Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Night-time ritual

Before falling asleep and going to bed, my husband reads to me. Right now we are dealing with the various St. Paul's letters to communities. I believe we started with one of the gospels and then picked random NT parts. For Advent he used the devotional my church had around, then for our anniversary we read Song of Solomon. We read that as he had me read the girl parts.
It is a ritual that goes forward, through sickness, health and travel. There have been very few times when he hasn't read a scripture to me, even when I'm trying to deal with pain, or I'm about to fall dead asleep, he'll read. If I'm alseep, then all bets are off. He reads a study bible so then he reads the commentary after scripture. I give commentary while he's reading.
Following scripture and the commentary is prayer. Sometimes I ask for a short prayer, which doesn't seem to make much of a difference because everyone still gets included and it is still long, winding and Presbyterian, then we do a relay Our Father, where I say part, then he says part, and then back to me. We kiss goodnight and crawl back into bed.
Not as good as compline, but better than nothing.

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