Saturday, December 3
Vespers 6 pm
Because I honestly have no idea what I’m doing, I decided that for this first one, I would defer to YouTube to help me to get the flow of things. This was good, a lot of the words were printed on the screen so I could kind of keep up with where we were in the order. It seems to have followed with only slight variation from what I plan to use from Forms and Orders.
Compline 7 pm
Grateful for this, if nothing else it helped me to solve my own inner monologue about how compline is pronounced. It was markedly shorted than the order I have (I think), but I’m not familiar enough with the different prayers to know what was missing.
Sunday, December 4 — Dominica
Matins 2 am (Okay, let’s be real here. I started at 1:30 because I was anxious I might fall asleep.)
What had me worried was the hour of this vigil—would I wake up for it? Would I stay awake through it?
Well, I can’t sleep if I know I need to wake up for something, so the first worry was not actually an issue. If this continues throughout the week though, I may not recover for a while from lost sleep!
This vigil was from the Carthusian Order, and from the intro in the video, their only goal is contemplation. While I have a bone to pick with contemplation as the only goal of anything, I recognize that contemplation is not something I do well. I like action. This was a good starter video for me in that it was all in either Latin or French. I needed to pay attention to the rare subtitles to stay engaged, but the chanting of the versicles and the nocturns in Latin with the words on the screen at this late hour (early hour?) with only a candle lit was kind of amazing. I have not taken any Latin classes, but with everyone in the house asleep and no one to hear or care how I pronounced words, I was able to mostly follow along out loud during the psalms.
Now, I have read that Lauds in medieval contexts usually happened several hours after Matins (for devotions to take place in between the ending of Matins) and now it seems like a lot of the YouTube videos I looked into before landing on this one lump them together. For today, I’ll consider sleep my private devotion (oh, I love sleep) and when I wake up I’ll do Lauds just before dawn, then I’ll do prime. What I really appreciate about this exercise is that it made sense of the jumble of words on the pages in this book, and I am actually picking out the different parts after just three observances. I was really struggling to visualize how all of this flowed before.
Lauds 3:30ish am
The divine office is not super compatible with being the mom of a kid with covid. As I was snuggling into bed after Matins, the familiar footsteps of my youngest came down the steps into my room. She couldn’t sleep. So we sat down, re-lit the candle and played a video from Sing The Hours. This was the format I was expecting, but with more “modern” hymns (Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, 18th century.)
Parenting tip: if you have a kid who won’t sleep, invite them to join you for prayer. She didn’t make the full 15 minutes. She didn’t even make it to the canticle from Daniel.
Prime 7:51 am (I overslept a bit)
I couldn’t peel myself out of bed. I found a prime video on Facebook, of all places. My notes were nowhere to be found, so I don’t know if it followed the format or not. It was a very difficult 5 or so minutes.
https://fb.watch/hcuP1d9Zh8/?mibextid=34AQnU
Terce
I. Slept. Through. My. 9am. Alarm.
Sext 15ish
It wasn’t quite at noon. Apparently church cabinet meetings don’t take kindly to their pastors zoning out for a quick prayer sesh, and to be fair, even though I was zooming in because we’re in quarantine, one should not be distracted while…sexting. I’m sorry. I had to. The hour was moved to 1:15, and was rivalled by the fast food my husband came in with. I won’t use this source for prayer again, the audio is great but unlike the other videos I’ve used, the text wasn’t on the screen to follow along with. Thank goodness they did Psalm 23 in English so I could tell where we were.
None 3 pm
I did this! I know I did this! Why don’t I have any record of doing this?! Didn’t I take notes? I am awful at this.
Vespers
My brother-in-law stopped by, despite Covid being present in our house, and disassembled a weight machine we were giving to him. I missed vespers.
Compline 7:30 pm
Started a bit late. At first Dot joined me, but after a few minutes, she got up and ran away yelling ‘THIS IS CREEPY.” Latin isn’t for everyone?
End of the Day Thoughts
I want to say how hard it is to fit the medieval office into my schedule. I knew there would be difficulties and it would probably be kind of comical as I tried to sneak off, but it feels a bit like caring for a newborn baby. Sitting up in the middle of the night like that was reminiscent of breastfeeding, except instead of Welcome Back Kotter reruns, it was latin chanting.
Busy Little Sunshine 