liturgy and life

I went to an Area Vocations Day.

It made me more certain that I need to pursue this vocation stuff seriously, and also pretty frustrated at the people who were organising the day. There were too many people, the vocations stuff was combined with "leadership" stuff which was pretty evangelical in its leaning and seemed to be more about equipping people for proselytisation than about a broader definition of leadership, there wasn't enough time to reflect, process, breathe... they tried to have some silence after each speaker but starting late didn't help, and the speaker who I most wanted to hear had to rush her talk rather badly (it was still excellent, and I'm glad I went if only to hear that).

There was worship, but it was almost entirely unfamiliar liturgy -- no benediction or confession or absolution, no doxology, no psalmody (except for about two lines), no sacrament. No Lord's Prayer, even, or if there was I managed to forget (I don't think I would forget). I didn't know either of the songs. There was praise and there was intercession, both in very personal terms... flattery and whining. No depth, no real cohesion.

Thank God -- a church in a neighbouring deanery has a Eucharist early on Saturday evenings for those who struggle to get there on Sunday mornings. I met Sweetie for a bite to eat and then went there, taking refuge, sanctuary. The Lord be with you, said the priest, and I was home again, never mind the unruly children running about the place, the lack of music. At some point I wept, not the anxious and embarrassed tears I'd been holding back earlier in the day, but just out of relief. I felt physically lighter and my mind seemed less dark -- en-lightened.

We talked afterward, the vicar and I, or rather she listened while I talked, scattered and unfocused after the events of the day. I floated home, exhausted, still upset, still uncertain, still frustrated but aware of being loved, connected to and grounded in the love that underpins everything.

How many times, earlier in the day, did I hear people talk about equipping Christians for outreach and mission, equipping people to change the world?

What feeds me, sustains me, equips me to do my work, is prayer and sacrament, mystery and miracle.

Maybe providing more of that would be more useful than having fancy leadership conferences.

Just saying.

Please vote.

By now if you aren't registered to vote in the UK's forthcoming general election, I'm sorry, it's too late for you to register.

There is a BNP candidate in the constituency where I live. This makes me feel vaguely nauseous. I will be voting, and of course I will not be voting for the BNP.

Otherwise? Life continues apace. This identity and my real name are colliding in some interesting (but I think manageable) ways. My foot is healing, walking is getting easier, the regular therapy for joint issues is going well and soon we will be down to monthly instead of weekly appointments which will be cheaper (I would have had to wait, on the NHS...) and take less of my travel time. I am behind on the gardening, composing, teaching prep, tidying, laundry, study for the Big Project (thank God it has no actual deadlines yet!), chamber music administrative work, general life maintenance paperwork, oh, and that thing all musicians must do, the thing that keeps me what I am, practising. Reading other people's blogs is minimal; commenting is happening even less.

I am having a great time and learning a huge amount but I am not going to catch up.

I haven't heard back from the homeless shelter I sent the volunteering application form to. Psalmody work continues apace, and often of an evening I tell Twitter I'm nearly home before stumbling wearily off the Tube, having been reading, half-asleep and exhausted from teaching, about Reformation politics and vernacular worship or some such thing, and more often than not there is someone begging. And I know I'm not in a position to just invite them into the house where I live, I know I don't have the skills, I don't have the understanding, to be of real help, I'm mentally fragile enough that dealing with someone who has really serious problems might well push me back into mental illness myself; I don't even have the financial resources of my own, given that Sweetie pays my rent! and I don't know whether giving money is the right thing -- it won't treat the mental health problems or drug addiction or whatever else has caused them to slip through the ever-widening cracks in a welfare system that has been comprehensively screwed over by the Tories and then by New Labour -- and I'm horribly, shamefully safe about it, never stopping if I'm alone or there aren't people about or I'm carrying an instrument or I don't have money easily to hand, never pausing for a simple decent conversation with a human being, finding out their side of the story, forming some sort of relationship that isn't based on my relative wealth. I walk that last leg of my journey home wishing I weren't such a coward, and I pray someone else knows what to do and has the courage to do it. And I get home, and tell Twitter I've got home safely, and I fail even to mention those who haven't got a safe home to go to.

Lord, have mercy.

A regular mid-week rehearsal has had to change to another time, and my first thought was "that's going to be really annoying for the group". My second thought, so quickly after the first, was "Now I can get to the mid-week Eucharist at Nearest Church". A said service, no less, not a hymn or a chant in earshot (though in my mind's ear the chanted kadosh, kadosh, kadosh and the blessings for ha-motzi and ha-gafen remain). I didn't expect bread and wine to become such a part of me so quickly -- or rather, I knew the bread and wine would, I didn't know the body and blood would. I am taking great comfort in this sacrament, even though my view of the entire world as sacramental has not changed in any fundamental way.

It's probably about 15 years since I was in church for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services, and then they would have been very different.

This is all feeling rather new, at the same time as being rather familiar.

