This is Ben, and this is Keith, and this is Main Street Lutherans. And today we have an opportunity to interview someone that I just met. Really should have thought that statement through a little further. Do you want to reverse the lead in or just take over after?

No, I really like this. This is going to be a great outtake for our promo.

Oh, good golly.

Really?

Yeah.

Hey, Ollie, how are you?

I'm great. I'm great.

Excellent.

Leaving you speechless.

Pastor Ollie Berg is with us here from. From Alaska. We get. We get all over the continent. It is awesome. It's been great to talk to you. We've. We've been looking forward to this for a long time. Actually, shortly after we announced that we were doing the podcast, you sent me a note on Reddit and said, hey, we should do something. And it took us a year to get around to that. I'm really happy we get. We get to do this. And I'm going to. Just to preface the main. The main piece of our talk today, Pastor Ali has a podcast called Psalmcast, and I've been subscribed for quite a while listening to it, but there was a particular episode about the matin service, our daily prayer service that he covered. And so I listened to that and thought, hey, we should talk about the daily offices on our. On our podcast. But there's so many other things rich in detail for you. One of the best things I think, to think about right now is being Lutheran in Alaska.

Yeah.

And I think that's just remarkable.

You know, it surprises me that there are Lutherans in Alaska. And actually, one of the great gifts the Lutherans have given Alaska is, is reindeer. Let me explain. So there. There was a missionary, and I'm blanking on his name, but. But he was a very pivotal figure in the history of Alaska. One thing that he did is he divided up Alaska for the mainline denominations. And he said, you know, okay, Lutherans, you get the Seward Peninsula, and Episcopalians, you go over here. Presbyterians, you're over here, whatever.

Right?

And so all of our churches kind of follow this pattern, more or less. But the one time he was out at one of the fish camps, you know, every summer, right, people go fishing. It's a subsistence thing for a lot of villages and people. But he got there when it wasn't time to put the salmon up and smoke it, right? And so he sees this, this. These empty fish camps, and he thinks, oh, my gosh, you know, the people are going to starve. We got to do something. So he gets some Norwegians on the phone. Any or maybe telegrams, I don't know. But you know. Right. He gets. He gets some. Some Norwegians on the phone and he says, hey, can. Can you bring some reindeer in so that there'll be a crop or, you know, you know, something for people to hunt? And they said, yeah, but, you know, can we bring a minister with us? So that's how we get reindeer in Alaska is these Lutherans from. From. I think it was Norway come to. To Alaska with their reindeer. So. And if you're in Anchorage on a sunny day, you can get a reindeer dog from. From a stand. They're very good, usually spicy. So, you know, when you do Thank a Lutheran.

Wow, that's. Wonder if they have those in Minnesota. Probably not, right?

Yeah.

That's great.

Yeah. So we were talking a little bit before we started recording the. The Alaska Synod. Alaska gets its own synod. What number is it? Oh, it's Region one, Right?

Yeah.

So one. Is it. Is it. Is it a.

It's one a. Yeah. Yeah, it is.

That's where it all starts.

That's right.

You said There are about 30 congregations in the synod?

I think that's right. It's either there's 28 congregations and two synodically authorized worshiping communities, or it's 30 congregations and two synodically Authorized worshiping communities. Communities.

There's a 30 in there somewhere.

Yeah, there's some. Yeah, I, you know, you think I would know this, but here I am. So, you know, it's. It's small.

Right. There are.

You know, you talked about how you've.

Got conferences small and yet big.

Right, Right.

The biggest synod geographically. One time, our former bishop was at a. One of the Texas senate assemblies, and she had a shirt that said ain't Texas cute? And it's Texas inside at the great state of Alaska.

That's fabulous.

Yeah, that's great.

Does the Senate sell those shirts?

No. They should. They should. Although. So, I mean, everywhere you go in Alaska, not just with the Lutherans, you know, we. We like to make fun of Texas. Not that Texas knows about us.

Right.

I mean, you know, Texas is thinking about its own. Probably high school football. It's what it's thinking about. But, you know, we like to. To remind them that we're bigger than Texas.

Yeah. So you're in Fairbanks and what church are you with?

