Compline and the First Weeks of Prayer Group

Early this spring two fellow parishioners invited me to help them start a prayer group.These two individuals had recently suffered serious difficulties in their lives and had developed very intense prayer practices through this great need. They wanted to be able to help other people find their way into prayer, to pray in a group for support and comfort and to grow further into their own spiritual life.

We certainly did begin this group. We met bi-weekly for three+ months and will resume a few weeks after Labor Day. We covered topics such as Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina; we discussed the different types of prayer, petition, intercession, praise, thanksgiving, oblation etc. We prayed together, It's been a qualitative, if not quantitative, success. Enough people have loved it that we feel encouraged to offer a second series in the fall.

It must be a hard thing to walk into a room with the purpose that you and others will pray together. You might feel exposed either in your inadequate praying (as if any of us are ever adequate) or vulnerable in your need. You might even feel that you have nothing to learn or gain from such an experience because you're fine praying as you are.The Sunday Eucharist does not deter people in this way despite the fact that, as we saw and studied, the prayers contained in the liturgy are just as soul-baring as anything could be. So our attendance was small, but enthusiastic.

The Daily Office has been a part of my life for 4 years. I find it so rewarding, so grace-filled, that I wanted to share it in some way with others. To that end I asked and received permission to lead a service of Compline during the summer months. It would be part of an overall prayer effort from the prayer group with additional elements to be determined in the future.

Unlike Morning and Evening Prayer, Compline does not have assigned readings that change from day to day. It is simple, short, sweet - actually very sweet. I set about preparing for this project.

So that people would feel entirely comfortable at this service, I made booklets that they could follow without having to find this or that page in the Book of Common Prayer. These were available on a table that people would pass on their way to their pews.

I transcribed the Order for Compline exactly from the Prayer Book, word for word. I didn't want anyone to have even one moment of uncertainty. I put the rubrics in red, just like in the old days. I included instructions for antiphonal reading of the Psalms and a request that everyone sit in the front pews. Remarkably, people did just that.

The one piece I did add was a prayer for members of our parish. Using the parish directory, I took all the first names of the parish and put them in columns on strips of heavy manila paper like bookmarks. It was easy to ask somebody to read one of these lists each night. Over the summer, we were able to pray for every member of our parish. Occasionally and serendipitously people were there to hear their own names and the names of their families read.

For atmosphere, I kept the lights dim and had one chair that the prayer leader (usually me but often another parishioner) could sit in during times of sitting. One candle burned to the side.

We began each evening with about 13 minutes of "still prayer," silent, undirected prayer. A chime would ring and we would stand and begin. Then followed another 15 or so minutes of spoken prayer, the Order for Compline. Many or few voices, once just my own voice. Praying into the darkness, the same words night after night.

Most nights we would observe the tradition of leaving in silence.

Over the months of Summer Compline, eighteen different people took part with an average nightly attendance of four. Five people absolutely loved the service and are eager for it to resume in the fall and again, more regularly, next summer. We hope.

Our next project is a half-day of prayer in November, sort of a mini-retreat. More about that when the time comes.

I feel a bit like the sower in the parable, tossing praying all over the place, blissfully unmindful that sometimes these efforts come to nothing. I feel that I have this one chance to do something and that I must get on with it. 

Over my life I have had many projects, some for work, some for family, some for church. This one has been different. The work is there, the preparation, the waiting, but the nerves are gone. Somehow gone. I feel oddly impervious to possible failure, ridicule or, even more dangerously, praise. 

That one evening when I said Compline alone - I didn't mind at all.