Phyllis Tickle | Author and Editor, The Ancient Practices Series
Phyllis Tickle is founding editor of the Religion Department of Publishers Weekly, the international journal of the book industry, and is an authority on religion in America. In addition to lectures and numerous essays, articles, and interviews, Tickle is the author of over two dozen books in religion and spirituality, most recently The Great Emergence, How Christianity is Changingand Why and The Words of Jesus, A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord. She is also the author of the notable and popular The Divine Hours series of manuals for observing fixed-hour prayer and general editor of The Seven Ancient Practices Series. In September 1996 she received the Mays Award, one of the book industry’s most prestigious awards for lifetime achievement in writing and publishing, and specifically in recognition of her work in gaining mainstream media coverage of religion publishing. She has received honorary degrees of Doctor of Humane Letters from the Berkeley School of Divinity at Yale University and North Park University.
- There’s nothing more urgent right now than reconsidering the ancient disciplines.
- We got modern and called them “disciplines.”
- In the early days of the Church, our forbearers in the faith realized they held dual citizenship.
- They were citizens of Caesar’s state and the kingdom of God.
- They sought to form themselves as dual citizens.
- In our modern time, we decided to be citizens of one kingdom… as a state and church merged.
- We’ve experienced secularization.
- Change is coming and we are once more citizens in Kingdom of God and in polity.
- Our first obligation is to be citizens of the Kingdom of God.
- We are called to do the ancient practices so that our citizenship in the Kingdom of God is undeniable.
The Seven Ancient Practices
- Three govern the body; four govern time.
Tithing
- Every citizen must pay tax.
- We must give back to what we are a part of.
- It’s a discipline of giving one tenth to the maintenance of the Kingdom; just as we maintain the state with our good.
Sacred Meal
- The most intimate relationship we can ever have with each other is to break bread together.
- When we take communion we participate in the Kingdom.
- We share with each other in the most incarnate fashions.
- Psalm 110
Fasting
- Fasting depletes our energy and forces us to begin to retreat.
- Nothing bothers me more than a middle class woman giving up chocolate for Lent, that’s not fasting.
- Fasting draws us further into ourselves until there is no energy to meet the stimuli outside of ourselves.
- We realize the Kingdom of God is inside of us as well as outside of us.
- It helps us understand our citizenship in the Kingdom of God and how to live it outwardly.
Disciplines of Time
- Time is the dimension in which we are caught.
- We live with spatial dimensions but time has us captive.
- It’s toward the end of time we are moving.
- Time must be governed.
Fixed Hour of Prayer
- The daily offices of prayer.
- The Psalmist said “seven times a day do I praise thee…”
- The fixed hour of prayer governs the day.
Keeping Sabbath
- Governs the week.
- Keeping an entire day that is set aside for God.
Keeping of the Liturgical Year.
- We have neglected to live the Gospel through the entire year.
- We’ve neglected Advent, Lent, The Great 50 Days, Pentecost
- Resurrection was not so unusual in those days.
- When they saw Jesus ascend something happened.
- They knew they were the Kingdom of God on earth.
- The Liturgical Year reminds us and our community that this the story we live every day of our lives and we measure our time by it.
Business of Pilgrimage
- We’ve neglected pilgrimage and withdrew from sacred places.
- You can’t intellectualize faith, it’s something you do incarnate.
- You incarnate by going to those places that have been made hallowed over the years.
- Christianity lacks transcendence.
- A pilgrimage is a coming back.
Fixed Hour Prayer
- Of all the seven disciplines it is the one being most completely revived.
- It involves praying every three hours and offering brief prayers. 6 AM, 9 AM, Noon, 3 PM, sunset and before bed [and midnight if you are brave].
- When those prayers are said you know Christians are going to pick up your prayers and consistently offer prayer.
- You are joining the church invisible when you practice fixed hour prayer.
- When you pray those prayers you are praying with the church vertical and church horizontal.
There’s an App for That
- Check out the Divine Office app
