This daily prayer will combine with a discipline of memorization — each month we will seek to learn by heart a psalm or canticle of the church. Our hope is to learn these prayers so they are with us in our time of comfort and our time of need.

This month — beginning with the Day of Pentecost, May 19, and extending to the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, June 16 — we will be praying the Phos hilaron 

Please join us as you are able!

O Gracious Light     Phos hilaron

O gracious light,

pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven,

O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed!

Now as we come to the setting of the sun,

and our eyes behold the vesper light,

we sing your praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices,

O Son of God, O Giver of Life,

and to be glorified through all the worlds.

Book of Common Prayer: Evening Prayer Rite I (page 64), Evening Prayer Rite II, (page 118), Daily Devotions in the Early Evening (page 139). 

10 AM – 5 PM (AS THE STORMS GATHER, WE MAY END EARLIER)

Homestead at Merin Road, north Chapel Hill

Come to the site of our new church at Homestead and Merin Road to shop our yard sale and buy our delicious baked treats!  See the ongoing transformation of what was a beautiful, but empty, historic 19^th century church into a permanent home for worship and prayer for the Advocate family.  The proceeds from the Advocate Yard Sale directly benefit our renovations and making our church accessible for everyone.  Furniture, clothing, books, kitchen items, kid stuff, cakes, cookies, treats, and more!

If you have items that you want to donate, please contact Sarah McInnes <sarahd.mcinnes@gmail.com>

As with all Habitiat builds, the volunteers will be working side by side with the family who will be living in the house we build. This year’s Build will provide a home for Zohra Harizi and Mohamed Bakour and their four children. The family moved to North Carolina from Algeria in 2005, having extensive experiences as school teachers there.

The build will begin January 20 and run through May. The Advocate is responsible for providing work teams on the second Saturday of each month — February 9, March 9, April 13, and May 11. If you are 16 or older, and would like to help with a morning or an afternoon shift on any or all of those Saturdays, please contact: administrator@theadvocatechurch.org

This daily prayer will combine with a discipline of memorization — each month we will seek to learn by heart a psalm or canticle of the church. Our hope is to learn these prayers so they are with us in our time of comfort and our time of need.

This month — beginning with Good Shepherd Sunday, April 21, and extending to the Day of Pentecost, May 19 — we will be praying the 23rd psalm, King James Version.

Please join us as you are able!

Psalm 23

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’ sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

King James Version (1979 Book of Common Prayer on page 476)

Here is our liturgy (prayers written by our Priest Associate, The Rev. Dr. Canon Marilyn McCord Adams).:

The people gather at the pond.

Priest lights the thurible and blesses a bucket of water for asperges:

O God, as our prayers go up with the incense, we pray your blessings on this water, that as it flows from pond to pitcher, and flies from holly branch to leaves and grass and pine needles, it would be a sign for us of your abundant blessing.  Amen.

The procession moves out the driveway and stops at the mailbox.

O God, You know we need boundaries, definite times and places in which to seek You and be found by You, to get better acquainted, to dream dreams, and to make future plans.  O God, thank you for the gift of this land.  Today we beat its bounds to banish fear and hatred, cowardice and complacency.  Today we sow seeds of passion for justice, solidarity with the displaced, and love for the earth.  Make us forceful and fruitful.  Give us a good harvest.  Through Jesus Christ.  Amen.

The procession heads north along Merin Road, pausing at the northwest corner of the land, then moving into the woods, stopping at the maple tree.

O God, we love the woods, with their hide-and-seek light and twisting trails, with soaring green and tweeting birds, with slithering snakes and lumbering turtles, with croaking frogs and scavenging racoons and things that go bump in the night.  O God, thank You for untamed spaces that we have not organized, places that quiet us down enough to listen to ourselves and to hear Your voice.  Through Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Procession continues along the north boundary to the train tracks, pausing at the iris and maple on the northeast corner of the land, then heads south to Homestead Road, stopping along the train tracks.