I had been feeling nervous about foot washing last night. I was feeling quite strange about it, not wanting anyone to wash my feet... not because I'm ticklish or embarrassed about my feet, particularly, but because it feels like I should be washing someone else's feet, not the other way around. It feels backwards.

But that's a false dichotomy. Gifts need recipients... we can each give and receive, we can each love and be loved.

How can I relate to the Cross if I can't even let someone else wash my feet? How can I accept that ultimate gift from God if I can't accept Gentle Vicar kneeling with pitcher and towel?

So the time came, and I went with the others and had my feet washed, and it was fine. It still felt backwards, but it was fine.

I loved the silent vigil afterward. So often for me, singing is the way to become aware of God's presence. Silence can be awkward... am I supposed to say something? Do something? Short silences in the liturgy make me feel nervous. They always seem either too long, or not long enough. I get stuck in a cycle of worrying about whether I'm supposed to be ready for the next bit, whether I've forgotten someone, whether I might be doing it wrong. In chant or song I often lose that, lose track of worrying about myself, because my whole self is in the song, takes on the song, becomes the song.

The longer silence in darkness was more like singing. My mind was not exactly quiet. I sat there, sometimes with other people and sometimes not, turning over various problems, asking God to be present to various people in various situations. How can I explain? I don't believe that God is ever not with us. I don't believe God could be there in the chapel of repose last night but not also with me now as I sit in front of my computer. But my perception was different, changed, maybe by the silence and darkness, maybe by the preceding liturgy, and God seemed very present.

I didn't really want to leave.

For this morning's Gospel reading we had a sort of dramatized version, with a narrator and different people taking different spoken parts. I loved that our reader, who is female, was reading the part of Christ. I don't know if anyone else noticed.

I did find it all rather short. I'm not sure if Nearest Church doesn't do the entire liturgy or if I'm still accustomed to the longer services in Judaism, but it seems odd to be out by early afternoon. What am I to do with the rest of the day? It doesn't seem right to treat it as a normal day, getting on with bits and pieces of work and study, or to spend time catching up on housework. It doesn't seem right to treat it as a usual day off, relaxing and resting and reading fiction or cooking fancy food. This day feels as if it should be like Yom Kippur, no participation in any of the 39 melachot, no eating, drinking, washing, wearing leather (a luxury), hours and hours and hours of liturgy. Instead I am at something of a loose end.

And yet there are no "normal" days, just as there is no "ordinary" time... if God is with me at church but also out in the world, God is with me when I pray but also when I go about my work, which is even another sort of prayer, if you will. But I am a creature of liturgy, of habit, of susceptibility to ritual, and setting aside times and places to focus on God helps to increase my awareness of God the rest of the time and in the rest of the places. This day is a set aside time.

So I will go for a walk, I think, and I will go back to Nearest Church and sit in silence a while, again.

O Oriens

O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death.

cf Malachi 4.2

This does seem especially appropriate for solstice. In the Northern hemisphere, from here on the days get longer again.

My favourite part of Morning Prayer, incidentally, is this:
In the tender compassion of our God •
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,

To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, •
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

These antiphons don't belong in Morning Prayer -- they're an Evening Prayer thing, sandwiched around the Magnificat. But this one reminds me of morning prayer, and the just-before-dawn, forward-looking feel of much of the liturgy around this time.

Spoilt for choice.

I went to Church-by-the-Station today.

I was not feeling very happy about this search for a church thing, before I left. I felt like going to Deacon Friend's church where I know I'm welcome in the choir and where I know I'm not going to be afraid of the clergy. But I wouldn't have been able to get there before the end of the service, as it's a 90-minute journey.

With that not an option I felt like staying home and singing instead. But that's never the same as worship with other people, and that won't find me a church.

So I went.

I am glad I went.

Like my visit to Nearest Church two weeks ago, this visit left my imagination alive with possibilities for getting more involved. The music director will be leaving in a few months, though the organist is staying on, and while I am perhaps young and inexperienced there is definitely scope for me to get very involved in the choral side of things should I so wish, without having to build it up nearly from scratch. There are some deaf parishioners and the entire liturgy was simultaneously translated into British Sign Language; when I spoke to choir members they said they hadn't done any choral signing, which is a shame. I bet it would be a possibility, though. The priest who had been doing the signing came and made the sign for peace at us during the peace, I tried to make it back at her but probably messed it up.

Church-by-the-Station is, er, right by Upper Suburbia Tube station. As such it attracts people from all walks of life who just drop in. It seems to take very seriously the call to serve the wider community. The sermon was relevant both to the day's readings and to issues which affect the community. Less of the liturgy was sung than at Long Walk Church and there were no smells or bells, but still processions. The blessing I received at the altar was long but full of almost-tangible warmth, I had a real sense of God there. That was true at Nearest Church, too, but not at Long Walk Church last week.

The choir and organist were very friendly; and again I had people taking my details, saying they'd pass them on to people who wanted music lessons. I ran into Networking Organist from Nearest Church and we had a brief chat about things, which was great.

