Keeping on.

Still ticking. Last day on the stronger tablets today, though I've been managing with food rather better this week than the one before.

I'm working on a project. It has to do with psalmody. Ultimately it's going to be something I'll attach my real name to, which means I can't discuss it much here. If you do want to hear about it let me know. I'll e-mail you if I have your address. Some of you have heard about it already.

The more I do research for this project, the more I let the psalms get into my head and my heart, the more it seems really important that I do some sort of direct voluntary work with people who are homeless. I wrote about this before, at the end of January. I don't know what the connection is; I don't know if my interest in psalmody will mean that the psalms are somehow directly involved in the work I eventually do, or if they "clear the lines" somehow so that discernment is easier for me, or if I'm going to need to know the psalms inside out and backward to deal with what I might find and this is a sort of preparation period for that. I only realised there was a connection fairly recently, after I'd written that other post.

This is way off the beaten track for me. The psalmody project itself is far more research-based than my usual work, but I can at least see a connection, a drawing together of various threads. But direct work with the homeless is unfamiliar in just about every way possible. Using my existing professional skills doesn't seem to be the requirement, and everything I can think up that uses them is definitely not the right thing.

I've spoken to some friends about this. I've spoken to my spiritual adviser/director. I've prayed. I've thought and thought and chased my tail.

I've found a night shelter/day centre within walking distance of where I live and printed out a volunteer application form.

I'm just going to have to try it and see what happens. I can't think this one through any further without taking action.

Right then. Thy will be done, and I hope I don't screw it up.

Hymnody, Psalmody, and knowing your audience

The ordination service yesterday morning at Southwark Cathedral had a few elements that have stuck in my mind.

One was a sung metrical setting of the Nicene Creed. Of course this made me happy; I can sing creeds, and believe them, because of the augmentation of the possible that seems to get through my thick skull when I sing or chant instead of speaking. I struggled with the lack of music dots in front of me but the tune used was easy to pick up, and I was very glad to be able to sing it.

The other was the choice of recessional hymn. It was Siya Hamba, with the Zulu words first, followed by several verses of English. I learned that song in the 1990s and know it quite well, but I didn't think it was a good choice for the occasion. The message of the song is appropriate enough, but there are other things to consider. The congregation contained a higher-than-usual number of people who probably don't spend a lot of time in church, and definitely a lot of people who probably do not know that song or be comfortable singing along with syncopated rhythms in a foreign language (there may well have been some Zulu speakers in the audience but I suspect not very many). It's difficult to recess in a seemly and dignified manner to a song that really feels more like you should be dancing. It isn't the easiest song to accompany on the pipe organ - the organist did a very good job, but it isn't exactly idiomatic writing for that instrument. On the other hand, the repetition of the words meant that anyone who has learned the song probably does remember it reasonably easily.

I like a lot of West Gallery music. This is mostly metrical psalmody -- that is, psalmody translated such that it has rhyme and meter. Thus a typical doxology, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost" etc might be sung as follows in 8686 meter:

To Father, Son and Holy Ghost
The God whom we adore,
Be glory; as it was, is now
And shall be evermore.

or like this in 8888:

To Father, Son and Holy Ghost
The God whom earth and heav'n adore,
Be glory; as it was of old,
Is now, and shall be evermore.

There are various different translations flying around the internet. I linked to one in this post in May but it seems to be broken now, but the wikipedia article has external links to a number of metrical psalters.

West Gallery music is wonderful; it was written by amateurs for amateurs, performed by real people who had other work to do, not just professionals. The theology is generally good (hard to go wrong with psalmody) and it reflects folk music traditions of the time.

This has got me thinking... hymnody these days is not always in a wonderful state. Nick Baines has blogged about this in some depth. We can't just freeze hymnody in time and only use what has been written before: that way lies irrelevance. Nor must we embrace everything new just because it is new: some of it will be theologically or musically inappropriate.

