Recently I’ve been using David Adam’s The Rhythm of Life: Celtic Daily Prayer for, er, daily prayer. It’s a nice little easy-to-use office with certain “celtic” themes. But, unlike some attempts at celtic Christian spirituality it’s thoroughly grounded in Scripture and orthodox theology.

There are four offices for each day of the week and each day has a particular theme, such as “Resurrection” for Sunday, “Crucifixion,” for Friday, etc. This has the added benefit of enabling you to use a particular day’s office(s) for the appropriate church seasons (e.g. the Sunday offices for Easter). In addition to the usual Psalms, readings, etc. there are celtic-inflected litanies and prayers composed by Adam, who is the vicar of St. Mary Anglican Church on the island of Lindisfarne off the coast of England, a location long associated with celtic Christianity.

There is also an appendix with common Christian prayers, but what I discovered almost by accident is that the appendix by itself makes for a brief but rich order of prayer. Here are its contents in order:

Gloria Patri

Kyrie

Prayer of Confession [e.g. from the Book of Common Prayer morning office]

Gloria in Excelsis

Apostle’s Creed

Lord’s Prayer [my addition]

Final blessing [e.g. “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us always.”]

One of the benefits of this is that these are all prayers that many Christians will already have memorized, or are easily memorizable, and yet they cover all the bases, so to speak. It could therefore be prayed anywhere and anytime. You could also insert personal intercessions or other extemporaneous prayers at various points (between the creed and Lord’s Prayer, say).