages when monasticism was at its height, those set hours of the day marked the passage of time by prayer.  Today we mostly are just familiar with compline, which ends the day, but our Prayer Book includes Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer.

This week we begin an opportunity to see, do, and experience new ways of relating to God and one another by sung prayer.  We’re going to offer Evensong (sung Evening Prayer) for anyone who’d like to come join us; it’ll take place in the chapel on the second floor of Trinity Commons at 5:30 pm on Tuesday (and every first Tuesday of each month).

Maybe you’ve been looking forward to this, a chance to sing and connect your prayers to the ancient practice of chanting. Maybe you’re a little unsure, intimidated by singing in public.  Maybe you’re curious about it, and you’re not sure that you want to sing but you’d like to come be a part of it. All of those are invitations for you to join us, give it a try, let your prayer be matched to other prayers for the good of the world and for the good of us all.

No matter if you’re good at singing or reluctant to lift up your voice, I bet you’re willing to say some prayers, and I bet you have some prayers you’d like to say. Come match your song to prayer, experience God in a new way (actually, in quite an old way) and find your voice in unison with others willing to help you find that voice so that you hear the voice of God.

–Thomas