I looked with awe at the small wine coloured prayer book I held in my hands…it seemed so familiar. I had not held that book since I was a child.
I was raised Anglican…well for the first 12 years of my life. It was there I listened to the poetry of prayer and supplication and grew to love it.
As I peeled back its pages, I could feel myself smiling. Yes, I remember that…my inner mind said as memories flit through.
It had been such a long time ago but it was there I sang my first solo and there I learned to kneel to pray. Then suddenly I was gone. Some upset between the choir director and the organist had led us away and I in my innocence followed. The following years were spent worshipping in a different church.
But the little prayer book was once well used. Certainly one could not properly bury all those much loved childhood pets without a word said over their grave. And the tears…how I remember the tears!
But the present prayer book had been kindly given to me by a stranger. I had been at an 80th birthday party and made small talk with a stranger. She had the sweetest English accent and announced she went to the Anglican Church. Why I shared with her my background I don’t know but there I was telling her stories of the past. I mentioned that I had been re-reading all of Jan Karon’s Mitford books about an Anglican priest and how many memories had surfaced because of it.
“How I would love to glance through that old Book of Common Prayer” I remarked.
“Let me see what I can do about that”, she replied. And two days later there she was at my doorstep, book in hand.
I recall years back, at a Writer’s Conference, the speaker of the evening sharing that the greatest poetry book in the world was the King’s James version of the Bible. It really shocked me. This was a secular conference I was at. Yet, the language in it is glorious…the 23rd Psalm the most beautiful of all.
I felt much the same way about some of the language in the prayer book… the words winding around thoughts and expressions with such delicacy and handing you a wrapped gift to be accepted.
That is a bit much for many of you to buy into I know…but colours, textures, scents etc. all affect people in different ways. Words do that to me. They can be loving and comforting or corrosive and hateful. People respond to words. They have a great deal of power.
Perhaps that is why Scripture tell us about the importance of the tongue…and its use. I have always liked Proverbs 31: 1-31 about the truly good wife…and have read it at several wedding anniversaries. Verse 36 says…”When she speaks her words are wise, and kindness is the rule for everything she says”… good advice for singles, married and widowed… and for the fellows too!
Photo by Bryan Sherwood via Flickr, CC 2.0