As I see it there are two main problems with some of the modern hymnody being written; the words and the music. That sounds like a sweeping condemnation of everything new, and it isn't meant to be! However, much of what is new includes bad poetry or sloppy theology, and just because words are written with Christian intent does not mean they should be sung. Similarly, just because some piece of music is written with worship in mind or appeals to a particular group or is appropriate for one setting does not mean it is appropriate for congregational hymnody. I feel choosing music that people can participate in and relate to is an important part of good liturgy.

I think in the current cultural environment, finding a common denominator for musical language is going to be a big challenge. We aren't anywhere near as limited by geography in our exposure to various traditions, and the last half-century has seen a shift away from music as a participatory activity to one of passive consumption. This means that your average congregation might include traditionally-trained classical musicians like myself with little exposure outside of their specialist genre (and very eclectic exposure within it), people who listen to or perform pop music of a particular time period or genre, people who listen to or perform "alternative" music from a number of distinctive genres, and people who are experts in a variety of folk traditions. The variety is huge! The music participation people may have encountered in school or elsewhere is also more varied than I understand it was ten or fifteen years ago in this country. None of those are in and of themselves negative things, but they mean that finding music the whole congregation can participate in is quite a challenge. The resources available for professionals or amateurs to lead the musical portions of worship are also highly variable. And there are going to be issues around disability and inclusion, and also literacy.

I don't think all these issues can be addressed by any one hymn or hymn-writer or hymnal: support for some of these issues is better handled at a local level by people who can sensitively and skilfully assess the situation and come up with creative solutions. But I do think it's important to keep them in mind.

To this end, I would consider the following when writing music for communal worship:

My understanding is that most congregations do not wish to rehearse their hymnody before services. They may be led by a choir of singers (of varying skill) or by instruments, but hymnody ideally also needs to be suitable for occasional offices when the choir may not be available. Most congregants aren't going to hear these hymns more often than during church services, so the melodies need to be memorable. Many congregants don't sing in daily life and so the melodies need to be singable by people who perhaps lack confidence in their singing.

A sort of via negativa list of things that make hymnody difficult for me:
-very disjunct melodies with large or awkward leaps
-too much syncopation, especially in situations where others are obviously not familiar with it and the accompaniment (if any) does not have a strong beat
-hymn tunes that are so long that I cannot remember them unless I have music dots to look at -- I'm okay if I can hear it once or twice through before we start singing, but most of the time you only get a line and I'm not so good at remembering and following at the same time.
-languages I don't understand, especially if they start the hymn or it's difficult to hear how others are executing vowels and consonants
-melodies set too high or two low for a comfortable singing range

This means an ideal hymn tune, among other things, will have a repetitive melody with reasonably predictable notes and rhythms. That in turn lends itself to metrical text.

I think I probably need to stick to tried-and-true texts, at least at first. I'm not a poet and I'm certainly not a trained theologian, and I would veer too easily into cringe-worthy words or dodgy theology if I attempted to write my own words without a lot of guidance from people more knowledgeable than I am. For me the obvious place to start is with psalmody -- it has been around for a few thousand years, after all. But the traditional metrical psalters are not suitable for a modern congregation: the language is seen as archaic by some and will simply be strange to those who don't speak English as their first language. I need to stick to modern translations. I'm not a translator, so I need to use others' work here.

Thankfully Dale A Schoening, a United Methodist minister in Iowa, has published a bunch of these and also some metrical canticles with an alternative copyright arrangement. I haven't read them yet to check for awkward language or syllabic stress, and there are several missing, but it's a good start. He's also stated the meter used for each and even suggested some tunes.

I need to develop some of this further, I think, but I'm quite tired now and need to stop here.

Miscellany again, and some links

Another tiring week full of long days. They do seem to keep coming and coming. Each day pours out its song to the next... and Sweetie tells me that I talked about kittens, last night, in my sleep.

