TUESDAY, March 23 (Gregory the Illuminator)

Psalm 122: I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the LORD."

Garrison Keillor, chronicler of Lake Wobegone, was raised in the Plymouth Brethren Church, whose services are quite simple. Back in small-town Minnesota, their picture of Episcopalians was "wealthy people, Yale graduates, worshiping God in extremely good taste. Episcopalian was the church in wingtips, the church of Scotch and soda," Keillor writes in We Are Still Married.

Then he discovered Holy Apostles Church in New York, a little congregation worshiping in a run-down building, with all kinds of people, and running a soup kitchen that fed a thousand New Yorkers every day. Though he had trouble juggling Prayer Book, hymnal, and bulletin, "I felt glad to be there. When we stood for prayers, bringing slowly to mind the goodness and the poverty of our lives, the lives of others, the life to come, it brought tears to your eyes, the simple way the Episcopalians pray."

I want to remember what he wrote. When next I get angry or frustrated about our endless arguing over who's righteous and who's not, I want to remember that I am glad when I go into the house of the Lord and join in "the simple way the Episcopalians pray." (1991)

PRAY for the Diocese of Bukedi (Uganda)

Ps [120], 121, 122, 123 * 124, 125, 126, [127]; Exodus 5:1-6:1; 1 Cor 14:20-33a, 39-40; Mark 9:42-50

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