Chapter 2: The Birthing Hour / Time before Time (55-59)

Ford's telling of his family story is quite remarkable. How fortunate for him to have read the journal of his biological mother so that he knows how much she loved her baby and his father, Tom, whom Ford never met. And how honest to tell us about his adoptive parents, Olive and Charles. As the father of an adopted daughter, I hope my Chelsea will be able in her late days to look back upon her birthing hours and come somehow to cherish her birth mother who indeed loved (and, I imagine) loves her now, day by day.

Ford's story is, of course, prelude to urging us to ponder over our own lives in our mothers' wombs. After reminding us how the bewombed John greeted the bewombed Jesus when Mary came to visit Elizabeth, Ford tells us that admittedly his and our own entry "into the world may not have been so dramatic. But as Elizabeth and the baby within her greeted Mary, God greets each of us and calls us to be special personal who live by purpose-drawn lives" (56).

And then Ford lets us in on what it's like to do womb-like Vigils at Mepkin Abbey, first with a half-cup of hot coffee with honey, then the middle-of-the-night waiting, a birthing time for psalm singing. While I've had the privilege of rising with monks for Vigils many years ago, I like to remind myself that wherever I am I too can share the Church's early singing and praying. It's for that reason that, whenever possible, I slip out of bed before dawn, heat up the water kettle on the stove, measure out four tablespoons of ground-up Haitian coffee beans into a French press (my "coffee ceremony"), pour the steaming water over the beans, let things steep for a few minutes, push down the press, fill up a mug of the milk-soaked brown delight, go outside and then settle into Vigils. It's a wonderful way to begin the day, well before dawn, in the birthing hour of each day. To say an early good-morning to God and the day, I generally use one of two books: Phyllis Tickle's The Night Offices: Prayers for the Hourse from Sunset to Sunrise or my Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary. I try not to be in a hurry, doing a good bit of waiting, sometimes just watching the sky light up or the birds in and around the feeders begin their morning chorus and seed-snacking. A good bit of the time I just like to be quiet, sort of empty, sitting in near silence. For me--and may well be for you too--it's the best part of the day.

While describing his own Vigil time at Mepkin, Ford does it just right to emphasis that he's "part of something bigger, wider, deeper than [his] individual experience" (58). That emphasis and understanding of prayer is on the mark. There's no special piety in all of this; nothing remarkable is happening; "performance matters little," Ford says. We're simply letting God open up the day for us. When we sing (or say) the psalms, there's lots of quiet, "long silences," Ford calls them, so that we can attend to the Spirit's slipping us into the verses of Psalms and Scripture. The whole of Vigils is a sort of easing into the day, a slow stretching of our souls, certainly "no rush to fill emptiness with words" (59). We might read a sermon or homily. I often read a bit of a book, one like this one we talking about. Prayers and intercessions rise up and are offered. And when things are done, we go back to the kitchen (perhaps to bed if that's best), maybe a walk, whatever. So God has delivers you and me into the day.