Fairbanks Lutheran Church.

That is quite the original name, isn't it?

Right.

That's great. Not even First Lutheran, you'd think, but yeah, we're a little bit older than the state we started in 1944, and I think it was 52 or 58, Alaska became the 49th state. I think it was 58.

Yeah.

Alaska and Hawaii both.

So we, we're a little older than the state. You know, we've been in our kind of downtown position for a good long time. We're one of two ELCA congregations in Fairbanks there. If you include the suburb of North Pole where Santa lives, there's a third and actually Lord of Life Lutheran. The, the, the church in North Pole.

Yeah.

It's actually down the road from Santa's house.

Wow.

It's on the same street. It's.

Santa may even go to church there.

I was what, I was just going to ask. That's what I want to know. Where does Santa go to church?

You know what? I, I, I know on good authority he's a Nazarene.

Oh, I thought Santa would dance, but.

Yeah, I know, I know.

Yeah. Well, that's, that's all very, very awesome. Is there anything unique? You don't come from Alaska. You grew up in the Pacific Northwest there. Not quite as Northwest as you are now, but anything different about Lutherans in the Pacific Northwest as far as liturgy or hymns? Do you guys have any special hymns that come out of that context?

I don't know if there's any hymns that come out of that context other than in Alaska. They have translated several hymns into a Nupiac. And so, like, we off, we'll often sing, like, the Doxology in Inupiac when we do, like, synod dinners or whatever. In terms of liturgy, I mean, people get creative, you know, I mean, and I, I know all throughout the Northwest, people get very creative in their liturgies. In Alaska, I have, I had an interesting moment come up where I would, I lead an evening service at a senior living complex, Thursday evenings. It's wonderful. And, and, and, you know, we, we just got our new purple book.

Right.

All Creation Sings. Yeah, it's got an, it's got an evening communion liturgy in there.

It does great prayers.

Really poetic. And it talks about, you know, as the shadows lengthen and the moon is in all this. Right. Well, in the middle.

It doesn't work in the summer or the winter, does it? Right.

You know, it's like either the sun is up or it's nothing but shadows.

Right.

And, and so I had to rework them to talk about, you know, being underneath the midnight sun. And then, and that was my summertime one, and I had to do one for, for being underneath the aurora, you know, because especially, you know, at certain.

Times a year, you can do evening prayer any time of day you want.

It's the only prayer you can do.

Very convenient.

Except for like, you know. Yeah, you get like an hour of a little bit of sunrise, you know, and it's fun when the sun is out for that little bit of time. You see people just leave their house and just kind of stand it for a second.

Oh yeah.

You know, even if it's like 40.

Below, it's so hard not to talk Northern exposure right now. Yeah. Yeah.

So I, I do want to ask an ignorant lower 48American question. What is the weather like in Fairbanks? I mean, clearly it varies from season to season, but like, you know, tell us about what kind of swing do you get between summer and winter and how long the seasons last, etc.

Right. So I have experienced 50 below in the winter and I think it got to 99 above in the summer at one point. So just a, It's a really huge difference. I think actually only Minnesota gets more of a swing than us because Minnesota is a little more continentally inland middle, I should say.

Right.

So, you know, in the summertime, you know, the sun is up all the time. It's usually pretty warm. Fairbanks itself is very dry. I think it's considered a desert or tundra, desert style thing. Right. It's very dry. And so, you know, my, my, since when I moved here, I got more nosebleeds and my, my cuticles crack.

Right.

In the winter we get a pretty good amount of snow. This year it's been a little less, but you know, I'd say we had at least five feet this year. Maybe Anchorage might get more snow than us, but it's not as icy as, as Anchorage.

Right.

Anchorage will have. Because it's got the water right there, has less variation, but it's got more ice and more wind. And so. Yeah, yeah. So I way prefer Fairbanks. It's, you know, it's, it's kind of a joke. But you know, it's a dry cold. Right. You know, you know, I actually heard.

That coming about a microsecond before you said it.

Absolutely.

