In this section we offer daily reflections and prayers, and links to other kinds of Christian prayer and meditation resources via "Related Links" (see the box in the right-hand sidebar on each page).

Out of the long history of Christian worship, and of the Christian mystics and monastics - from the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the first few centuries, to St. Benedict of Nursia and his Monastic Rule; from St. Julian of Norwich and St. Francis of Assisi (that's him, over there to the right) to St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila; from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Simone Weil to Thomas Merton and Fr. Thomas Keating - out of that long tradition has come a wondrous variety of practices of prayer and contemplation.

The English and Anglican monastics and mystics, too, have been a key and central part of that tradition:  Julian, of course, and Bede; Walter Hilton, Richard Rolle, and the anonymous English writer  of The Cloud of Unknowing; George Herbert, John Donne, and William Law; Nicholas Ferrar, John Keble, and Evelyn Underhill.  Our Anglican heritage is full to overflowing with (often ardent and sometimes quite wonderfully eccentric!) seekers and lovers of God. 

It shouldn't be forgotten that the Benedictine influence was especially strong in England; our Book of Common Prayer, with its equal emphasis on Communion and Daily Office, is reflective of that.  

In this section we hope to offer a glimpse into at least a small part of that tradition.

[Worship] is not merely a commemoration of the events of the Gospel or other events in the Church's life, in an artistic form. It is also an actualization of these facts, their renewal upon earth. The Christmas service does not merely commemorate the birth of Christ. In it Christ is truly born in a mystery, as at Easter He rises again. So with the transfiguration, the entry into Jerusalem, the ascension of Christ....The life of the Church in her liturgy, discloses to our senses the continuing mystery of the Incarnation. The Lord still lives in the Church, under that same form in which He was once manifest on earth, and which exists eternally; and it is the function of that Church to make those sacred memories living, so that we again witness and take part in them.

- From Anglican mystic Evelyn Underhill's 1936 book, Worship, in a quote from S. Boulgakoff, L'Orthodoxie