I have been intermittently using “Celtic Daily Prayer: Prayers and Readings from the Northumbria Community” in my practice of daily devotions. It works rather like the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, in that it is organized into sections such as Opening Prayers, Readings, and Meditations which are further organized by date or by day of the month or by church calendar. It is published by the Northumbria Community, an English Protestant lay monastic community, and many of its readings are excerpts from various ancient and modern “Celtic” (British, Irish, Welsh, and some from the Iberian peninsula) saints and monastics, mixed with meditations by modern writers such as C. S. Lewis and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. As such, it is not strictly nor reliably biblical, but most of the excerpts are worth the meditation, even if only to better understand the spirit of this age.
Yet I find the opening prayer for the morning office very encouraging and searching. It begins with Ps 127:4: “One thing I have asked of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; to behold the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple.” This is a wonderful prayer it itself, worthy of daily contemplation and recital. But then there is a call and response (these prayers are meant to be prayed corporately by a group…):
Call: Who is it that you seek?
Response: We seek the Lord our God.
Call: Do you seek Him with all your heart?
Response: Amen, Lord have mercy.
Call: Do you seek Him with all your soul?
Response: Amen, Lord have mercy.
Call: Do you seek him with all your mind?
Response: Amen, Lord have mercy.
Call: Do you seek Him with all your strength?
Response: Amen, Christ have mercy.
These questions, of course, are based on the first great commandment recited in the Shema Israel of Deuteronomy 6, to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” What I love about this recitation is that the answer to each question is not, “Yes”, but “Amen….So be it, may it be so”, because it is never wholly true that we are seeking God with all of anything of ours. It is partly true, we are seeking somewhat, but not wholly, yet we wish we were; “So be it.” And then, may God have mercy upon us that we are not whole-hearted. This is the only basis upon which we can stand before Him, upon which we might be found in his house, even if only upon the threshold as a doorkeeper: His mercy. It recalls to my mind the desperately honest answer to the question, “Do you believe” that, “Yes, I believe; help me in my unbelief.”
Little Gidding 