I actually got a chance to talk to the Vicar for a bit. Or I got a chance for him to talk to me... he seemed very eager to tell me about the things the church has done for the community in recent years, very eager to reassure me that the three churches I have visited so far all work closely together, very eager to emphasize a strong commitment to arts ministry and to equality. Perhaps he was a bit too eager; why not let the facts speak for themselves? But for all that, he did seem to understand that I am looking to make a long-term commitment to a community and that it will take some time to figure out which is right for me. He spoke of the right place being the place that I find that I meet God.

On the whole I felt a lot better for having been to the service. It still really isn't clear where I will end up. But how blessed am I, that there are these three churches I could attend? All of them seem to be places that would nurture me in some ways and challenge me in others. All of them seem to have a strong commitment to serving the wider community. The degrees of inclusiveness vary a bit and perhaps aren't entirely clear but all of the congregations are at least attempting to engage with those issues on some level. And all of them are places where I could get involved with the musical side of things and make significant and useful contributions while learning an awful lot.

I guess the thing now is to keep going back and see what happens... see whether the sermons at Nearest Church get better, see whether the community at Long Walk Church is a little more friendly once you get to know people, see whether Church-by-the-Station really does walk the walk as well as talking the talk.

But I might go visit Deacon Friend next Sunday at Leafy Suburb Church, despite the journey, just to rest in something known, to comfort myself with the slightly-familiar, and perhaps by attending a service at a church where I know I won't be able to make a long-term commitment, turn off that part of my brain which for the last three Sundays has been evaluating everything as it goes by.

What would you take with you?

I wrote a little about changes in the church, here, a while ago.

There's a wonderful conversation going on over at Leave It Lay, all about what the church is and should be and where it is going. Great stuff! And in the comments there, people have started talking about a journey, and what trappings of 'church' as it is now they would take with them on that journey.

I don't consider myself part of the small-c church, the church as humans see it, because I don't say the Apostles' Creed and I don't take communion. I don't know whether I'm part of the Church as God sees it; I leave that judgement to the only One who can judge these things.

All the same, here's what I would take with me:

I would take the best of the church-run homeless shelters, the ones that don't try to dish up doctrine with dinner but just focus on making sure those who need it have a place to sleep and a meal. I would take the interest-free community loans that can sometimes stop people becoming homeless in the first place. I would take the coffee mornings, the visiting schemes, the support groups. I would take all of these examples of the church unconditionally loving and endlessly serving the wider world.

If I had lots of space I would take the Daily Office, which seems to be necessary for some people... it's certainly a part of my life in ways I hadn't imagined. I'd take Choral Evensong, I'd take every sort of sung psalmody I can find. I'd pack some Eucharistic services, because although I myself don't partake (more out of respect for a human institution than anything else, at this point) I recognise that that is, for most of you, important, far more important than the words and music are.

But I think that the Church exists to spread the Gospel, I think the Church and people in the Church spread the Gospel by living it, and I think all the trappings of liturgy and ritual and prayer and what we call sacrament--the candles and canticles, the incense and the oil, the bread and the wine--exist to enable us to live it better, and to respond to it with praise. And if the Gospel, if the news we have to spread, is that God loves us, the only way to live that is to rejoice in loving one another. I'd pack anything that helps us do that, and I'd jettison anything that acts as a barrier.

Maybe that's simplistic, but it's absolutely fundamental to my approach to this faith or any other. Why yes, I am a big old hippie.

If I didn't have room for much, I'd take the Summary of Law (to remind me what to do) and the Lord's Prayer (to help me be able to do it) and start again from those.

A little something.

So I've been saying/singing an order for Compline most nights, and there's a verse before and after the Nunc Dimittis:

Save us, O Lord, while waking,
and guard us while sleeping,
that awake we may watch with Christ,
and asleep may rest in peace.

And what my brain has done with that is this:

From Randomness

I have no idea whether I'm fitting the words to an existing campfire round or whether I made this one up. I thought, "those words would make a good round" and then it was just sort of there, and it has stayed for a while. But it really does want to be sung as a round, and I can only do that in my head.

Please feel free to use it, or not. And please tell me if I've nicked someone else's tune!

Hallelujah

Oh, what a few days.

Thursday, got to Dorset, walked around a lot. Went to Evening Prayer at Christchurch Priory, because it was there and I could. More said psalmody! But I was made quite welcome. Chickened out of going to Maundy Thursday services, partly because of my hosts' schedule and partly because I'm a big chicken.

Good Friday, walked some more. Spent a lot of time reading, thinking, reflecting; tried not to hide from my hosts too much. And of course, the performance in the evening.

Saturday, Holy Saturday I guess. Went for another walk. I walk a lot if I have the time and energy. I might have walked too far this time, my injured hip isn't very happy with me, but it was a good walk. I walked to Mudeford and along the beach there until I came to some cliffs. I sat and watched the tide coming in for a while. I took off my shoes and socks and let the cold eternal ocean wash my feet and couldn't help think of Maundy Thursday. Then I spent far too long on a train back to London, where I found we were out of certain essential items and so I went out for those and didn't get to any Saturday night vigil services. I was sorry not to.

