How can a work based on such traditional oldies as the Benedictine Rule, the Book of Common Prayer, and the writings of the Church Fathers be modern? For each day during June through September complete daily readings and appointments are provided for The Morning Office, The Midday Office, and The Vespers Office, with a weekly Compline for each month. And the book shines from beginning to end: the ancient propers are presented in modern but dignified language, harmonized with very suitable contemporary readings. And it works to no understatement - Tickle could well be today's Cranmer.

In her introduction to this manual, Phyllis Tickle writes about the place of fixed-hour prayer in the timeless Christian experience: "Like a double helix rendered elegant by complexity and splendid by authority, the amalgam of gospel and shared meal and the discipline of fixed-hour prayer were and have remained the chain of golden connection tying Christian to Christ and Christian to Christian across history, across geography, and across idiosyncrasies of faith."

With such a perspective, the keeper of the Hours is ready to go, and it's all in this manual, without the shuffling of prayer books, Bibles, and hymnals! Tickle has compiled a complete text, made possible by over thirty years of daily intimacy with the divine offices and with the discipline of keeping them. "In essence," says Tickle, "I have compiled the book of hours or breviary that I always wished I could find somewhere to use for my own observation of the offices." She has done a beautiful job of just that.

Bindy Snyder
EPISCOPAL WOMEN'S HISTORY PROJECT

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