Choral evensong has a magic all of its own. First, it makes you sit still, in one place, doing nothing, for at least three quarters of an hour. And it structures that time with a pattern of readings, prayers and music that, after a while, become second nature.
For someone with my chronic fidget factor and continual desire for self-distraction, it sounds like hell. But it is easily the thing I miss most about my time at St Paul's. Those early evening services become an emotional anchor, a way of patterning my life with time and quietness. My internal clock is readjusted to tick along to a rhythm that is at once slower and yet also more expansive than the one that regulates my soul throughout the rest of the day. It becomes a sort of cradling. In such circumstances, God exists for me not as some kind of shrill demand, or theological dogma, but as a background presence. Like silently reading a book in the company of someone you love.
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