Prayers online

During the Corona virus lockdown I was contacted by someone who was longing for communion with others in prayer, and we started streaming our morning prayer. It has been good for Andy and me to keep this discipline, as we are by ourselves in the community house at the moment and the long period of social isolation and staying at home does funny things to routines and motivation. It has reminded me of one of my biggest original reasons for seeking community, which is to have support for a pattern of daily prayer. In the evenings we have stopped creating the prayer ourselves for the moment, because Taizé have begun to stream their evening prayer at 7.30 pm (UK time) on Facebook, and it has been wonderful to tune into that live.

For morning prayer, people can join us on the Lunesdale Community Facebook page Mon-Fri at 8 am. We use the Church of England lectionary which can be found in the Daily Prayer app or the Church website. The morning and evening offices have recently been translated into Finnish (for any friends in Finland) and also the daily readings are available at https://raamattu.fi/kirkkovuosi.

If people are not familiar with some of the Taizé songs we sing, it is easy to quickly google the first few words of any song with ‘Taizé’ and to find ways to view the music or just the words.

On Saturday mornings at 9.30 we now host the Priory morning prayer, which is the spoken office. Sometimes we add a few songs to the end to give a balance to the many words spoken. This can be viewed on the Lancaster Priory Facebook page. This is the church where I am doing my three-year placement during ordination training. The Church has gone all online, and it remains to be seen what changes in worship as we start a slow return to normal. It has been a useful exercise for us to make the Lunesdale Community prayers accessible to people near and far, but we long to be able to open the doors and offer hospitality in person again.