You know, and like I just to give an illustrate, I've learned about cold. I live in a parsonage which is on the same block as the church. So I have a two minute walk and I learned that at 30 degrees, the second you walk outside. 30 below, I should say, the second you walk outside, your pants are cold. Right. Just immediately at 40 below it's hard to breathe. And at 50 below you just don't go outside. It's, you know, it's nuts. I mean, your. Your nose hairs instantly freeze. It's just crazy. There's a phenomenon called ice fog. I didn't even know that's a thing. You know, we. We went to go watch. This is a very Alaskan story. We went to go watch the Yukon Quest, which is the other dog race. You know, it starts. And it started in Fairbanks, but it was 50 below, so there was this ice fog. You couldn't even watch it. So we had to get out of the valley so where it would clear up a little bit so we could watch the dog race, you know. And it was. Yeah, it was. And it was scary driving out. I mean, you know. Yeah.

Yeah.

So does your church ever call services off on a Sunday because it's just too cold?

Not often. Maybe the 50 below, but I don't think it was a Sunday when that happened.

I think Keith is looking for a thing to tell his parishioners, like, if we can do it, we could do it at 14 degrees. If they can do it at minus 50.

Right.

Yeah, it's hard for me because one. My. My accompanist, he'll. He'll be there no matter what the weather. I mean, he'll. He'll make it if he has to lose a leg. And it's just a short walk for me. So it's like, all right, well, we'll have church.

Awesome. Well, that's what it's like to. To be Lutheran in. In Alaska.

Wow.

We're actually talking about having more. More discussions about this. What. What being Lutheran in. In different synods. A great experiment with that. What we actually wanted to talk about is our main topic here is about one of the topics of your podcast. We'll talk about the Psalmcast, but also the daily offices. So the services that we inherit from our Roman Catholic faith, predecessors and those sorts of things. So to begin talking about those, I guess, do you want to describe what. What those services are and how they come about?

Yeah. So we can call them the Divine offices, the daily offices. Sometimes they're called the liturgy of the hours. I like what the ELW calls them, which is just daily prayer. That's what it is. And they. We did inherit them directly from our Catholic background, but also we get them from the. The Jewish background of Christianity.

Right.

We. We know in Deuteronomy it says that you should recite the Shema in the morning and in the evening. Somewhere in the Psalms, it. It mentions seven times a day. I have. I have praised you especially. Some early people interpreted this to mean they, they prayed seven times a day. Specifically, when you read Acts, you can see Peter and John going to the temple to pray about 3:00. That was the hour of prayer. And so the divine offices are kind of a structure for praying at these different times of day. They're a way to mark the hours. That's why it's sometimes called the liturgy of the Hours.

And so in particular, you talked about matins, the morning prayer service, which is pretty interesting. And I think one of the things, if I remember correctly, you said something about the matins is always appropriate because we're always celebrating the dawn, right?

That's right. You know, and it's not just because I'm an Alaskan that I think this, that, you know, the thing about prayer is sometimes we think of prayer as, you know, oh, I just, I'm going to tell God what I want. You know, it's my secret divine therapy. Sure, of course it is. But mostly prayer is about being in communion with Christ, right? It's a way that, that communion manifests and Christ is the light of the world. And so when we are in Christ, which by faith we always are, right. He has claimed us and brought us into Himself. Therefore we are always in his resurrection, dawn.

Right.

So in one sense, morning prayer is the only prayer that we can pray. You know, that's, that's, that's a bold claim. I'll also say evening prayer is the only prayer that we can, we can pray, right? And, and, and night prayer is the only prayer that we can pray. But it's because we are in Christ and He is always in these moments of time because he's, he's outside of time, right? He's, he's in this, he has ascended. You know, he is in this new way. And so we are, are joined to him. And so we can pray. Morning prayer whenever you need to, you know, it's good to pray it in the morning. But if, you know, if, say you just need to do it. Maybe, maybe for instance, for a while I work the night shift at a hospital. Maybe your morning prayer is actually in the evening because you're waking up to go do that.

Right?

There's nothing wrong with that. That's, that's part of it.

So do you have a tradition for yourself or your congregation that does morning prayer or any of the others or.

So, so I've been, I've been introducing it to my congregation. Part of it was, was practical. I was going on paternity leave. And one of the things about being a pastor in Alaska is you're it.