Yesterday I spent in Leafy Suburb. I went to the 9.30am service at Leafy Suburb Church, and was delighted. The renewal of baptismal vows bit was difficult for me, in that I don't know which of these vows which were made for me when I was a baby are ones I feel I can make for myself. I have no real problems with the Father, the Creator, no problems with the Holy Spirit. But I do balk, I do clam up somehow, when we start talking about the Son. I have no problems singing about it. I have no problems talking about it in an abstract sense, in a sort of model-for-thinking-about-God way. But as much as I want to there are things I don't believe in the way I think the creeds mean them, not when they're the spoken word or the word on the page, and I can't say "I believe this" when I don't. Why am I so afraid to believe this?

Only singing works. I wish I knew why! I wish I knew whether what I believe when I sing is what I actually believe and my intellect is just getting in the way the rest of the time, or whether what I believe when I sing is some sort of ridiculous fantasy and my intellect is right to stop me believing it at other times. I wish I knew. I don't think I will be rid of this problem, this uncertainty, any time soon.

Nevertheless, I was grateful that the vicar was so thorough in her sprinkling of the congregation. There's so much water imagery in this desert faith... the Flood, the Red Sea, baptism. Ritual washing of hands, feet, souls. For a moment all of that was in the drop of water that landed on my cheek.

I'm still itchy about the Eucharist, still not sure whether I'd be welcome (formally or informally), but again, going up for a blessing seemed to be right, yesterday. The text leading up to it was different than on Tuesday. I was sorry not to have the Summary of Law. I missed the very Jewish blessings over the bread and wine. I don't really understand some of the differences, and I find myself wanting to. Is there a guide to C of E liturgy somewhere that's aimed at foreign heretics? I feel like I must be making context errors but I don't know what they are. I want to understand this.

Singing is meaningful to me and singing is, eventually, what I got: I had intended to stick around for Evensong anyway. I asked one of the choir members whether I might sing alto, if I came to the rehearsal in the afternoon... they've all heard me singing in the hymns at Evensong a few times now. I was welcomed with open arms by choir, musical director and clergy. So I sang my little heart out, in the rehearsal and in the service, and I'd do it all again today if I could. I won't say the performance was of a very high musical standard; the choir does very well for the amount of rehearsal and the spread of skills they have, but it's not what I'm used to at Academic Institution. But it meant something, and I believed every word I sang with every particle of my being. I managed to avoid tears but my eyes were quite ready to add their own water to my cheeks.

I think sung creeds and sung Eucharist might change my understanding and experience of Christianity in profound ways, with enough repetition and in an environment of loving kindness.

At the other church I at which I attend Evensong I don't think I would have the courage to ask to sing in the choir. I've been to about as many services by now, and people are welcoming enough, but there isn't the warmth of spirit. I think that when I am looking for a church to attend in the area of London I'm moving to, I need to look for somewhere that has the warmth of spirit that I can feel at Leafy Suburb Church. It may be a while before I can spare my Sunday mornings for singing in a choir but I hope to be able to do so at some point: it seems to be where I belong in church. There is a part of me that considers moving to Leafy Suburb, but it would make my commute to my existing teaching work, my existing social network, and Sweetie rather horrible, and wonderful as the people of Leafy Suburb Church are, I don't think I want to start over yet again. Leafy Suburb Church can't be the only one with that sort of community. That love must exist elsewhere. I hope I can find it, and add to it.

During the afternoon I had lunch with some choir members and then went for a walk. It was more of a sit than a walk really, I found a comfortable park bench and sat on it to read for a while, and then I walked a bit and found a comfortable tree to sit under and sat there reading for a while. My hip was hurting too much to do any serious walking. It's better today.

There has not been much time in all of this for reading teh internets. I may or may not catch up today in amongst various chores. Tomorrow it is nose back to the grindstone: I need to get the write-up for Big Project out of the way, as well as getting a good start on various other projects.

miscellany; and a prayer for the clergy

Today has felt better than yesterday did. I got some work done in the morning, not as much as I should have done but more than yesterday! I saw a friend for lunch and another for an afternoon walk. I haven't had to take any painkillers.

Went to Leafy Suburb Church this evening.

There was no choir or choir director as it's a weekday. For someone who sings all the good bits of worship and sings all the bits that feel awkward, having an almost entirely spoken service was really very odd and rather hard work. But there was still a resonance to it that I can't explain.

The Eucharist seems strange and familiar to me, at the same time. The blessings over the bread and wine are near word-for-word translations of the equivalent Jewish brachot and I found that comforting for some reason. I keep coming back to what The Ostrich said about Eucharist and it sort of makes sense in a way I can't quite articulate. Maybe I'll get it eventually, maybe I'll even take communion at some point. But going up for a blessing seemed right, this evening.

I love having the Summary of the Law as part of worship. I think maybe I just need to print it out and stick it in my small prayer book and start saying it along with my other prayers.

The Peace, always a favourite part of childhood services, remains a favourite, and I was struck again by how welcoming the congregation there is.

