Month: April 2016

Rogation Prayer Bunting

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Amanda had the idea for a prayer bunting to hang in your home, or around your garden, as a way to celebrate the Rogation days in your family.  The first page has a few prayers already included on the flags, and the remaining two pages have room to write your own prayers, and for children of non-writing age to draw their prayers.  Just another visible reminder of our responsibility to pray always for our neighbors, communities, and society at large. Cut the flags and fold them and secure with tape over some kind of string.  Kabob skewers work well to hold the flags in the ground.  We would love to see some of your Rogation buntings as well!  Tag us on Instagram @thehomelyhours. RogationFlags

What are the Rogation Days?

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This upcoming Sunday is Rogation Sunday, followed by the Rogation Days on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The lore of these days includes “beating of the boys” and a mysterious pastry called “Rammalation Biscuits,” so research was particularly interesting. What are the Rogation Days and how did they begin? From the always helpful Anglican resource Full Homely Divinity: The Rogation Days, the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day, originated in Vienne, France (not Vienna, Austria), in 470 after a series of natural disasters had caused much suffering among the people. Archbishop Mamertus proclaimed a fast and ordered that special litanies and prayers be said as the population processed around their fields, asking God’s protection and blessing on the crops that were just beginning to sprout. The Latin word rogare means “to ask”, thus these were “rogation” processions. In an agricultural society, closely connected with the soil and highly vulnerable to the uncertainties of nature, this was an idea that took root quickly, and the custom spread around Europe and over to Britain. The Sunday before the Rogation …

The Common and Best Things

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While struggling against discontentment with the everydayness of life, it can be tempting to seek escape from the mundane. But, perhaps the way of joy is to come closer to the common– to become more attentive to the very things that seem endless. Perhaps faith in the God who chooses bread, wine, and water as his sacraments means a faith that insists upon meaning in the most common things. Sixteenth century Anglican clergyman and poet Thomas Traherne believed this: “I was guided by an implicit faith in God’s goodness: and therefore led to the study of the most obvious and common things. For thus I thought within myself: God being, as we generally believe, infinite in goodness, it is most consonant and agreeable with His nature, that the best things should be most common. For nothing is more natural to infinite goodness, than to make the best things most frequent; and only things worthless scarce. Then I began to enquire what things were most common: Air, Light, Heaven and Earth, Water, the Sun, Trees, Men and …