One month from today I will be playing Big Final Recital Exam. I don't feel ready. This is fairly normal. I will keep practising, and it will be okay--or so I keep telling myself. I still have some coursework to do. After the exam I'll be moving house, and I have househunting to do. And the interminable medical appointments continue; this coming Wednesday is a bit of a doozy with the vampires sticking their suckers in for samples every 15-20 minutes for two and a half hours. Hopefully I'll be able to get some of my coursework done while they're at it.

So, I'm not likely to be posting much in the next month. I'm way behind on reading blogs, too, and responding to posts. Have a some links, instead.

I'm very pleased to have happened across this metrical psalmody resource. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet.

FranIam is posting a between-Ascension-and-Pentecost Novena, the first post in the series is here. I've not had time or the right words to respond as I'd like to. This promises to be worth reading, if you're into the prayer end of things.

It's also a period of prayer for Christian Unity in the southern hemisphere, but you don't have to be in the Southern Hemisphere or even a Christian to pray for Christian unity during this coming week.

This week at Academic Institution I've seen some people treated rather shabbily by the official machinations of academia; I'm hoping there is a way, within the official rules and regulations, to find some redress and restore a bit of balance. I've spent no small amount of time and energy attempting to do what I can to restore hope and confidence to one friend and colleague who has had the wind blown right out of her sails. Relatedly, Adrian Worsfold writes excellently about the problems of a culture of rules. I think that this relates to what Nick Baines wrote on media neutrality. Both are about a culture of accountability and responsibility which some would say seems to have evaporated in recent decades in the UK. I think we need more ways of building that back up than just voting; what do you think? What, to you, builds up community--online or in person? What fosters care and responsible action? And how can you, I, all of us or any of us, act in good faith to do this while protecting ourselves and those we love from the rotten, rule-bound, opportunistic policies of the punctilious paper-pushers who mistakenly think that if you can't quantify something, it has no quality? Serious questions, and I'm seriously interested in your answers. There's another post in here somewhere.

Speaking of community, and of building up: what is marriage, really? Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG writes well about Biblical definitions of the institution marriage. In the comments he writes: "Those who cloak bigotry in the language of faith are guilty of nothing short of blasphemy." I heartily agree. It's a harrowing time for the LGBT community in America, waiting for a decision in California, and I hope and pray it will end with joy.

It's been a harrowing and joyful time for others, too. I'd fast run out of space if I posted a link and description to every person or situation deserving of prayer, attention and concern or celebration this week. The usual prayer lists from MadPriest and Grandmère Mimi are a good start. But they're only really a small cross-section of one community I'm at the edges of; there are ever so many more, and everything is so interconnected... I find it difficult to keep track of all those I would like to pray for and frequently tack on a sort of catch-all, a sort of intercession for anyone I happen to have missed or simply didn't know about to begin with. Since I'm not omniscient I know that I'll never be able to pray for every specific situation separately, but I still feel sad if I find I've forgotten someone. I wonder how others keep track; I know that some people keep a written-down list on paper, or use various structures to remember to pray for people in certain categories of relationship (family, friends, wider community, government etc). What, if anything, works for you? And how do you decide what goes on your prayer radar?

Josephine's post on photography and prayer, and Doug's post on truth and art, seem to me to be connected somehow.

For today I am resting. So far this has meant lazing on Sweetie's sofa for the better part of a day. I am thinking a nap may be in order. If I'm feeling particularly energetic I might go for a walk. There is a party this evening I wish to attend if I am not too tired, but I mustn't stay out late as I'm teaching tomorrow as usual. I've had enough of staring at a screen for a little while, in any case.

Feeling sheepish

It is Good Shepherd Sunday. My memory of this story from childhood is always one of wondering, if one sheep got lost and the shepherd went after it, who looked after the rest of the flock while the shepherd was away looking? Yeah, I was missing the point a bit.

Today I missed Evensong. I went to the church in the area where I teach, where I usually go for Evensong on Sundays if I'm not able to get to Leafy Suburb Church or elsewhere. It has become a sort of default option. I turned up. I started folding up my bicycle. I realised nobody was there.