I spoke to the Vicar briefly about the Sekr1t Pr0ject. I'll e-mail her, next week after everything is a bit calmer. Can't say more without risking giving the secret away--mentioning it at all is a bit dodgy in fact.

I find myself praying tonight for clergy. Deacon Friend has a lot to deal with and Holy Week is in some ways the worst time to deal with it, and in other ways perhaps the best. Various other clergy I know, online or in person, well or as acquaintances, are struggling with various things right now. And it's a tough week, a lot of hard work, trying to enable or facilitate or lead meaningful worship for others without losing sight of the important things themselves, trying to move Heaven and Earth and also trying to hold them together. I pray that the clergy I know and the clergy I don't know are granted the stamina and courage to get through this week. I pray that they will be offered help and support wherever it is needed, and be able to accept it. I pray that they are able to draw comfort and strength from the message of resurrection, unconditional love and eternal life that they are called to preach. I'm just a confused monotheist, but I care and I pray.

Praxis

Last night I posted a sort of snapshot of my current beliefs.

Today I am going to look at a more practical side of things.

I would say that the major change in my spiritual practice over the last few months has been that I am regularly engaging in structured prayer in a way that I have not before.

When I was young, one of the problems I had with Christianity as I encountered it then was that it seemed to be something we did on Sundays, and very fleetingly with grace before meals, and that was it. When I was very small I was taught to say bedtime prayers but it was obvious as I grew older that nobody else in the family did this. Somehow I stopped, too. I did try to pray in church, but my experience of church wasn't something that supported my private prayer. It didn't help that we moved every few years and so our little family was the only continuous community we had.

When I was observing Judaism I took on a lot. I took on habits of dress that were fairly restrictive. I took on dietary changes that make giving up chocolate for Lent look like a walk in the park. I took on making Shabbat, complete with timers for the lights and not cooking after sundown on Friday and not carrying--and there was no eruv in North London then. And all of these felt like prayer, in their way. But they were also very much things I did to fit in with the community. The bar is set pretty high for conversion to Orthodox Judaism and much of the time I found myself concerned with 'passing'. The community was warm and welcoming, and I wanted to be part of that.

Communal prayer in Judaism was strange and mysterious to me at first, then grew more comfortable and beautiful as I learned more of the language. Last spring I found, visiting a friend, that I could still get through much of the Grace After Meals, despite not having prayed it for years. But... again, my communal prayer did not support my private prayer. As a woman I would only be expected to pray once per day but I did not even manage that, most days. I did not even manage grace after meals when I was alone. I think this is partly because it was too hard for me in Hebrew, and partly because I was already doing so much and worrying so much about how I looked to others. When I moved to a geographical location where the community was less accessible, eventually all my practices faded away. My prayer had been so community-based that without the trappings of community it couldn't sustain itself.

I suddenly feel nervous about telling teh entire internets about my prayer life. A bit silly really. But I don't want to start writing about this just for the comments, I don't want to present myself one way and then find that actually, I'm another way, I don't want to walk into a trap of saying I do something adn then feeling a sham on days I don't manage to do it. So please, friends, take this, like yesterday's post, as a snapshot of where I am now, not a commitment to stay there.

Sometime in January I started praying Morning Prayer, first from the Oremus website and then the Common Worship version from the Church of England site. I think it was very soon after I read Jane R's book, When in Doubt, Sing... somehow I stopped worrying about doing it wrong, stopped worrying about agreeing with every single word and decided it would be better to pray, if that's what I want to do, than not pray. I've missed a few mornings here and there, usually due to internet outage. When I am home or alone I sing most of this, and read the readings aloud. When I am staying with Sweetie or when I'm so disorganised that I end up praying on the bus I pray silently, but that often means singing in my head. An interesting recent development has been finding myself imagining the psalmody in parallel fourths and fifths; I didn't make a conscious decision to try it, just noticed I was doing it.

I found myself wanting to pray by mid-afternoon most days. So I did, but sometimes the words wouldn't come, or more often I'd get distracted. I have a very wandery mind. It's easy to slide from praying to the sort of fidgety worrying that just wears me down.

I bought a book, Work and Prayer, which has Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, Midday Prayer and an order for Compline in it, for Monday to Saturday. I started using the Midday Prayer and Compline many days. The midday prayer has most often been silent and I might get to it anywhere between about 10.30am and 5pm. It's hard to control my schedule in the middle of the day so I end up praying in breaks from rehearsals, praying in lunch break, praying on the train or the bus. Compline, I usually sing, though quietly so as not to wake my flatmates. I've been doing both of these most days since I bought that book, which the magic of the internets tells me was at the end of February. I'm not as consistent with these as with Morning Prayer.

