Some phrases in a prayer stick with me more than others. When I was little, my dad would kneel next to my bed to pray with me at night. I’d have my fingers intertwined so tight it almost hurt, and I usually kept one eye cracked open, watching so I could learn to do it just like him. He’d get to the line “protect us from dangers seen and unseen,” and even as a kid I remember thinking, wait, how do you protect someone from something you can’t see? I said the words anyway. He always waited for my “amen” before he’d get up off his knees and tuck me in.
My twins asked me something similar not long ago, about a different prayer. We were going through the Compline service from the Book of Common Prayer, the prayer said at the very end of the day, and they got hung up on this line: shield the joyous. The whole prayer can be found on page 134 of the 1979 BCP. Here it is in full:
Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.
Every line before that one makes sense right away. Watch over the workers. Tend the sick. Give rest to the weary. Then you hit “shield the joyous.” My kids didn’t stop me to ask about it, they waited until we finished. Why would happy people need shielding? Isn’t joy the thing we’re all praying for?
Here’s the simple explanation I had for them. They heard the same message before in different words: Don’t yuck someone’s yum. Don’t make fun of somebody’s favorite snack. Don’t tell them their favorite book is boring just because it’s not yours. Let people enjoy what makes them happy, and don’t be the one who ruins it.
Turns out we do this to ourselves, too. We take that first indulgent bite of something delicious and immediately start calculating what it’ll cost us later. We come back from a trip we needed badly already dreading the “catch-up” waiting for us at home. We finally take the nap our bodies have been begging for, and still feel a little guilty once we wake up. There’s a whole movement called The Nap Ministry (led by Tricia Hersey) built around exactly this need.
Shield the joyous isn’t asking God to protect happy people from bad luck. It’s asking for protection from us, from our own habit of cancelling out joy the second we feel it. What if, just once, we let joy stand on its own? No “but” attached. Just joy, shielded, for what it is.
The Nap Ministry? Say more about that, please.