O God, You are a traveler.  You will be with us wherever we go, just as You have accompanied us wherever we have been.  O God, let the Advocate be an underground railroad from bondage to freedom, a community where people catch their breath, rediscover themselves and  forge new directions; a place that sends people on towards the new Jerusalem to become all that they can be.  Through Jesus Christ.  Amen.

The procession pauses at the southeast corner, where the train tracks meet Homestead Road.

O God, “home is the place that–when you go there–they have to take you in.”  But You did not have to include us in Your family.  You built the world on purpose to welcome us and all your creatures.  O God, bless all of the homes around this road.  Help us to realize that You are our home.  Make this homestead chapel a place where all who enter will be greeted by Your presence and grow up into the knowledge and love of You.  Through Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Procession moves west to Merin, up to the driveway and back to the pond.

O God, we are mostly made of water.  No wonder this pond is so inviting.  We love to gaze across it.  We can’t resist the urge to wade right into it.  We are eager to discover the treasures, cheerful to engage the dangers that lurk below.  O God, baptize everyone who comes here with holy curiosity, with wonder at what is present, with readiness to roll up our sleeves and reach for immeasurably more.  Through Jesus Christ.  Amen.

The Advocate @ Unity

The year after I graduated from college,I worked for a marketing research firm in Dallas, Texas. And there I befriended Pat, a woman who worked in the firm and whose husband was in the final stages of his life. By the time I knew him, Pat’s husband had already been ailing for years with emphysema, but was still fighting hard to stay alive. As the months passed, it became clear that his body was ready to die, but his spirit was not.

I don’t remember whose idea it was, but somebody had the idea of giving Pat a book that went through the 23rd Psalm – line by line, image by image – to share with her husband. And she did. She read each line, each phrase, and talked with him about it.

The Lord is my shepherd,

I shall not want.

He maketh me lie down in green pastures,

he leadeth me beside still waters.

She said it was amazing to see her husband relax more and more as they went through that Psalm.

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

For thou art with me….

She said that reading this Psalm together gave them the opportunity to talk with each other about their faith and their fears in ways they had never talked with each other before. She said that she watched her husband come to a place of sweet acceptance, of comfort, of peace. He died that night. And was received in the arms of the loving shepherd. the Good Shepherd.

I’ve thought of this story through the years, especially on the fourth Sunday of Easter each year when we read the 23^rd psalm as part of our Good Shepherd Sunday, like we did today.

I’ve thought of this story as a priest, too, as I’ve had occasion to be with people as they prepare for death, or as they slip slowly into dementia. I have been repeatedly amazed at how the poems and songs of childhood and young adulthood stay with us til the end.

Last year, I visited  an elderly Advocate now in a nursing home in Siler City. For most of the visit, Jane just sat there, staring off into space. And when I offered prayers, her affect did not change. But when I started to say the Lord’s Prayer, she turned and looked at me, and started to say the words along with me. Not all of them, but some. Same thing when I sang the doxology.

I’ve thought about these things in the days of the week gone by as well. As the events in Boston unfolded. If I or someone I loved were injured in a blast, If my house were evacuated while heavily armed police searched for a terrorist, a) would I remember to pray? and b) what would my prayer be?

What would your prayer be?

The prayers we learn in our youth stay with us in our old age. The prayers we learn in our time of comfort stay with us in our time of need. I wonder, then, what are we learning now that will be with us then?

And more…. We say that we are formed by our liturgy. The words we say in this place are not offered willy nilly. They have been written and vetted and selected with great care, not just the care of the Advocate’s liturgy brewers, but with the care of the Anglican Communion from whose prayer books and conventions gathered they come. Anglicans take the words of our prayers very seriously, because we deeply understand that these prayers form us and our faith.

Ideally, too, the words and the phrases and the prayers themselves get so deeply embedded in our memory and our soul, that they pop up in our time of need or celebration and make us mindful of God’s presence with us.

The best experience of this for me is a canticle called the Phos Hilaron. A canticle being a song or prayer, mostly taken from scripture and often deeply rooted in the church’s tradition. The daily prayers of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer include several canticles. And they are generally known by the Latin or Greek words with which they start. Phos Hilaron for example, is the Greek for O Gracious Light.