Work and Prayer lacks much in the way of seasonal variation. Singing Morning Prayer from the C of E website and finding that oh, the text changes for Passiontide, I decided to look at other resources. I poked around the website. I considered printing off the bits I was going to use. I realised that by the time I've finished deciding what I want and printing it I may as well just go and buy a book, so on Friday I did that. I took myself off to the Church House bookshop to see what I could find. I ended up with Daily Prayer, which I will use at home when there is no internet or when I am brave enough to read the scripture from a Bible rather than nicely tucked into a website (this could be a good thing, giving me extra context. Or it could lead to entire mornings spent reading the Bible when I ought to be doing other things. Having a wandery mind is hazardous). But it's a bit big to carry around so I've also got a copy of Time to Pray, which has an order for Prayer During The Day and an order for Compline but more seasonal variation in it than the resource I had been using.

I still want more of the Summary of Law. To me this seems like the most important thing and yet it doesn't seem obviously prominent in any of these structured prayers.

I've also been going to church. I teach on Sunday mornings so the main service is out of the question. In fact I usually teach Sunday afternoons, as well. But my usually-in-the-evening students have cottoned on to the fact that early afternoon is easier for them, and my late-afternoon student can often do earlier in the day. When there is Evensong at Leafy Suburb Church, where Deacon Friend is spending her curacy, I go there if I can juggle my schedule appropriately. I don't know now whether I'm going to see her or for the worship. I've been made to feel very welcome there, despite my coming from so far away. When there is not Evensong at Leafy Suburb Church I go to Church on Hill for Evensong instead, which is in the area where I teach. I have to say, I don't feel as warmly welcomed, I find the music more polished but less heartfelt, and there have been some sermons which left me more confused than anything else. But week after week it's there, and I finish teaching, and I may as well drop by really. So I do.

My teaching schedule has changed a bit; I've lost some students. My first thought, after the teacherly regret, was that I might get to sleep a bit longer on Sundays. My second was that I might find an early service to go to. I'm not sure about that; the transport logistics don't work out very well at all.

I'll be moving house this summer, moving to a different area of London. I'm choosing the area based on many of my friends living there already and the possibilities for teaching from home, among other things. But recently I've also been thinking, "must check out churches in that area, see which are places I might feel comfortable, see where I might get involved even if I still can't make Sunday morning services." I can imagine myself getting to a weeknight Parish Eucharist. I can imagine myself getting to Morning Prayer at 8am somewhere.

I wrote, in an earlier post, of how others have influenced my own spiritual searching. I want to make clear again that none of them have put any pressure on me to change what I am doing or to encourage me to do as they do. In fact, all of them would be saddened, I think, if they thought I were doing this out of some desire to please them. But on days when I feel a bit sluggish, knowing that Deacon Friend will be saying Morning Prayer makes me want to get out of bed and do so too. On days when saying Compline seems like a silly, childish, goody-two-shoes empty ritual, knowing that Catholic Friend prays and takes it seriously helps me to take it seriously, too. And when I read prayer requests, great long lists of them on some of the blogs I read, I offer up my silent or spoken prayers then and there but I am also reminded, invited, to take time to pray at another point in the day. So while I'm not attached to any one community very strongly right now, I do feel supported, generally, by a community of prayer. I think that helps. And I think that maybe part of what I'm looking for in a church is a geographically convenient group of people to pray together with, something that will be able to carry me along when I'm less able to pray on my own than I am right now.

I don't know where I'm going with any of this. It feels like something I am doing out of need and curiosity, not something I am doing out of obligation or trying to impress others. So I am trying to take a wait-and-see approach, trying not to get too attached to this sort of structured prayer as any kind of hard rule but rather trying to remain faithful to the curiosity, trying to see where I end up next.

I've been doing all of this in a Christian context. This is partly because after trying to learn even the slightly familiar but new to me faith of Judaism, I don't underestimate how hard it is to learn something that isn't the mainstream culture. It's partly because the resources for Christian prayer are so accessible online, which is a by-product of some form of Christianity being the mainstream culture again. It's partly because people I love very much happen to be Christian and I want to understand them better. And it's because I think what I perceive as the underlying message of Christianity is true, and I'm willing to put up with some cognitive dissonance on issues like the Trinity if using Christian prayer structures is going to help me love the world better.

I don't think that makes me Christian. More on that in another post, though. This one is too long already.

Weekend post

It's been a busy week for me with academic work: a few more months of busy weeks like this and then I'll be finished the degree, God willing.

That doesn't stop me pondering and searching, though.

Margaret writes of Fear being the first sin. I think she may be right, and said as much in a comment there; I also mentioned something I'm starting to believe more strongly than I once did, that love is stronger than fear. Since then I've been thinking that a lot of scripture tells us to fear God, and a lot of scripture tells us not to be afraid, and I tend to interpret these two things very differently. It would be good to look into the context and translation in more depth at some point.

