Since the start of lockdown last year and with ongoing uncertainty around Alert Levels that this has brought, many in the Diocese have been rediscovering the joy of prayer in common...

From Tuesday to Saturday at 9 am and Tuesday to Friday at 5 pm, people throughout the Diocese and beyond continue to gather for prayer, using the Daily Services from A New Zealand Prayer Book He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa. This includes a cycle of prayers, readings for particular days, as well as the Psalms, Hebrew scriptures, New Testament readings and Gospel as set out in the lectionary. This rhythm of prayer takes the church through the seasons and cycles of the Christian year. 

But more than this, these times have become a life-line for the regular and occasional participants who gather to pray in this way.  They have helped form a very different community to what was in place a year ago, where people are able to care for each other, pray for our world and for matters closer to hand, while being the "body of Christ" in a unique way.

This kind of common prayer is anything but ordinary. We have it in common, it is part of a usual pattern that can be part of our days, but often with extraordinary consequences. 

Rev'd Claire Brown from Otago Penisular Parish (one regular participant) says:

What is important for me is the sense of Diocese: people from all over, joining in praying - for the Church and for the world, and for those in particular need - with our prayerful Bishop. It is a very precious time.

Judy Ringland-Stewart from Port Chalmers Parish writes:

The Diocesan Morning Prayer on zoom has been the best thing to come out of COVID and the lockdown for me. I love the sense of connection and community which those of us have to each other who meet regularly or even occasionally. We are quite widely spread throughout the Diocese.

There is no obligation and not much effort to be sitting in your own home and clicking onto the connection on the Diocese website.

I also love the format of the service - the canticles, the psalm, the readings and especially the intercession prayers. It feels as though added strength is given to our individual prayers of concern when we voice them 5 times in a week with the group.

We prayed for my pregnant daughter in law and the safe arrival of the baby. We rejoiced at his birth. And then one of us was delighted to meet that baby by chance.

There is plenty of room for more people to zoom in and be part of this community.

Jo Stevens, who is part of the Dunstan Parish says:

What's been important to me about prayer by Zoom has been the sense of being able to contribute by reading a canticle, psalm or Bible passage or by adding to the thanksgivings and intercessions. While someone is always leading the session we can all contribute fairly equally as you would in a house group rather than in a church service.

The Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig in one of his books about prayer talks of morning and evening prayer as like contemplating a tree, whose roots reach down below the surface. The tree seeks nourishment from the dark soil, the rich "broken down" matter of life, with its roots holding it firmly to the earth. This enables the tree to grow, to swarm with life... but also withstand all the storms and changes that inevitably come our way. He says:

"A person kneels to contemplate a tree and to reflect on the troubles and joys of life. The person imagines mornings and evenings in a great forest of prayers, swarming and teeming with life. 

The person is learning how to pray." *

Everyone is welcome to join in these times of prayer together and to add this into your own spiritual discipline... who knows who and what we may encounter in these "thin places" where God is to be found...

• Morning Prayer (9 am Tuesday to Saturday)
• Evening Prayer (5 pm Tuesday to Friday)
• Diocesan Prayer Diary
• A New Zealand Prayer Book He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa
• The NZ Lectionary 2021 (version to download)

* Leunig, Michael (1991), The Prayer Tree, Collins Dove (Harper Collins Publishers Australia), ISBN 1 86371 034 5