The 24 Rhythms of Hearth & Hinterland: Praying Simplified Hours

In a culture fueled by production, how can we take back the rhythm of our life?

There is a kind of mercy to an intentional daily rhythm rooted in prayer. The body knows it. The land knows it. Our souls remember it too.

This discipline is often seen as some sort of lofty spiritual ideal that no longer fits in our current way of life, but that is entirely the point.

It is, in fact, the way we move through our life, modeled in the same practice of farmers and fishermen that rise, rest, and end their days within the cycles of the sun. Their lives moving in rhythm with earth and heaven.

We too order our days in relationship toward chasing the light.

Since the earliest days of Christianity, a life set apart for ongoing sanctification has always been ordered by prayer because a life ordered by prayer—instead of production—is the fastest way to remind ourselves that we are wholly baptized into a different way of life.

But this new monastic discipline does not stand on the ruins of old crumbled traditions.

It springs from them.

We are recovering ancient wisdom to root ourselves in the love of God right where we are, in this distinct time and place—in the kitchen, the woodshed, the classroom, the office, the school pickup line, or while we wait for the neighborhood barista to call our name.

“Pray without ceasing,” wrote Paul to the church in Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 5:17). This practice wasn’t a metaphor. It was an invitation to a conversation that we are all too prone to losing without intention.

Still, most of us need a little help with the how.

Why?

Human beings are prone to leading lives that are scattered, not gathered. We spread out instead of slowing down to go deep. We want one hundred acres with roots that are one foot deep instead of one acre with roots that run one hundred feet.

We fill our time like we fill our baskets.

We don’t know when to stop working.
We don’t know when to stop harvesting.
We don’t know when to say enough.

A rhythm of prayer fights back against this basic human malady.

A Rhythm for the Dispersed

Most of us do not live lives where we can faithfully pray eight times a day like the old monastics. But the heart of their practice was not in the number of times or hours they prayed but in the rhythm they kept.

They knew that time itself could become a liturgy. Each rising and resting, each meal and moment of stillness, could become a doorway into divine communion and conversation. And it was those moments that set a better cadence for their day than any of the other things we so often use as our anchor points.

That’s the invitation of the simplified hours within The Way of Hearth & Hinterland.

Whether you pray at fixed times or use the more natural rhythms of daily moving—perhaps waking, your midday meal, the stoppage of work, and before sleep—you are stepping into a current of prayer that is ancient and alive.

And if you do this within a larger community that is sharing a rule of life, there is a deep knowledge that in that moment, no matter the distance between, you are not alone.

When you whisper the words of your morning prayers with a cup of coffee still warming your hands, somewhere a brother in another place is doing the same.

When you pause at noon to breathe and say thank you and ask God to bless the work of your hands, a sister is lighting a candle in her kitchen window.

When you kneel at night with nothing fancy to say but “help me” and “thank you,” the saints and angels bend low in solidarity over your bed and the beds of your shared community of brothers and sisters.

Our rhythm of prayer is the communion of the faithful, a divine conversation that is dispersed but not divided. It is what shortens the distance between us and sets us apart in unity.

The Celtic Witness

The monastics of Northumbria and Iona lived close to the land, forming communities where hospitality, humility, and holiness were not ideals but habits of life. They prayed as they worked, and they worked as they prayed. They understood that God was as near in the smoke from their hearth as in their chapel incense.

Aidan of Lindisfarne once said, “Leave me alone with God as much as may be. As the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore, make me an island, set apart.”

It’s a prayer not of escape but of availability—to be still enough to hear God’s voice and ready enough to respond when called.

Sanctifying the Ordinary

It’s tempting to think of prayer as something added onto life as though it were a holy appointment slotted in between meetings or chores. But this way of thinking misses the heart of the practice entirely.

The goal is not to divide our lives into sacred and secular. Our aim is to recognize that all ground is holy when we walk and fill it with our desire to be in conversation with the great mystery of our Creator.

“Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,” Paul writes to the Colossians, “… giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17).

The simplified hours help us live this scripture out in its fullness of intent—not just in principle, but in practice.

When we pause before our meal to pray, we remember that food is a gift and our bodies are a blessing that still requires the providence of God to maintain.

When we rise with prayer on our lips, we place the day back in God’s hands before it even begins.

When we pause our work for our midday prayers, we remind ourselves that the work of our hands is a form of worship and sacrifice that require the blessings of the Creator to make useful to the repair and restoration of the world.

When we lie down with prayer, we surrender our striving and let grace carry us into a sleep that is both rest and worship.

When we make this adjustment to the way we view our rhythm of prayer, it becomes less an act we perform and more a posture we adopt.

We become like Brother Lawrence, who wrote in The Practice of the Presence of God, “There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God.”

Praying in Common

One of the quiet beauties of keeping the hours (even modified hours as I do) is knowing that others are doing the same. Even if your prayers are said in solitude, you are part of a living liturgy—joined not only to those in our Appalachian Order, but to a long line of saints who have shaped time with prayer.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers in the East, the Celtic monks along the rugged coasts, the Anabaptist communities who sang their prayers underground—they all knew the power of a common rule and shared rhythm.

St. Basil the Great, one of the fathers of Eastern monasticism, once wrote: “It is impossible to live the life of the Gospel without the support and encouragement of brothers and sisters.”

That’s what praying modified hours give us—a way to be together, even when we are apart.

And in a world that constantly fragments our attention and scatters our hearts, a shared rhythm of prayer is more than a discipline.

It is healing.

A Fire on the Hearth

In Celtic households, the hearth was more than a place of warmth—it was the spiritual center of the home. It was a symbol of safety and love. Daily, the fire was kindled with prayer, and the smoke rose like incense.

Each morning, as they rose from their sleep, they prayed:

“I will kindle my fire this morning
In the presence of the holy angels of heaven
God, kindle Thou in my heart within
A flame of love to my neighbour,
To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all …”

In keeping the hours, we do the same. We stoke the fire each morning and keep it lit throughout the day on the hearth of our hearts. And that flame, however small, is not ours alone. It warms our neighbors. It lights the path for the weary. It bears witness to a God who is near, even when we feel far.

Scripture as Compass

The simplified hours are not just framed by tradition, but saturated in Scripture. The Psalms, of course, are our steady companions:

“Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws” (Psalm 119:164).

“In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly” (Psalm 5:3).

“Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice” (Psalm 55:17).

And Jesus himself withdrew to pray at every stage of the day (Mark 1:35; Luke 6:12; Matthew 14:23), showing us not just the necessity but the possibility of living attuned to the Father’s voice.

A Way Forward

This isn’t about perfection. I’ve been practicing praying the modified hours for a few years now. And some days I forget or miss a prayer. Some days the prayers feel dry or rushed or tangled in distraction. But even then, the rhythm holds me in grace and mercy and time. The prayer is still prayed, even if it is done so in my spirit’s unconscious unrest.

A flame still flickers.

As we go about our work—tending children, stacking wood, answering emails, making soup—we return again and again to the hours. Not out of guilt, but out of a longing. Not to earn God’s nearness, but to remember it.

Perhaps, over time, you’ll find that what once felt like interruption becomes an invitation. Your heart will come to lean into these holy pauses like a well-worn walking stick. Even in the silence between the prayers, you will sense the nearness of the Spirit who walks beside us.

I pray that you will kindle the fire. I pray that you will keep it going.

Say the prayer. Keep the hours.

God is waiting.