Right.

In Fairbanks, I've got one retired pastor and he is currently serving a vacancy at the other Lutheran church. And so it's me and, and, and my wife, but she's serving the Presbyterian church, so.

Right.

It's where we don't have substitutes.

Yeah.

And in particular we don't have any like licensed lay ministers. Very many. And that's just. I need to find some.

Right.

But make some really.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

Right.

But also, you know, the, the matins is kind of the original service of the Word and, and anybody can do it. And so it's a good lay led service. So while I've been on paternity leave, I said, hey, you know, do matins because it's, it's part of, of all of our, all of our duties. And I just basically adapted what was in the elw. It's a, it's really a good rendition of, of matins. And you know, the, probably the most innovative thing in it is the, the prayers. They have these really cool bidding prayers that are very lovely. I might have changed it to make it a little more, a little more rote because that, that's unfamiliar to my congregation. You know, and that's one of the things you can do with these daily offices. You know, there's, there's sort of less rules we might say, as maybe with a communion service you can, you can really mold it to whatever you need it to be. I use an adapted ELW tradition because I. It's faithful to, to our, to our tradition.

Could you ali give us a rundown of the various liturgies and kind of roughly the times of day that they correspond to?

Right. So to use the Latin names, there's matins. If you Google it, you're going to find some confusion because depending on who you ask, the morning is either at night.

Right.

The Jewish calendar has the day beginning at sunset and so the day begins there. So matins might be like the night service, but the idea was that it was the next day. Sometimes it was the middle of the night service, sometimes called vigil as well. But it's, it's, it's fair to call it the morning service, Matins. And so that's the first service. And in our book we've got three. The next one is Vespers, which is the evening service. Most people are really familiar with Holden evening prayer. And that's just part of the daily prayer office. It's just a setting of It.

Right.

The one in our book is also very lovely. It's got some really great stuff in it then. The final one in our book is compline, which is. They call it night prayer. It's the prayer before you go to bed. It's kind of a prayer that has, you know, it's a lot of resting in God's grace. It's, it's really beautiful. It's also really good kind of pedagogy for death.

Right.

Because you're, you're giving up your spirit, saying God all on you. It's sort of an expanded version of that really old prayer. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take, but much more, much more expansive and, and lovely. And that's kind of the three main offices in our book. We also have what's just labeled responsive prayer. Sometimes it's called the suffrages. And in it, if you study it, it, it, it doesn't help you see this, but you can use it at kind of other times of day. And this is reflective of the older tradition of the liturgy of the hours, where you can do it up to seven times a day.

Right.

You can do it in the mid morning and at noon and at 3 o'clock and yada yada. And so the, the suffrages kind of act as in our book, the other hours, the littler hours of the day, and it's a much shorter service.

Thanks.

There's a Catholic church down the street from me that has a chapel and they have a 15 minute service every morning. I think it's at 6:30 or 6:15am every day. I've thought about dropping in to see what they do, but it's early and I think about what calls people to do those things to do that service. I'm sure it's, it's a spiritual discipline to do something like that repeatedly, you know, faithfully to draw you into prayer every day. I'm trying to think of other reasons why people would use that or why a congregation might consider adding that to their stuff. We know, you know, our pastors don't have enough to do, obviously.

Yeah, you know, it's, it's funny because the question is basically why pray?

Sure.

You know, and, and because in my mind these, these offices, you know, we think of them kind of as, as, oh, it's another liturgy, you know, which means it's another thing to do. You know, it's got all this stuff, but that we got to remember that that liturgy is a way that the Holy Spirit makes Prayer a gift, Right. We, you know, how many times have you gone to communion and you didn't have the energy, but you could just say the words that were right there.

Right.

And that was sort of God guiding you along. You know, I think one reason that we. That we can pray in this way is it. It helps it be a gift.

Right.

I, you know, I love my Pentecostal friends, but, man, how are you freestyling prayers all the time? And also, are you. You know, we know that people get into ruts, right. When they pray. And, you know, okay, I'm going to pray for my family in the exact same way that I've done, you know, every day for the last month. When you have something like matins, it can guide you or any of the other divine offices.

