After having been promised, for about five years, a daily prayer app based on A New Zealand Prayer Book He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa (ANZPBHKMA, Tuia is finally here. The the App is free thanks to our generous St John’s College Trust Board.
Here is the website and you can download the app onto your phone for both iOS and Android.
‘Tuia’ is a Te Reo Māori word meaning to thread, to be arm in arm, bind, interlace, woven… (see video below).
The app uses Daily Devotions in ANZPBHKMA – that provides 14 frameworks (7 day-by-day morning devotions; 7 evening devotions) with the following structure:
- A theme
- A call to worship with a response said by all (in bold)
- A Gospel Reflection with a response (in bold)
- A place for the READINGS
- Prayers beginning with one of the seven lines of the Lord’s Prayer said by all (in bold) followed by three fixed prayers.
Everything in the app is available in English, Te Reo Māori, and Samoan (the intention is that other languages will be added). Changing languages is as simple as swiping across.
The Readings included are the 2-year Daily Eucharistic Readings and on Sundays the 3-year Revised Common Lectionary (RCL). The psalms are treated as (and called) a “reading” rather than a prayer (in liturgy, psalms are normally understood and used as prayers). When the RCL gives options for a first reading related to the Gospel (the Roman Catholic practice on which RCL is based), Tuia only gives the semi-continuous first reading (I call it the RCL’s first reading because that is how lectionaries are presented, but in Tuia the psalm is moved to be the first “reading”).
Tuia often follows the lectionary booklet rather than our agreed formulary ANZPBHKMA – this coming Sunday is titled “4th Sunday of THE Epiphany” (as per our lectionary booklet) rather than our formulary-agreed “4th Sunday OF Epiphany” (Bill 6).
The translations available for these Readings are the New Living Translation, Te Paipera Tapu (2012), and the New Revised Standard Version. This includes for the psalm (rather than the app using the ANZPBHKMA version of the psalm).
For yesterday, The Conversion of St Paul, Tuia incorrectly states that the readings are coming from RCL – they were not (in this case, Tuia is not following the lectionary booklet which correctly states the source of the readings). There are no RCL readings for The Conversion of St Paul. The readings are actually drawn from ANZPBHKMA, but Tuia chooses to omit Paul’s own description of his own conversion, Gal 1:11-24. A short introduction from For All the Saints precedes the Theme (which is the usual Wednesday one) and after the Call to Worship, the Sentence and Collect from For All the Saints precedes the Gospel Reflection. This format is followed whenever there is a saint’s day in the NZ Lectionary (the For All the Saints readings do not replace the Daily Eucharistic ones).
One of the oddities is that every day the same Readings are used in the morning as in the evening – there being only one set of Eucharistic Readings.
You can run the app as a “guest”. Or you can sign in, which gives you more options. If you are using it as a guest, to sign in is not intuitive: go to the Examen or Night Prayer (which are only available for those who have signed in). Once signed in there are options for adding prayer cycles – but, having gone past them, I cannot see how to add them once in the app as a signed in person [Update: it is explained here]. You create a Username – but “Liturgy” is a forbidden Username! [‘Worship’ is fine – I didn’t choose that, so it’s there for someone to take!] You can customise your profile, select a theme, and switch off some of the options.
Unlike many apps of this sort, it seems no wifi or data is used once downloaded – so the whole content seems to be on your phone. It recognises your date and time; so you can be in the UK using the Evening Devotion at the same moment that someone is in NZ using the Morning Devotion automatically.
This app may whet someone’s appetite for praying a fuller Daily Office. The Daily Office is a discipline of praying the scriptures (especially psalms and biblical canticles) – normally a good Daily Office will have quite a different feel, a different texture, season by season (so Advent will be different to Christmas to Lent and the Easter Season, for example). Within a season there is a consistent texture. In ANZPBHKMA, the “Daily Services” is a step in this direction, but Benedictine Daily Prayer or (say) the Church of England’s Common Worship Daily Prayer give such a discipline [Celebrating Common Prayer NZ is one attempt to rework ANZPBHKMA’s Daily Services to be a fuller Daily Office. A full Daily Office is complex when this practice is new for you (like new shoes feel uncomfortable) but after a while you follow the discipline without any stress (you are walking – read that as praying – without focusing on the shoes).
There are plenty of Daily Prayer apps: The Church of England’s Daily Prayer; Australian Anglicanism’s ePray; The Daily Office; Mission St Clare; The Order of St Helena Daily Office; Universalis; The Daily Office…
There are some other features of Tuia: it includes an Ignitian Examen, and a version of Night Prayer from ANZPBHKMA but lacking its flexibility (only Psalm 31 is prayed; only ‘Before the ending of the day…’ is sung).
I hope that people will use the app, fall in love with the liturgical discipline of praying the scriptures, and when they find this resource doesn’t support their long-term spiritual walking, including through rough terrain, they don’t abandon the discipline, but rather discover the strong shoes of a good Daily Office that we can comfortably wear for a lifetime.
| Kia whakarongo ake au Ki te tangi a te manu nei a te Matui Tui-i-i, tui-i-i, tuituia – Tuia i runga Tuia raro Tuia i waho Tuia i roto Tuia i te here tangata Ka rongo te po Ka ronga te ao. Tuia i te muka tangata I takea mai i Hawaiki-Nui I Hawaiki-Roa, i Hawaiki-Pāmamao Oti rā me ērā atu ano Hawaiki Te hono a wairua Whakaputa ki Te Whaiao Ki Te Ao Mārama. Tihe mauri ora! | My attention is drawn to the cry of the bird nearby, to the bush wren Calling “Bind, join, be united as one” May it be woven above, Enmeshed below, Entwined outside. and within our very beings, Interlaced by threads of human love May there be peace at night (in death) and peace by day. (in our lives) Intertwined with the cords of humankind Originating from the great homeland From the far homeland, From the remote homeland And from all other ancestral lands Merging with the spirits there Then coming out into the Light Out into the World of Consciousness. The living spirit is within us! |
Kia ora Bosco, perhaps it is also worth noting the App is free thanks to our generous St John’s College Trust Board. In addition, it seeks to celebrate the Five Marks of Mission as well as invite users to record and share their prayers with others. You may add your own prayer cycles by logging into http://www.tuia.app and navigating down the left column to “My Prayer Cycles.” Once you are there you will find a blue button labeled “New Prayer Cycle.” You may also choose to search for and add cycles created by others.
With thanks for your support and promotion, Stephen
Thanks, Stephen – good point about it being free; I am updating the post & also include how to do the Prayer Cycles. Congratulations. Blessings.