Seeking Perfection Using Imperfect Approaches
My expectation for this column is that I would always address a significant matter and not sweat the small stuff. I am not sure that this one meets that standard. Yet, as they say, “The devil is in the details.”
For some time Sr. MO and I have been praying morning and evening prayer together as part of keeping the Rule of Life and Service. I will admit that our approach is a “hodge-podge.” Currently we use the Order’s Daily Office, the Psalm selections from the Book of Common Prayer, and the readings from the Vigil section of Benedictine Daily Prayer (BDP). The latter because it is both convenient (one has only to turn the pages each day and find the next OT and NT reading printed out) and its selections are well chosen from the full text of the Bible. The approach is semi-continuous reading of biblical books. For example, the current readings are selections from the Book of Job and continuous readings of 1 Timothy. The readings on Sundays are tied to the lectionary and include wonderful selections from homilies by ancient Christian writers, preachers and commentators.
This morning, however, I was shocked...
by the omission. The Job reading was chapter 38:1-30, where God finally nails Job after Job has asked for his day in court: “Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” We can imagine Job shrinking under the interrogation! So far so good! And then…I looked ahead to see what the reading for tomorrow (Saturday) was. I could not believe my eyes; the reading was Job 42:7-17—the concluding narrative of the book where God sets Job’s “friends” on their judgmental butts and forthwith restores to Job all that he had lost.
“But,” I thought, “what about Job’s response to God and his repentance for having “uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” (See 42:1-7.) You see I have my own prejudices and personal “lectionary”! I confess, I was shocked that the compilers of Benedictine Daily Prayer would omit Job’s dramatic response to God’s interrogation.
Whether my response is right or wrong, the realization for me is this: no daily prayer plan for use of the Psalter, scripture readings, and overall pattern is thorough, complete, or perfect. Every breviary, prayer book, or set of books to guide the church in its daily prayer is partial, abbreviated, or marred with some idiosyncrasy.
Should this discourage us from using this or that approach? Should the seeming imperfections of any approach to daily prayer discourage the Order’s current Daily Office Revision Team from seeking the very best and most inclusive approach to daily prayer for our members? Clearly the answer is, “No.” As with the quest of the heart before God, the venture is a journey in seeking the best possible and most serviceable prayer book that we can devise.
All the while, we will know that it will have its foibles. And, no daily office volume will be able to satisfy every member of the Order, given our diversity of temperament, daily schedules, and other contextual constraints and freedoms.
For me at least, the omission of Job 42:1-7 from the readings in Benedictine Daily Prayer will make me a bit more generous toward the team preparing our revised Daily Office. I will still add my two cents on a number of matters as the volume develops, but I will be more alert to the fact that one volume can only do so much. Compilers have to make choices.
I come back to John Wesley’s bottom line corrective for all false choices: “[I]n using all the means of grace, seek God alone.” If the journey and the end is the triune God, then even in using imperfect means we will not stumble outside God’s grace. Or, as Andrew Greeley often says with the Irish, “God draws straight with crooked lines.”