The Exegesis Fairy posted about Agenda and the Great Commission. I think what she was saying is similar to the sermon I heard on Sunday night. Another reader has a different interpretation of scripture and so I waded in... as much to understand my own beliefs as to understand his. Result? I'm still confused, but I'm slightly more clear what it is that I'm confused about. Some of the discussion there is the good old knotty tangle of scripture and truth and interpretation, which is not too bad if you decide the Bible is a source of inspiration and narrative truth but gets to be problematic very fast if you start trying to say that some bits are factual or literally directive--how do you tell which bits? And if it's all factual then we've got some serious problems. Some of the discussion is more a discussion of salvation. It won't surprise most of you who've read my posts so far that I'm not very comfortable with the idea of God's unconditional, unlimited love resulting in a quite narrow, restrictive and conditional salvation. I have a suspicion that humans made this part up. (The Exegesis Fairy is not online as much as usual at the moment, so it might be sensible to comment here rather than there.)

I also liked A Sermon for the Future, particularly this bit: So what is it to say Christ is Risen? It is to say that one can and will live within a renewed vision of hope, that the world can be ethically remade, that we will serve one another and seek the common good... I too have difficulty with scientifically implausible concepts like physical resurrection. Understanding some of the anthropological, humanist aspects of this story makes me feel more comfortable with it, to relate to it differently. Not, I think, comfortable enough to say the Apostle's Creed or receive the Eucharist, but I think I have a better understanding of why others do.

Today in a discount bookshop I spied a single copy of Work and Prayer, compiled by Chris Keating. I bought it. I think I will continue to use Morning Prayer (Common Worship) from the C of E website as the anchor to my morning, but I like the idea of having a short liturgy I can use at other times of day. It isn't that there is anything wrong with my rather more spontaneous, unstructured prayers, but borrowing words seems to be useful and meaningful. I do like that the morning and evening prayers have hymns in them in this book but alas, no notes, though I guess with only seven weekdays I can find the hymns and memorize them, easily enough.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm feeling drawn to more structured prayer in my life recently. It may be that I'm trying to find some ballast to balance the chaos of my academic and work commitments (I have a different schedule every weekday, and no two weeks are the same). It may be part of a more general yearning for a feeling of closeness to God. I'm trying not to worry about it too much, and just see where the journey takes me. But I do have some idea where I might be going.

I think I may eventually end up regularly attending Morning Prayer at a church (probably after my degree is done, for practical timing reasons if nothing else). This will be a bit strange as I normally sing the psalms, to whatever tune comes out; I may eventually get a psalter to use, but for now I see nothing wrong with improvisation. But I think most parish churches probably have spoken Morning Prayer.

I can also see myself compiling bits of liturgical material and ending up with a sort of prayer book of my own. I'd like to get the Summary of Law in there, and the prayer of St Francis. I prefer hymnody when I have the musical dots to look at, and I might like some sort of short list of prayers for various occasions, a bit like the Jewish bracha books with all the blessings in them. The big difficulty with that plan is a lack of portability; my work teaching and performing means I am out and about quite a lot, and while I can usually pray first thing in the morning at home, other times of day are not so easy. It may take me a while to settle on which material to include, and temporary bindings (ring binders and the like) tend to be bulky. So for now I'll be keeping things simple, using books other people have written or compiled.

What would you include in your own personal prayer book? What prayers do you have memorised?

It's been an interesting few days. I'm busy with academic work, and getting to the end of every day not having finished as much as I'd hoped and intended... that's about normal for this stage of the degree, I think.

Want to see something beautiful? Have a look at this video footage of narwhales.

One thing I didn't anticipate, deciding to start blogging here myself rather than just passively lurking, is that suddenly all the prayer requests seem quite a bit more compelling. I haven't replied to all of them but I have prayed in response to all of the ones I've seen. I've not previously been in the habit of keeping a written list of people or situations to pray about, but I think I might like to start one soon. I don't want to miss anyone out. On the other hand, I'm always going to forget someone or something even if I do keep a list, so maybe a simple "and anyone in need of help" tacked onto the end makes more sense.

It's a little odd, because I still don't really know most of you at all and you don't really know me, but even small niceties like online comments build a sort of connection, a sort of bridge between souls if you like, even if it's tenuous. Jan writes I believe love is a prayer, so we all are joining God's prayer when we love, whether we know it or not. I like that view of prayer.

I wonder how this relates to being kind to the stranger, especially when the help required is more material than prayer or kind words. I think we're all a little more likely to give money or food or shelter to someone we know than someone we don't, even if we find a way to do so anonymously. I can't help everyone without becoming an ascetic myself (and even then, it wouldn't be enough) so maybe that sort of community-within-the-world is as good a method as any to decide where to send help, but there are some obvious flaws: the world is a very interconnected place and just because I'm not directly involved in a community (even on a marginal basis) does not mean there is no need for help, no obligation to help.

I've been thinking more about music and liturgy and worship, but in a different context: that of hospital chaplaincy.

When my grandmother was in hospital I used to visit her with my dad. She had Parkinson's disease, and her body gradually became more and more a prison. Sometimes we would sit and talk, or read poetry that she had written or that we knew she loved. Often we would go to the hospital cafeteria and eat together. Always, we would take her wheelchair to an open area of the building that had a piano in it, and I would play for her. Long after she lost the ability to speak or even vocalise in response to conversations, she could sing along with the music.

