By Katharine E. Harmon, May 27, 2026
In my earlier days, I was generally annoyed by poetry. Too irrational. Too many feelings. Too unconnected to reality. Too annoying.
But, perhaps as I, ahem, gain “wisdom” in my years, I find my feelings around poems have evolved. I find more food in them—less annoyance, and more…wisdom. Perhaps it is as one of my music professors once to our overly opiniated music history class: “You’re too young for Mozart.”
Maybe one can be too young for poetry. Or, perhaps, not filled up with enough experience, grace, mercy, or patience to digest it. And, poetry certainly demands patience. If we let the words slam by with a quick skim and scan, we do not see it, we do not hear it, and we certainly don’t learn from it.
Liturgical prayer is a lot like this, of course. It is not for the feint of heart. Perhaps it requires crash helmets, as the author Annie Dillard once quipped. Liturgical prayer requires plenty of grace, mercy, and continually demands that we practice patience. How long, O Lord, how long? The answer might take our entire lives to unfold.
As we’re practicing, crash helmets or not, there’s nothing that helps us to hear liturgical prayer better than actually doing it. Surprised? Maybe you’re not. But I was. I, who have long loved liturgy, have long been terrible at praying that great pastoral juggernaut: the Liturgy of the Hours. But I’ve had promptings in at least two ways this year: One, from my spiritual director (yes, a Benedictine). Two, from subbing as an organist for evening prayer with our Benedictine Sisters here in St. Joseph, Minnesota.
First, my spiritual director encouraged me to read a psalm from morning prayer first thing to start the day. And so I have been doing so: I make a feeble but dogged attempt at lectio divina over breakfast—between feeding two children seeking fruit loops and bagels and dealing with a dog demanding kibbles. I might gain a word or two. I read it slowly, and sometimes twice. Coffee helps.
But, it’s the sisters who I’m accompanying that have taught me—or rather are teaching me—to hear the psalms and canticles slowly. With patience. With mercy for myself and others. And to give room for grace to speak. There is plenty of space for silence—between the psalms and readings, between the stanzas, even between the lines. There is space for prayer to speak. For God to speak. And for us to be silent.
I’m far from perfect in my hearing of the liturgy. But I feel as if I’m getting very slowly tuned to hear just a little bit better. It certainly is easier to hear liturgical prayer speak in community. In fact, the community slowly speaking—better yet singing—evening prayer animates the texts in a way I’ve never quite experienced, but perhaps in the way in which liturgical prayer was intended.
So maybe it will take my whole life. But I’ll take “a little bit better” if I can catch but one day (or one word) in the courts of the Lord every once in a while. At least over coffee.
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