The liturgy of the hours is a traditional monastic practice of pausing for prayer at given intervals during the day. However, this practice can also be adapted for non-monastics as a way of entering more mindfully into the rhythm of each day.

In Seven Sacred Pauses: Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day, Macrina Wiederkehr gives us a very beautiful and practical guide for incorporating gentle reminders of God’s graces into our everyday lives.  For each of the seven pauses, she draws upon a lifetime of Benedictine spirituality to describe the themes and images that are associated with the hour.

For the Night Watch (midnight to dawn), she emphasizes that it is a time for deep listening and vigil.  The second pause, the Awakening Hour (5:30 to 7:00am), also called Lauds, is a time for waking up – for rejoicing and praising God.  Terce, the midmorning pause that Wiederkehr calls the Blessing Hour (9:30 to 11:00am), is a time to take a break in order to recall the blessings in our lives and to gain perspective that we can bring into the work day.  The midday Hour of Illumination (noon to 1:30pm) is the luminous hour of opposites and has traditionally been associated with prayers for peace.  The midafternoon pause that Wiederkehr calls the Wisdom Hour (3:00 to 4:30pm) is a time for tying up loose ends.  The sixth pause is Vespers (5:00 to 7:00pm), the beloved evening prayer with a mystical twilight quality.  The final hour of the day, Compline (8:30 to 10:30pm), is associated with darkness and silence in anticipation of awakening.

Seven Sacred Pauses unfolds wisdom and is gentle in its cyclic approach to the hours.  A few years ago, I enthusiastically made a drawing for each of the seven pauses that I kept at work with the book.  I must admit that I had mixed success in being completely faithful to this practice, especially during week days when I was crazy busy.  Still it’s worth working on and, although it may be challenging to grow into the habit of pausing to bring mindfulness into our day, it’s good to just pause to breathe even if it’s just for a minute.  Each chapter ends with a collection of quotes, poetry, prayers and reflections that we can use as a resource.  In addition, there is an accompanying CD of chants called Seven Sacred Pauses: Singing Mindfully Dawn Through Dark that is a beautiful collaboration between Wiederkehr and musician Velma Frye.

Soon after the book was published in 2008, I was fortunate to be able to attend an excellent retreat at the Cenacle Retreat House in Houston that was led by Macrina Wiederkehr, based on this book.  In the end, her parting wisdom to the group was very simple.  She said, “Remember to pause.”

Reference: Wiederkehr, Macrina, “Seven Sacred Pauses: Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day,” Sorin Books, Notre Dame, IN, 2008.

Image: Seven Sacred Pauses, cover art design by John Carson.