Sure.

It can guide you to pray in such a way that you. You wouldn't.

Right.

Part of that is because one of the big chunks of Matt. Of. Of the divine office is the Psalms.

Right.

And so when you pray the Psalms, especially if you're just praying like one after the other, which is a great way to do it, you're gonna. You're gonna pray for stuff that you would never pray for.

Right.

Such as the downfall of your enemies. You know, maybe some people pray for that, but I, you know.

Right.

And so you're. You're praying in a way that expands your own. Your own prayer life, your own soul. And so you discover Christ in you in ways that you wouldn't have ever imagined.

Right?

Yeah. It gives a format to your day that's great. You know, for some people, they do it because.

Right.

Well, especially our Roman Catholic friends, they're obligated to do it right there. They're asked to do that. But also, I think what I've found in living a life of trying to do daily prayer as best as I can, as frequently as I can, is molds me to look at the time I spend as God's time.

Right.

Even if I, you know, I've got. I've got a newborn.

This is Ben jumping in from the editing room. We lost some audio there. It got corrupted, so we're gonna cut out some stuff, but I think it will carry on through.

Why are you thinking about what you're gonna do for Lent? You're gonna have a baby. And I was like, it's just what I do, right. I'm thinking about it, and I haven't done any of it because, you know, I'm changing diapers. I'm trying to get sleep. But, you know, 3:00 runs around and I think, oh, you know, Peter went to pray. Oh, Jesus hung on the cross maybe around 3:00. And so just all of a sudden looking at the clock becomes a slight uplift.

Right.

As I, as I'm, as around 5:00 comes, that's when I would, you know, in an ideal world, do vespers. I start thinking about Jesus, the light of the world.

Right.

Even when the sun is totally up.

Right.

5:00 in Alaska.

Right.

But I.

Right.

It helps me because I've been formed by it. And so in that way, you know, I mean, the whole Christian life is just trying to remember that God is at work in our lives every single moment. And so the divine office is a gift that helps us get there.

So for someone who wants to do that but doesn't have a church that wants to offer a thing to participate in, is there a way to use that? There's a lot of responsive, a lot of responsive prayers in there and songs that are part of what we have there. I suppose even the responsive prayer, the suffrages, has a lot of the responsive stuff. Have, have you found a way to do that on your own as a, as a thing outside of community?

Yeah, so, yeah, I often do it on my own.

Right.

Most of the time I do it on my own. What I have done might not work for everybody, but I say all the words, even the responses, and out loud, and I will out if I can. You know, maybe it's early in the morning and my family's awake.

Right.

Ideally I sing it. Right. But I'm a singer and I like that kind of stuff. But let's say you aren't a singer and you just want to do it. What I would do, first of all, study the rubrics in the book, right? The italicized red words, right. They're, they're a godsend and they'll, they'll help you kind of go, what should I do here? And then speak it. Just speak the words, right. I include the responses. You might not, but in my head I need to read every word in order to know where I'm at.

Right.

And so.

Gets less awkward with repetition too.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And, and you know, part. Especially if you're singing it, you know, the melodies flow together, but if you're just speaking it, you'll, you'll do, you'll do just fine. And you know, I often like you. It'll say, you know, what's the prayer of the day? Well, if we were following the book of common prayer. They've got a prayer for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We don't have that in our book. I like to just find one of the prayers in the front of the book. Often I'll do the prayer for peace because why not? But you know, I, I just try to find something right there and I just, I speak it. I go down. If you're, if you're good with hymns, there's a couple of hymn versions like say there's, there's some canticles in, in these offices that are traditional.

Right.