Default Option Church is okay. They do well, I think, to have Evensong most Sundays. They're not unfriendly, not as welcoming as Leafy Suburb Church but they probably just don't know what to make of me. The sermons range from good to wishy-washy to downright confusing.

I've been telling myself that I go for the music.

The choir usually outnumbers the congregation. The singing is directed with care and a great deal of precision but lacks a certain passion and doesn't take risks, the hymnody is often planned in such a way that doesn't encourage congregational participation (alternating women and men for verses when there aren't many strong singers in the congregation means people get lost; and I can't easily sing the soprano line for consecutive verses in many hymns so generally stick to harmony except for first and last). Overall my impression is that it's a little insipid and uninspiring. But... I turn up anyway. I can't easily get to another service most Sundays. I turn up, and I sing the hymns, and I try to take something from the sermon, and I try to notice what the music is trying to do, and I sing along in the psalmody, sotto voce and slightly behind because I don't have the dots to tell me what notes are next.

I knew sooner or later I'd turn up and there wouldn't be a service, and tonight it happened, and there was nothing for it but to head home.

I didn't expect it to upset me so much. I guess I am there for more than just the music.

I read the Evening Prayer service from the Book of Common Worship courtesy of the C of E website and then took a psalter and went to sit in the park and sing... sotto voce again so as not to attract undue attention. And the park got dark and cold and I came home. And saw this post, among others.

There's rather a lot of church on the internet after all.

Placeholder post

Too many things to think about, let alone to post about! My brain, at the moment, is all about big ideas, general concepts, broad careless strokes of a chunky brush dipped in searingly bright colours. It's in my practising, my teaching, even composing (such as it is) is coming at me in big forms and harmonic structure rather than melodic line and fine nuance.

Typical, then, that this week in my academic work I need to write a report on Big Project, a meticulously detailed report of what I learned and how I learned it, complete with appendices, tables and charts. As someone who normally does that sort of learning in a more organic and intuitive way, I'm struggling a little to identify these things, but as a teacher and a musician I can do self-scrutiny well enough; as someone who thinks the structure of the assignment is not actually that helpful to the learning process I'm resentful of having to jump through the hoop. But the biggest problem is really that I keep getting distracted by big ideas.

The way I usually work through ideas is to talk about them or write about them.

Things I would like to write about, right here and right now, but for which I really haven't got the spare brain cycles:

-How my spirituality/beliefs relate to teaching music; how I can be more generally supportive of the families I work with, through music teaching and not in any overtly religious framework; how to pray about teaching
-I've touched on it a bit before, but more on music performance and spirituality and my current understanding of the relationship between the two
-Chronic pain and how I deal with that and various other physical and mental health difficulties. I'm not actually sure I can do this without turning it into a whinge-fest or completely destroying the fragile anonymity I'm trying to maintain here.
-Words and meaning; images and meaning; sounds and meaning. In the beginning there was the Word, we're told--but do we mean the word, or do we mean meaning itself? And how does this relate to our being made in God's image, and being creators of meaning ourselves?
-Psalmody and how/why it seems to work so much better for me when chanted or sung; the line between speaking and chanting, and between chanting and singing. I'd quite like to do lots of research into chanted/sung psalmody in the Jewish tradition and how that relates to the worship patterns of the early Church. And I'd like to get to know it all so much better, and find or help create an authentic, aesthetic and accessible sung/chanted Psalmody for English translations. Yes, lots of work is being done on this already; I'm essentially playing catch-up, in an academic sense. Meanwhile I keep singing them in Morning Prayer, and one day indeed pours out its song to another as in Psalm 19 this morning.
-Material poverty (of others) and asceticism (the temptation to it in myself, and a certain pointlessness). I really haven't ironed out my thoughts on this.
-FaceBook, Twitter, blogging, other ways of keeping in touch and building communities online and how I see (and how I use) these various tools.
-Food and prayer and (especially shared) meals, and an assortment of thoughts I've been having on these recently; Eucharist and sacrament within and without standard liturgy; this also relates to creating a welcoming home, and to being spiritual/religious in a pluralist/secular society, creating rituals that can be shared and meaningful without excluding anyone or making them feel uncomfortable.

