Steven Breedlove, Bishop
"Julie Lane-Gay has written a book that weaves an accessible explanation of the practices of the Book of Common Prayer into a narrative of her own life, described with such simple candor that we can easily feel she is talking about us or those we dearly love. She has done this with vivid images―sights, sounds, smells―using just the right amount of words, so that this book is not only eminently readable but artistically beautiful."
Wesley Hill, Associate Professor of New Testament
"...this book is something different: more of a warm
invitation than a simple instruction manual. It is a disarming personal testimony of a spiritual life lived with the prayer book and a hospitable summons for others to experience the rich
gifts of that life."
Karen Stiller, Author and Editor
"Julie Lane-Gay is guide and fellow explorer in this rich contemplation of the Book of Common Prayer. Her personal journey through an ancient text of Anglicanism is honest and poetic. As she reads the Book of Common Prayer at church and at home, the book reads her, and we all benefit."
Bruce Hindmarsh, Professor of Spiritual Theology
"On my shelf are many guides, handbooks, and histories of the Book of Common Prayer, but Julie Lane-Gay has offered something refreshingly different from these. She knows this background and draws on it skillfully, but more than this, she shows us from her own experience what it means, from the inside, for one's real life to be shaped by the rhythms of the prayer book. There is nothing stuffy here. Julie's compelling personal narrative is all about how these ancient words seep into you, little by little, and change you at the very depths of your being. The Riches of Your Grace is a winsome companion to prayer book worship in everyday life."
I’m not a priest, historian, or theologian. I am not inclined to prayer and I am not naturally disciplined. This book is not a guide (a friend teased me that it’s maybe an “enlarged travel brochure”); it’s a vista of a layperson living in the prayer book, one who is still learning. I want to help you be more comfortable with it, blessed by what you’re participating in. I’ve included history and instructions here and there, but mostly I have tried to show how the age-old prayers and liturgies have drawn me, and others, closer to God, how we have become more attentive to Him, and how He has drawn closer to us.
- From Riches of Your Grace
Theologian Lesslie Newbigin writes, “The business of the church is to tell and embody a story." I would add the church’s business is also to watch for that story, to watch for God at work in the world, to be like my sky-watching husband who stays up into the early hours of the morning looking for a galaxy. The prayer book has been my window on that story, showing me God in our midst, and leading me to become more skilled at doing so. The prayer book hasn’t become a substitute for the Bible but a means to live into it.
- From Riches of Your Grace
Like haiku or sonnets in poetry, collects (pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable—COL-lects) are a particular form of prayers. Their content varies widely but their shape stays roughly the same. They are called collects because they “collect” the voices of the people. There are more than 150 of them in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. There are collects for the sick, the anxious, the grateful; for an election, for natural disasters, for farming. There are collects for those going to sea, those who work in hospitals, and those starting school. There is one for every week of the year and every saint’s day, and they are woven in throughout the services of Morning Prayer, Holy Communion, Baptisms, Weddings, funerals, and more. Four to nine lines long (and wonderfully terse), collects usually include five ingredients, in this order: 1) an address to God, 2) an acknowledgement or attribute of who God is, 3) a request, 4) a reason for our asking, and 5) a reason why we can ask God for this. Most of these prayers are so old it’s impossible to know who wrote them. Church historians date some of them back to the eighth century Eucharist services of the Western liturgy. Other collects were composed in the sixteenth century, during the Protestant Reformation. Thomas Cranmer chose many of them from earlier sources, but he also wrote a number of the favorites himself. The collect by our back door comes near the end of the service of Morning Prayer. On the days I notice it as I head out, it reminds me again of one of my favorite pieces of art, the Henry Ossawa Tanner painting The Good Shepherd. It shows a shepherd carrying one of his young sheep down a steep, rocky mountainside. Saddled over the shepherd’s shoulders, the lamb looks curious and content, so confident in her rescuer that her legs hang relaxed over his left shoulder as she ponders the landscape. Collects, like the shepherd, have a way of reaching down into the anxious part of me that asks, “Can I handle all this?”—one of many questions I shove down deep—and pulling me close to God’s care. A friend once said to me that the Collect for Grace made her feel cared for, not as a competent person, but as a nervous, insecure child, and in experiencing that tender care, she began to learn to rest in God.
“Ohhh . . . It’s not here.”
“What’s not here?”
Early on a Monday morning I was grabbing a mug of tea to take upstairs when Lisa poked her head into the kitchen. She was our favorite of the runners who helped with our Border Collie’s insatiable need for exercise. Her cheeks and nose were red with cold, and I wondered if what she was missing was a jacket she could borrow. “That poem—or is it a prayer?” she said. “The one about ‘being brought to this day,’ and ‘not running into danger.’ It’s usually on the little bulletin board above the dog food. I’m not religious at all but I always like seeing it. It’s weirdly comforting. I was looking forward to it this morning. Did someone take it?” Nearly ten years ago Craig had taped up a copy of the Collect for Grace by our back door. I’m guessing it was meant to be a sort of a benediction as we all raced in and out. On what had become a torn and splattered (and now missing) piece of paper, the prayer read: Almighty and Everlasting God, who has safely brought us to the beginning of this day, Defend us in the same with thy mighty power, and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger, but that all our doings may be ordered by thy governance, to do always that is righteous in thy sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.