Book excerpt: Praying the Hours in Ordinary Life takes the reader and the worshiper on an excursion into an ancient practice. While providing a sense of the monastic life from which it is drawn, the book also provides the opportunity for individuals or groups of people to enter into the Opus Dei, the work of God: a life of prayer to which monastics have been devoted since the third century. With illustrations by artist Denise Louise Klitsie and poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Martina Nagel), Lauralee Farrer and Clayton Schmit have provided a resource that allows believers to engage in a twenty-four hour pilgrimage of prayer, joining those whose life's work is to pray without ceasing.