The assignment will have to come first, I'm afraid. And I've got a busy week in other terms as well, so need to be careful not to commit to too much yet. But I might be able to write about one of these by Saturday-ish. Which would you like to read?

Help? and Five Miscellaneous Items

Can you help me do my coursework?

I want to get my hands on as many different translations (into English) of the Psalms as I can. I'm setting one of them for some of my academic work, and I want to find just the right words. I don't know enough Hebrew to be able to work directly from the original text so I'm thinking if I look at lots of different translations I can either choose one if it speaks to me particularly strongly, or somehow blend them together. So please tell me your favourite Psalter, and for bonus points, where I can find the text online.

Miscellaneous Item the First:

The Archbishop of Canterbury says in his Easter Sermon:

When all's said and done, the call is to every one of us. We need to hear what is so often the question that's really being asked when people say, 'How do you know?' And perhaps the only response that is fully adequate, fully in tune with the biblical witness to the resurrection is to say simply, 'Are you hungry? Here is food.'

I think this is another way of saying that the way to communicate the existence and indeed love of God to the world is to act as if God exists and loves us, take responsibility for acting for God in the world, teach ourselves to act with lovingkindness. Maybe I am reading too much of my own bias into it. I don't know how I managed to miss this when I was growing up.

I do tend to get caught up in the small details at times. It feels like I need a certain amount of structure and ritual to stay focused on the bigger goal of acting with lovingkindness.

Earlier in the sermon the Archbishop discusses two common responses to the "How do you know God exists?" question. One is to make it so personal, so much a matter of opinion, as to be irrelevant. The other is to try to depersonalize it through a sort of real-world prooftexting. I have often said, when asked about my belief in God, that it is the surest thing I know and yet I will concede on an intellectual level that I could, theoretically, logically, be wrong.

I think I need to qualify that. I know, theoretically, logically, that it's entirely possible that the sun might not rise tomorrow (or that the Earth might stop spinning if you want to be accurate). I know, theoretically, logically, that I could wake up and find that all my life so far has been a dream. Both of those are so unlikely that we simply discount them in everyday life. And yet both of them to me are more likely than God not existing. I know that God lives! I know this through a lived experience, a perceived sense of God that is more reliable than any of my physical senses (after all, sometimes I don't hear things clearly the first time, my sense of smell is quite patchy, and my eyes aren't trustworthy at all until I put my spectacles on in the morning). I've tried to explain this before. But I can't really explain it to anyone who hasn't also experienced it, and everyone's experience may well be slightly different. All I can do is try to show it. I don't think I'll ever get that quite right but it's worth it to keep trying. And somehow I'm paraphrasing the sermon again. Repetitive blog is repetitive.

Hat tip to nearly everyone who linked to the Easter Sermon, but particularly to a certain restless bishop who pointed it out specifically in comments on one of his posts.

Miscellaneous Item the Second:

This is a very beautiful poem.

Miscellaneous Item the Third:

I was up too late last night but still got some academic work done today. Go me! Am determined that tomorrow will be still more productive. It's a little over two months until Big Final Exam. This gives me the Fear. I hope that by then I'll find the love, which is stronger. I almost don't care whether I pass or fail as long as I give an honest and loving performance. But passing would be good, too. Failure would be inconvenient and impractical on a number of levels.

