Praying the Hours

Praying the Hours offers us a contemporary way to practice the ancient tradition of hallowing time throughout the day by marking the hours with prayer and thanksgiving.

InPraying the Hours Suzanne Guthrie offers us a contemporary way to practice the ancient tradition of hallowing time throughout the day by marking the hours with prayer and thanksgiving. With humor and wisdom she draws on her experience as a wife, mother, Episcopal priest, and teacher of children, showing us through her own life how these devotions can fold into the times of a hectic day. By praying the hours all the activities of our days — our eating, sleeping, working, cleaning, playing, and reading — become part of the sanctification of time and place.

In part one Guthrie focuses on the importance of stability of place in the life of prayer. “Every time I move,” she observes, “I have to learn to pray all over again,” and she describes how she has learned to make a new home a house of prayer. In part two Guthrie takes us through the hours of prayer in the monastic day and explores how praying at fixed hours through the day can draw us closer to God.

Praying the Hours is one of our series of Cowley Cloister Books: smaller format, gift edition books designed for meditative and devotional reading.

Chapter 1 Moving: A New House
Chapter 2 Sensing: Sounds and Scents
Chapter 3 Censing: Dust and Incense
Chapter 4 Gardening: Once and Future Figs
Chapter 5 Mapping: The Timepiece of the Hours
Chapter 6 Sleeping: The Hour of Vigils
Chapter 7 Waking: The Hour of Matins
Chapter 8 Reading: The Hour of Lauds
Chapter 9 Worship: The Hour of Terce
Chapter 10 Working: The Hour of Sext
Chapter 11 Coping: The Hour of None
Chapter 12 Magnifying: The Hour of Vespers
Chapter 13 Returning: The Hour of Compline