The Phos hilaron is part of Evening Prayer, and it includes the lines:

now as we come to the setting of the sun

and our eyes behold the vesper light,

we sing you praises O God,

Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

You may see how this works then. The words are in my bones. and when I see a sunset, or the glow of the late afternoon sun, I often find myself saying these words, now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the vesper light,,we sing your praises O God…

Lo and behold, I am praying praise, aware of myself as a creature beloved of God.

God is with us in our times of sorrow and in our times of joy, at our beginning and at our end. As the psalmist says, The Lord shall watch over your going out and your coming in. How do we prepare ourselves to remind ourselves of this?

I wish that I knew more canticles and psalms.  And I wish that as a people of the Advocate, we all did. Because that would help us to pray more readily, to be mindful of God in the hours of the day, or in an hour of need.

One of the downsides of the move toward more contemporary language in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is that we lost some of the old and what were then the more familiar translations of these psalms, canticles and prayers. Parents wonder which version of the Lord’s Prayer to teach their children. And the psalter version of Psalm 23 doesn’t ring as poetically as the old King James. Add to that our commitment here at the Advocate to using different rites from one season of the year to another, so that we don’t get to “inwardly digest” the words or phrases of any one rite. They don’t then get into our bones.

Beyond the Creed, the Sanctus and the Lord’s Prayer, probably the things we repeat the most here would be the songs: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, or All Who Hunger Gather Gladly. Good. But we could use more.

Which brings me to an idea I want to proffer for our life together. An idea that we identify some canticles of the church and verses of Scripture to commit to memory. Psalm 23 for starters, then the O Gracious Light. Then maybe Psalm 121: I will lift up mine eyes to the hills… Or Psalms 139 (selected verses). We could make a list and focus on one each month. Then gather to recite them together perhaps.

Which dovetails nicely with another thought I’ve had for our life together. It is not uncommon for Episcopal communities to provide a regular gathering for morning prayer or evening prayer. Indeed, both Chapel of the Cross and Church of the Holy Family do. As does St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church in Durham. Here at the Advocate we are somewhat hampered by not having a single identifiable neighborhood location to publicly advertise. And also by the fact that at present our congregation is scattered across five counties during the week. But I wonder if we might find a way to pray together anyway.

There is an old custom of the Roman Catholic Church called praying the Angelus. It is perhaps best known because of the painting of that name by 19^th century French painter Jean-François Millet. People scattered hither and yon would hear the church bells toll at particular times of the day, morning, noon and evening. And they would stop what they were doing and offer a prayer of thanksgiving for the Incarnation and for Mary’s willing acceptance to be the bearer of God.

It concluded with the prayer:

Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts; that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection, through the same Christ Our Lord.

Very formative!

The Advocate has a bell, but even if the steeple were up and finished, I don’t think many people of the Advocate could hear it in the place of their daily life and work.

Recently someone brought to my attention that the clocks of many smart phones and computers can be set to give and alarm or reminder at different times of the day. She in fact has her phone set to chime at noon, 3 PM, and 6 PM to remind her to pray at each of those times. Very cool.

What if, as a people, or at least as a group of those willing to try it, we set our clocks for a set time each day and agreed that at that time, wherever we were, we would offer the prayer we had identified to memorize that month. We would do so, knowing that others of the Advocate were doing it at the same time. Together we would be formed. And together we would be prepared. Prepared for the life of faith. Watch the Advocate website, twitter feed and facebook page! Invite your friends and family to join in the fun.

It is noteworthy that the image we are given of Jesus this day is that of the Good Shepherd. The Good shepherd who knows his flock and calls us each by name. Even in this image, we are given an identity that is at once individual or particular, and corporate or communal.

Yes, the Good Shepherd calls us each by name, but we are a flock, a collective, a community.

The flock that is under the care of the Good Shepherd Jesus, then, eats, and also eats together. Works for justice, and also works for justice together. Prays, and also prays together.

Let’s start with the 23^rd psalm. King James Version. See how we do it today, then try it together again on May 19.

Here we go: (I don’t have the words in front of me, so we are all in this together!)

Let all God’s people say… AMEN!