Morning and Evening Prayer

It’s seven in the morning. Not quite awake, I enter the chapel. I dip my hand in the holy water and cross myself. The familiar words begin:

“Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness…

“Let us confess our sins…”

Why am I here again? Why am I repeating these words yet again?

I came from a church tradition that fears empty repetition, insists all prayer be spontaneous, and belittles ceremony. This service of all services, the morning and evening, day after day repetition of confessions, creeds, prayers, psalms—this service is the most foreign to my upbringing. Yet it is most familiar.

As a child, I lived in Turkey and attended Turkish schools. There I experienced ritual, ceremony, and repetition. Every morning I stood at attention with hundreds of children in the schoolyard—with millions of children in schoolyards across the country—and recited The Oath. “I am a Turk! I am upright! I am diligent!…” Day after day, week after week, year after year… The words were woven into the fabric of my being. What began as a required recitation of incomprehensible words became the expression of my identity, in particular, of my identity as one of a People.

On Easter Vigil of Holy Week 2013, I would become a member of the church. As the disciplines of Lent opened my heart, I heard a drastic call: the call to shift my identity from Turkey to Holy Church. I wrestled with the call. My very identity was being torn out of me. Would I accept this death? Deep within I accepted, yet continued to wrestle. How would this new identity look? What was I being called to? How would Holy Church ever become the very warp and woof of my life, the People of my identity? As I cried and prayed my way through Holy Week, the Lord brought a gentle answer to my questions: daily office.

Through daily words and ceremony I became of Turkey; through daily words and ceremony I am becoming of Church. The Oath shaped my identity; the Creed and The Lord’s Prayer reshape my identity.

That is why I am here at seven in the morning. That is why I stand and kneel, say the words, pray the prayers, hear the Scriptures. Some days I stumble through, barely awake. Some days my lips form words I cannot say through my tears. Some days I feel nothing and my distracted mind wanders to trees and chores and intricacies of the HVAC system. Some days I am fully present, drinking in the beauty of God’s presence. I would love to experience all days fully present. But, in a way, whether I do doesn’t matter. Whether I feel it or not, whether I can focus on it or not, whether I can understand it or not, the ritual of the daily office transforms me through its sheer daily-ness.

I stand and proclaim, “I believe in one God… I believe in Jesus Christ… I believe in the Holy Spirit; the holy, catholic Church…” And I know: I belong in Church.


Join us for 30 minutes of daily prayers and Scripture reading in All Saints Chapel.

  • Morning Eucharist: 7–7:30am Mon-Sat
  • Evening Prayer: 5:30–6pm Sun-Fri (Eucharist on Sun.)

The entrance to All Saints is at the southwest corner of the building.

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