In the morning it's the, the, the Benedictus, where the song of Zechariah sometimes singing canticles in that chanted format just doesn't jive with people. Our book has some great versions of it. Blessed be the God of Israel. So you can, you can find them in there and you could do that. You know, sometimes I get to. It has the, the little bidding prayers and I'll follow them. Sometimes I don't want to follow them. And maybe that's a moment where I'll, I might jump to the suffrages because they have a morning version or maybe that's a time I freestyle some prayer for a minute, you know, and I just say what's on my heart. Why not? I mean, I'm, I'm kind of roughly going through the service in my head right now. But that's an easy way to do it and you can really make it your own that way. You know, sometimes if you need a down and dirty morning prayer and you want to do it in this way just I, I love the opening. Oh Lord, open my lips and my mouth will proclaim your praise. I start, I start my prayer that way and then I jump straight to the psalms, you know, especially that opening Psalm, Psalm 95. The version in our book is really beautiful. It's also pretty tricky to sing. It's, you know, it. I, I feel like it was written for like the St Olaf choir or something. I think, you know, my congregation is, is starting to get it, but you really need to practice it. So I might just start with Psalm 95 and read it kind of plainly. Yeah, but even though, you know, Luther says even if you just speak the, the salter right, it has a music to its own.

Right.

And even if you just speak the, the, the prayers that we have in our, our humble eelw. Right, they too have a music of its own and, and it still carries you in that wonderful way.

Awesome.

W. And of Luther, there's also in the Elw and, and elsewhere you can find Luther's small catechism, which contains a simple morning and evening prayer ritual. And, and it's, it's, it's very basic. It doesn't have the, The. The dialogue liturgy that the one you're describing from ELW does. So for an individual who wanted to try this, you know, and maybe feel a little less intimidated by. By starting a new ritual on their own, they might try Luther's version, which, you know, is pretty simple. After a while, you can even do it from memory. There's you. You recite the, the Apostles Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and then there's a simple prayer. It's just a couple of sentences for morning or for evening, whichever time of day you're doing it, and then. Which would suggest like, like where you are ali, you know, reciting a psalm or reading a piece of Scripture. And it's another great way to, to frame your devotion for that time of day.

I. I think he says, you know, whatever. Joyfully serves your devotion.

Something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I'm, I've actually got my ELW right here because that's how Lutheran I am. Right? The two pastors memorized.

I mean.

That's right.

So when. See, when your supply pastor is boring you, next Sunday, page 1166 in the back of the hymnal, that gives you the ending part. And so that's the morning blessing and the evening blessing. You can read those there. And just a quote Luther translated into English, of course, after singing a hymn, perhaps, for example, one on the Ten Commandments or whatever else may serve your devotion, you are to go to your work joyfully. And that's after the morning prayer. And then the one at the end of the evening prayer. I love that. And then you are to go to sleep quickly and cheerfully. And I'm sure he was writing both of those to his kids.

That's right. That's right.

I'm sure, Ollie, that. That's probably on your mind most of the time right now.

Yeah. Oh, she is.

Go to sleep cheerfully.

I actually, I have no, no proof or scholarship to support this, but I suspect that Martin Luther was not a sound sleeper.

Probably made a lot of sounds.

I don't think you can eat that much sausage and sleep well. I just, you know.

Yeah. Yeah.

So tell us more about Psalmcast. I know that you can find it at Psalmcast Blog.

Not quite. It's Psalms Blog.

Psalms Blog. Sorry. We'll get that right in the episode notes.