Miscellaneous Item the Fourth:

I had a wonderful conversation with an online friend yesterday about trying to change the world from the current competitive system to a more cooperative one, trying to be an agent for good in the world, trying to show people that they can love and trust, while still acknowledging and mostly avoiding the dangers of the world as it currently exists. I wish now that I'd kept a log of it, because it was the sort of conversation where we were typing nearly on top of one another, nearly identical sentences. And I've had some good online exchanges here and there on other topics (not least in comments on some posts here), and some good, life-and-love-affirming conversations in person about teaching and living. Having friends who agree with me doesn't mean I'm right, of course, it's just the peer selection effect, but it does make me feel quite a bit more hopeful at times. Given how contagious grace can be, it seems to me that maybe together we can make a difference, each in our own little way.

Miscellaneous Item the Fifth:

If I don't go to bed now I'm going to have another painful and unproductive day tomorrow. Can't be having with that.

Goodnight, friends.

A lovely day

Oh, internets, I had such a good day today.

The weather was beautiful for cycling. I woke up in plenty of time and with more energy than I've any right to given my recent schedule; the normally-takes-thirty-minutes-mostly-uphill initial part of my commute was only twenty or twenty-five today. The glorious sunshine continued all day. The plums are in full flower now and the magnolias are not far behind. What a blessing.

Teaching was challenging and tiring, as always. Nothing about teaching today was spectacularly dismal, and nothing about it was spectacularly wonderful, except that teaching is always miraculous somehow. Some of my students are working toward exams, others have more personal goals; all are progressing, though not always in the directions they and I think we would like. Sometimes I have the joy of finding a student who responds well to my teaching and learns to love what is essentially a very difficult subject requiring much discipline and much courage. Sometimes, discovering with a student that actually, they don't want to learn this instrument or even this subject... sometimes that's still successful teaching. I am savoring the last few lessons with a student I've taught for several years now, she is at a point where it is time for her to move on, and though I'll miss her I know that this is right. I love every one of my students dearly and want to teach them as well as I can. I'm keenly aware that every challenge they bring me is an opportunity for me to improve as a teacher and grow as a person. And I get paid for this, enough to live on if I'm frugal. What a blessing.

After that I went down to Leafy Suburb Church for Evensong. The journey went well and I saw a rather beautiful sunset. I'm starting to be known at Leafy Suburb Church, everyone was very welcoming. Before the service I ended up discussing hymnody with... well, I'd have to call them friends by now really. There were some moments of perhaps not-entirely-Lenten levity. I feel welcome there. What a blessing.

The service itself was good. Hymns maybe a bit on the slow side--a Lent thing perhaps?--but two of them to tunes I know and love. Someone had printed out the pointed psalms and music for them and left them on the ledge and this meant I was able to join in with the choral psalmody in a way I haven't previously. I found myself whispering small bits of the Apostles' Creed, though I still find much of it I can't accept and so won't utter. And that, too, seems to be okay, seems to be accepted. There is a warmth of spirit, a goodwill and lovingkindness in the worship at Leafy Suburb Church which seems almost tangible at times. What a blessing.

Of course, I'm hopelessly biased about Leafy Suburb Church, because the main reason I make the journey all that way is to see Deacon Friend. I don't think she expected me to come to every choral Evensong. I didn't expect I would be able to but it has worked out that way so far. And so in a friendship that is mostly conducted on e-mail these days, today there were shared smiles, eye contact, commiserations over our respective deadline pileups, that near-instant visual appraisal of another's wellbeing that renders the small talk of "How are you?" moot except as a conversational placeholder, the polite and a bit tired (we'd both been working all day, after all) chitchat that in some relationships seems to bring people closer rather than hold them at arm's length. We're both very busy and Leafy Surburb is a good 90 minutes' commute from where I live, so we don't get to see each other much; every visit is a blessing. And every visit reminds me, in turn, what a blessing this woman is to the world and what a blessing this friendship is in my life, what a blessing so many other friendships are to me.

Even the journey home seemed charmed: I didn't have to wait long at either of the two changes, which always makes things a little easier. That's a small thing, but still very much a blessing. All of the little joys I've mentioned can be seen as small or insignificant in face of the trials and evils in this world, but not to acknowledge them and partake of them would just be to add to the trials.

What blessings did you notice today?

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?