Music is a very important part of worship for me, and if I were in hospital and facing a crisis, I think it would be in music that I would find the most comfort and solace. Some things just can't be put into words, and I think I would want to sing, or if I couldn't sing, to be sung to. Some things just can't be put into words. But many hospital chaplains may not be musicians, and I imagine that most hospitals, at least in the UK, are lucky if they have a piano at all. Also chaplaincy as I understand it very often means dealing with people from very diverse backgrounds and (I am generalising madly here) musical traditions in worship tend to be less rigidly standardised than, say, spoken prayers: there may be strict guidelines on what sort of music is appropriate in a given tradition, but in my experience there are almost always various different tunes that can be used for different prayer texts. Very often the musical part of a service is the part that is most variable. So to incorporate music effectively into the pastoral care of hospital chaplaincy would require working knowledge of a huge range of traditions and access to several libraries. The Hospital Chaplaincy Gateway has a link to the Oremus Hymnal, which is a wonderful resource, but it has limits. (And then there is another problem: someone hums something at you, you don't recognise it, they don't remember the words or title: how do you search for it? I understand Google is working on some sort of melody-based audio search but this is extremely non-trivial.)

I'm not done thinking about this, but I'm already starting to wonder whether this is something I should pursue as a volunteer activity, when I've finished this academic degree. I don't know whether I'd want to help compile more extensive online resources, or get involved in the practical side of things; I suspect I would learn more from the latter. But for now I really do have to file this under 'neat ideas to explore when I have time'.

Modes of Worship

I posted this over in the comments at OCICBW after reading some of the comments on MP's Thought for the Day, which dealt with the Latin Mass and the present pope destroying something which was beautiful. Some commenters described their experiences of Latin Mass as very moving, others had experienced it as moving rather too quickly to be seemly or meaningful. I'm not sure of the etiquette here, in re-posting a comment that I made elsewhere, but wanted to have it for future reference.

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It's interesting reading about differing approaches to the Latin Mass from the perspective of having participated in Jewish services of the Orthodox variety. These are all in Hebrew, for similar reasons to the Mass being in Latin. It was certainly a useful thing to be able to go to any service and encounter familiar words, even if they were in a language that I never did manage to learn properly.

Perhaps because of the nature of the liturgy, which has a written text but tunes which are passed on through oral tradition, there was a rich variety of music in worship in the synagogue and at home. I experienced both approaches in different circumstances: sometimes, yes, the prayers would be gabbled, rushed through. Other times there was a real appreciation of the music of the prayers, not always solemn, but meaningful.

I think both approaches can have a place. I know that saying the grace after meals there were times when we were going too fast for me to really keep up with the Hebrew in any sensible way and I just had to give up and let the syllables wash over me, pronounce the sounds without thinking about the meaning in anything other than a very general way. I found that this can be an almost meditative experience, as if saying the words distracts that part of my brain that gets caught up in such things and leaves me free to experience something deeper. The danger, of course, is that quickly gabbled prayers said on autopilot can also free up part of my brain to think about what I might want to do with the leftovers from the meal, or what I might wear tomorrow, or how hideous that cabbage casserole was!

I'm a musician, and beautifully performed music speaks to me on a level that I've been unable to explain in words. Some of my most powerful spiritual experiences have been in the context of singing at a high level of competency with good direction and excellently-crafted music. But there are dangers there, too, I feel: it is entirely possible to get so caught up in technical aspects of good musical performance, perhaps even getting competitive about it, that one loses the true intent of the liturgy.

This is often a problem in non-liturgical musical settings, too! I think one of the differences between a very good musician and an astounding one is the ability to communicate in some sort of transcendent manner on a consistent and regular basis. Of course, if there are technical problems--if the music is just too hard--that will distract the listener, which is why musicians spend so much time and effort trying to get the technical details right. But at the end of the day the technical details are only the technical details, and a perfectly-executed technical performance can still fall flat.

The issue of language is a knotty one. The Latin I have sung has always been beautiful text in and of itself, and it is a language that often lends itself to singing rather better than English does. Singing is such an important part of worship for me that given a choice between beautifully-sung Latin and badly-sung vernacular I would probably choose the Latin and go learn what it means. Hebrew is a lot harder to learn (I studied French at school, which makes Latin a little easier, and Hebrew goes the other direction and has a different set of characters!) but if I had stayed longer in Judaism I'm sure I would understand a lot more of it by now. But someone who doesn't learn languages as well as I do, or who isn't affected as much by music, or who has a higher need for immediate literal understanding of liturgy, might choose differently. The needs of someone who cannot hear at all will be different again.

A perfectly-executed technical performance of the Latin Mass could be a thing of sublime, transcendent beauty, or it could be utterly alienating. It depends on who is singing and it depends on who is listening.

With that in mind, I think there is a place for the Latin Mass in modern worship, but I'm not sure what it is. I guess ideally there would be a variety of worship styles available regardless of doctrine or dogma, and people could feel free to attend or participate in whatever services they found most meaningful. But that might be a little forward-thinking, given the current state of the world.