Right. It's. It's a little It's a little pet project of mine because I fell in love with this book. You know, part of it was, you know, early on in my formation, I didn't grow up in the church. And I, you know, I started going to church, and then eventually I started figuring out, maybe I'll go to seminary. And one of the ways that I found reprieve is I went to the monastery at Mount Angel, Oregon. It was not too far away from where I went to school. And I would sing the hours with these monks, and it was. It was really joyful and gave me a lot of peace. And, I mean, and they were praying seven times a day, right? They were doing it all. And I felt uplifted by. By. By doing this. And then as I did my studies, I noticed, you know, all of my heroes like Augustine and Luther and Bonhoeffer and. And, you know, like, Augustine found incredible insights. You know, he was going off of the Latin version of the Psalms. But, you know, he found that God was being itself just by studying the Psalms, right? This is an extraordinary. And that's in that line, you know, Jerusalem is a city bound firmly together, right? The Latin version of it is. Is just like it is what it is, right? And it's like, wow, you know, that is like, I am what I am. And so you can pull so much out of the Psalms, right? Luther wrote at least six books on the Psalms maybe, so you can just get so much out of it. So I thought I wanted to do that, see what happens for me. And the thing about the psalm cast is I wanted to have a practical edge to it. So not only do we look at it, right, but we also look at it not just as this, you know, this Word of God as anyone would study the Bible, but we look at it as. As words to God as well, right? And so Bonhoeffer has a great line about the Psalms where he says that the words that come from God will be the steps on which we find our way to God. And that's kind of been like a driving way for me to understand the Psalms, you know, and especially as you. You put these words in your mouth, you discover yourself saying really lovely things. Like in Psalm 91, the end of Psalm 91 talks about how God becomes the speaker, right? And so God says, I will protect you. I will cherish you because you love me. I will give you long life. And you're saying those words. And so in that, I would argue we're discovering what we might call theosis, right? That God is filling us up Just by saying these words, right, where we kind of participate in his divine life through, through saying the Psalms. And that to me is, is a practical aspect. I mean, yet we learn about prayer. Prayer isn't just. I'm going to say, you know, God, God, please, I really want an rv. You know, get me some. Please give me some. A windfall of money. But, but prayer is so much more. In fact, prayer is proclamation of, of Jesus Christ with us and, and the psalms. I think eventually, as we study them, they get us there. So the psalm cast is me trying to explicate that psalm by psalm.

Oh, hey, I, I do have one more, One more. Just little detail question for you, Ali. Is there a particular translation of the Psalms that you personally find helpful for your own devotion?

The Catholics have. I think it's called the Grail Commentary. The, The. The poetry of it is very, very interesting and captures my attention. It can be a little off putting. It translates the word holocausts as holocausts, which can. Like, when I first started reading, I was like, what the heck is going on here? You know, I didn't, I didn't know that that was a, A Bible word. But good poetry there. You know, I, I often will read, like, for the podcast, I'll read from the nrsv. The nrsv UE now, because that's our, our new version. There's a. There's this. I don't know if it's new. It's the Evangelical Heritage version. Have you heard of this Bible? It's allegedly Lutheran. And I, I want to say it might come from the Wisconsin Synod, you know, but it's, it's supposed to follow the, the Evangelical Lutheran tradition. I think they do a good job with the Psalms. They have the frankness of the language. But, you know, and these days I'm hand. I'm. I'm recommending the, the Common English Bible all the time because I think maybe it, maybe it's not as poetic and accurate or not accurate, but, you know, distinct as some of these more academic versions. But it's scholarly and it is readable. So that's not, you know, my answer is, what version? I don't know, the one you'll read.

And, and I think, I think that's fine for folks to make that choice on their own. I was just curious if you have one for yourself.

So the, the bi. The Bible that my laptop is currently propped up on right now is the Evangelical Heritage version. I. I'm trying it out and I think I kind of like it. Okay. Yeah, but I don't know.

I don't think you get reported to the authorities for it.

So you're okay, right?

They'll have to find you.

That's right. That's right.

Well, Ollie, we're going to keep you around for our catechism questions. So our last episode had a catechism question which everyone is invited to call in or leave a message for us. So our last question was what happened to the prodigal son when he returned home? Our answers were lots of things, like being sent back to the pig farmer, that his brother threw a party for him and that he took him back as a hired servant. But the true answer was that his father welcomed him back and killed the fatted calf to throw a party. So we don't have any winners. We're recording a little bit early on this, so. So go ahead and send in your answers and we'll. We'll still give you credit because we all know it's all about scorekeeping in the end, so.

That's right.

That's right. So what about this episode, Keith?

Right, so what are the names of some of the Divine Office liturgies? Is it Matins, Ford, Sex and Vespers? Is it Louds? Prime Gnome and Vespers?

Ben from the editing room floor again, we had some more corruption on this file, lots of it, actually. But let me give you the rest of the answers here. So Chevillet, Compline, Sex and Louds, or Matins, Lauds, Vespers and Compline. You can respond to our questions through our social media and email, which is all found in our contact information. Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fote, and it is produced by Fote Media Productions. Find all our contact information, links and a transcript in our episode notes. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been a wonderful talk and I hope we get to talk on the podcast and all over the other other ways forever. So thanks for being with us.

Thank you.

Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.