Quiet Days are times of silence, reflection and prayer in the Chapel. No preparation is necessary, it is simply an opportunity to enjoy some communal silence with reflections from the Chaplain or a guest to guide your thoughts. Quiet days have been led by alumni, faculty, guest lecturers and other friends of King’s and the Chapel.

Upcoming Quiet Days

March 8, 2025 (At St George’s Round Church) : ‘Psalms of Pilgrimage & Ascent’ lead by Elizabeth King

Holy Communion at 9:30. Talks begin at 10:30

The Gospel for Quinquagesima (Luke 18:31-43), places us with Jesus and his disciples on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. As they go on their way, they encounter a blind man, who cries, 'Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.' One group of Psalms (120-134) has a particular connection to this story, the ‘pilgrim’ psalms, thought to be sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. This quiet morning will consider how these psalms express the patterns of the season of Lent, and thereby reveal and order the soul's journey to and with God. The day begins with Holy Communion at 9:30am, with talks at 10:30am, 11:30am, and 12:30pm, followed by a light lunch at Trinity House. There will be time for silence, walking, or reading between talks. Childcare will be provided.

March 22, 2025 : ‘Psalms of Praise’ lead by Elizabeth King with opportunity to attend a Rare Books Talk with Patricia Chalmers

Quiet Day

The Quiet Day will follow Morning Prayer at 9 am. The Rare Books Talk begins at 1:30 pm.*

‘The cure for the wounded heart.’ “Bread in the wilderness.’ ‘The honeycomb of the inner man.’ ‘A paradise full of all fruits.’ The soul’s ‘complete gymnasium’—its ‘anatomy’—its ‘mirror’.  As the Bible’s poetic ‘book of praises’, the Book of Psalms, the foundation of Jewish and Christian liturgical prayer, has been described in these terms, and more, across the centuries. This Quiet Morning will afford an opportunity to consider the Book of Psalms through these images. We will spend some time looking at one particular grouping, Psalms 113-118, integral to Jewish feasts and therefore also to Christian Holy Week and Eastertide. And we will consider the role of the Psalms in Benedictine-inspired forms of prayer, turning our imaginations in particular to a perhaps lesser-known instantiation of this way of life, the 17th century community of Little Gidding. The morning will take the form of several short addresses followed by time for discussion, interspersed with periods of quiet reflection.

Elizabeth King is raising three young children with her husband, Evan, in the fishing town of Lockeport, Shelburne County, Nova Scotia. She studied the Liberal Arts at St John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland, and Classics at Cambridge University. For the MA in Classics at Dalhousie, she wrote on Plotinus’s fourfold gradation of virtue and its relation to the soul of the world. While completing the MA at Dalhousie she was Residence Don of 4th Floor Alexandra Hall, and a Chapel Warden.

Rare Books Talk

*There are only 15 spots available for the Rare Books Talk. Please email chapeladministrator@ukings.ca to sign up

With familiar, and widely-available, ancient texts such as the Psalms, we are apt to take their persistence through the ages for granted.  This afternoon we will reflect on the stages in the transmission of these Scriptures, from manuscript to printed book, by examining some treasures in the Rare Book collection here at King’s.  Among the manuscripts we will look at are a Hebrew scroll, an Ethiopian psalter, a medieval illuminated Bible and a leaf from a Parisian Book of Hours.  The early printed books include massive learned works prepared for scholarly study as well as smaller and more intimate books intended for personal devotion.   We will examine a Latin Bible printed in Nuremberg in 1475, St. Augustine’s Ennarationes in Psalmos mysticos edited by Erasmus in the 16th Century, and Walton’s Biblia Sacra Polyglotta (1655-57), a scholarly edition of the Bible in many ancient languages.  A Roman Catholic breviary used in 18th C. Acadia, a copy of the first edition of the 1662 edition of The Book of Common Prayer, a Dutch psalter with printed music, used by a female colonist in New York, and a Book of Psalms in the Mi’kmaw language, are all examples of books of worship containing the Psalms.

April 5, 2025: ‘The Poetry of Affirmation’ lead by Luke Hathaway

Following Morning Prayer at 9am.

More details TBA