Laurence Hull Stookey

Dr. Laurence Stookey of Wesley Seminary has created this resource to serve as adaily prayer book for the home and personal use.The book isalso designed for useby individuals participating in a Wesleyan class meeting in conjunction withthe Sunday morning experience or a week-day meeting.The unique aspect of this program lies in its incorporation of the practice of daily prayerand accountabilitywithinthe Sunday morningadult education program. In addition to activities conducted on Sunday, class members will participate in ordered daily prayer within the Wesleyan spirit. This Daycontainsthirty-one forms of prayer, onefor each day of the month drawn from: John Wesley's 1738 Forms of Prayer for Every Day of the Week, The 1784 Order for Morning Prayer, The United Methodist Book of Worship, The Book of Common Prayer, The IONA and Taize Communities, the Benedictine tradition, the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and contemporary sources. This resource is not UM specific and isbased on the revised commonlectionaryand the daily lectionary of the Book of Common Prayer."

A probing but clearly written book, Calendar will find an appreciative audience beyond academia and clergy to the laity of the church: choirs and their directors, worship planners, adult study groups, and others who want to understand better the church's times of preparation and celebration. Calendar centers largely on theological meaning and parish practice in relation to liturgical time. Deliberately, almost no attention is given to detailed historical development, much of which is exceedingly complex in its origins and technical in its detail. An appendix entitled "Forgetting What You Were Always Taught (Or, This Book in a Nutshell)" aptly describes the radical reordering that Stookey believes occurs when our understanding of time and the story of Jesus takes its bearings from the Incarnation. So, just as the Christian week begins with Sunday, the day of Resurrection, Stookey follows the Christian year beginning with the season of Easter, and only then Lent; Christmas, then Advent. Illuminating discussions of Ordinary and Extraordinary Time, and the Sanctoral Cycle follow.