Let Your Computer Summon You to the Daily
Office
I have trained my computer to load the Daily Office automatically four times
during the day, and to ring cathedral bells just beforehand to summon me
to prayer.
Here are the routines on my SONY VAIO computer using Windows XP. I
hope the explanation will help you set up similar routines.
Here are the stages:
- Load "Scheduled Tasks"
- Schedule Explorer (or any other browser)
to go to the Daily Office
- Schedule Explorer (or any other
brower) to ring cathedral bells
Load Scheduled Tasks:
"Scheduled Tasks" is available in most verisions of Windows, though menus
may vary from the ones in XP referenced below.
From the START button, follow this route:
When you click on 'Scheduled Tasks' you will cycle through a series of windows:
Note: later I change this name to "Oremus" or to "Church Bells", but
for right now, I accept the name suggested when I clicked on "Internet Explorer"
in the previous window.
Also, later I will change the frequency to be several times a day, but for
now I choose "Daily."
Once you have clicked on FINISH, you can go back to "Scheduled Tasks" and
modify it so that Internet Explorer does not just run, but goes to the Daily
Office and at multiple times that you specify.
You can also change the name of the task, from
"Folder Tasks" menu in Windows XP, from the FILE menue in some of the earlier
versions. I renamed this Explorer routine to "Oremus" the name
of the site for the faily office. Then I clicked on the right mouse
button and chose to see the properties of my Oremus Task. It comes
up with three panels: "Task", "Schedule" and "Settings":
When you first see this, the text in the "Run" panel will show only the command
for Explorer, as you have specified it in the earlier routines above.
Keep the address of EXPORE.EXE the same that is now in your panel,
as that will be the route to Windows Explorer on your computer, but modify
the line to add the lectionary site address, as I have done in my panel.
Note well the use of quotation marks arounde the program name and route::
"C:\Program Files\Internet
Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" http://www.oremus.org
Note: I have chosen Oremus at http://www.oremus.org:
there are other lectionary sites from which you may choose. For
examples: http://www.io.com/~kellywp/
or http://www.textweek.com/.
I suggest vistiting all three of these and any other you find, and then making
your choice. For this explanation, I am staying with the Oremus example.
Next click on the 'Schedule' Panel, which on my computer appears below, after
I have clicked on the "Advanced" button on that panel::
Note that I have set the routine to run 4 times every day, starting at 9a
and running every 4 hours. The routine is set to close after
30 minutes each time.
The "Settings" panel summariezes my choicese and gives me a few more opitions:
Note that I have chosen not to wake up the computer to run the task. That
means that others in the household will not be disturbed by it if I am not
on site to respond to it.
You can repeat the steps above, but in instead of putting the Oremus
address in the Run Panel, go to the address of your
favorite church bells. I change the bells that I use occasionally.
Click here to access a fine
collection of bells from English Cathedrals.
As a young man I was encouraged to make fun of religions which created prayer
wheels, as if a mechanical device could do one's praying and free up time
for something else. In this instance, the mechanical aid is to free
up time, but not for something else. These routines free up
time for prayer itself. Like the muezzin in a minaret, these routines
can interrupt our busyness to summon us more consciously into the presence
of God.
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