Book Review: Sophia's Book of Hours

Sophia's Book of Hours

Sophia’s Book of Hours
Rev. Laura M. Grimes, PhD
Copyright 2010
Spiral Bound: $24.99
Ebook: $20.99

For those of you who like to pray The Daily Office of morning, noon, evening, and night prayers, there is now a Book of Hours that uses feminine names and pronouns for Godde: Sophia’s Book of Hours. For each day of the week there are Psalms, prayers and Scripture readings along with the three Lukan canticles: The Benedictus (morning), the Magnificat (evening), and Nunc Dimittis (night). Sophia’s Book of Hours is adapted from The Book of Common Prayer. In addition Laura also uses some gender-neutral names for Godde as well as giving the prayer a list of alternate names for Godde as well as alternate versions of the Gloria said or chanted after the Psalm of the day and the canticle.

Each Psalm and canticle is broken into two or three lines with an asterisk (*) midday way through the verse. This allows for them to be chanted in either Anglican or Gregorian chant tones. The morning Scripture readings are taken from The Hebrew Scriptures, noonday from the New Testament, evening from The Hebrew Scriptures’ Wisdom Literature, and the night prayers are Jesus’ seven “I Am” statements from the book of John. There are also Leader and People parts for the offices to be prayed in community settings such as church services, retreats, or in prayer groups.

As with Sophia’s Rosary, Laura has written Sophia’s Book of Hours to be versatile for many different settings whether community or individual. This prayer resource invites us into seeing Godde in new ways, and ourselves in different ways as we worship this Godde who will not be limited by our human language. I think it also does a great job of giving women a glimpse of what it means to made in the image of Godde as the feminine face of Godde is front and center in this beautiful prayer book. It opens our imagination to look beyond the so-called traditional gender roles that are enforced on women to see the ways we image Godde in our lives and presents vistas of what being a woman made in Godde’s image really looks like.

Rev. Laura Grimes

Laura holds a doctorate of theology from Notre Dame, and she is an ordained priest in the Independent Catholic Church. She was ordained as a bishop by the Sophia Catholic Communion in 2007. She pastors the St. Junia the Apostle Chapel. She lives in Dayton, Ohio with her husband and two children. You can find out more about Laura on her site, where you can buy her books. She has been working on using gender inclusive language in the church for both people and Godde for years, and she plans on putting out more resources for liturgical and prayer use. She has also recently released Sophia’s Rosary for those who like to pray the Rosary (my review is here).