maggi dawn

Training for Fresh expressions and pioneer ministry

It's an amazing thing to me, and really exciting, to look back 18 years, and see how far pioneer and emerging groups have come in that time.  In early 1990 I was one of half a dozen people who started a group in South London - not knowing really what we were doing except that there were Christians we knew who didn't want to abandon their faith, but really didn't connect any more with traditional church activities or language. We tried to reinvent the form while staying true to the theological and liturgical threads of the tradition. As far as we knew, we were - with an appropriate mix of courage and caution - just making it up as we went along. We stayed connected in various ways to the traditional church (some of us never left the trad. Church as such, in fact) but also gave ourselves plenty of freedom to try new things. Some of them worked so well the trad. Church eventually wanted us to teach them how to do it. Some of them were not so good and we quietly abandoned them.

Anyway, eighteen years later and the Anglican and Methodist Churches have taken more steps forward in their embracing of all this alternative/emerging stuff, and Fresh Expressions is now offering training courses for people involved at all levels. I'll be teaching on the Cambridgeshire course, and looking forward not only to the course, but to thinking about how new ways of Church demand new ways of approaching teaching and training (what a travesty it would be if we started giving lectures and assessments on this now...! ). I am dreaming about how to give away wisdom, knowledge and experience in a way that opens up the way for people, rather than boxing them into an "approved" way of doing it.

Dozens of others are involved, and the courses are springing up all over the country. Go here for more.

Tenebrae

A couple of years back we did a kind of "Alternative" Tenebrae service here at Robinson. Andy and Hannah Goodliff came over and joined us for that. This weekend they did a Tenebrae of their own, adapting our basic idea and adding some fresh ideas of their own. Looks great. Go here for their version

Candlemas

One of the most-read features of this blog is the summaries I write on the liturgical year - why are the feasts there, what do they mean, and how can we engage with them in a way that brings our own individual and community devotion to life?  Today is Candlemas, blog-readers, so Christmas is finally over for real (eat up the remains of your Christmas cake this weekend!) and many Churches up and down the land will celebrate it either today or defer it till tomorrow (it's a common practice in the Anglican Church to defer a major feast to the nearest Sunday). I was planning to write about Candlemas this morning, but Good In Parts has written such a neat summary I'm going to let her tell it to you:

Candlemas (aka The Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple) is the final element of Christmas. Our crib has stayed up in church til this weekend, and we have one at home too but on Sunday they will be put away as we look away from Christmas and towards Lent and Passiontide....As we hear the story of Christ's Presentation, and his recognition by Simeon and Anna, we remember not just the joy with which Simeon greeted the "light to lighten the Gentiles" but also the foreboding of his words to Mary - "And a sword shall pierce your own soul also". It's one of those hinge points in the liturgical year.

In the medieval church, this was the festival when all the candles to be used for the rest of the year would be blessed. Today, the Church of England “Common Worship – Times and Seasons” has a lovely provision for marking this transition time. At the end of the Eucharist, during the final hymn each member of the congregation will be given a lighted candle - then the clergy will make our way to the font while the choir sings Simeon’s song, the Nunc Dimittis…Once there we are all brought to focus on our baptism, and recommissioned to bear the light of Christ into the world.

Pentecost Worship: don't despise your body

Come and join us for worship. I'm presenting the Daily Service tomorrow (Tuesday 29th May).  9.45 a.m. on Radio 4 LW.

We're in the week of Pentecost, and our theme is on the experience of life with the Holy Spirit. Tomorrow's service is about flesh and spirit. The reading (which I didn't choose!) comes from Romans. I never preach/speak on Romans unless the lectionary dictates. It's complicated and not something I naturally gravitate to. But it's one of the things I like about the discipline of lectionaries and thematic plans that you are forced to engage with parts of the Bible, and the Faith, that you might otherwise leave on the back burner...

To "listen again" on the website go here after the service is over and scroll through the page to find the link to Tuesday's service:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/dailyservice/index.shtml

Daily Service

I'm presenting the Daily Service n Thursday. 9.45 a.m. on Radio 4 LW. To "listen again" on the website go here after the service is over and click the link on the page to my programme:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/dailyservice/index.shtml

Poems for Christmas: BC:AD

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

U.A. Fanthorpe (born 1929)

more reflections on Advent and Christmas here

blessings and dismissals

Tom writes some nice stuff about blessings, and a long but intriguing Blessing to use. One of his comments is that a Blessing is often a formal ending, but ought to imply something ongoing rather than closing down. That reminded me of one of the people who taught me the shape of the liturgy. Five sections, he said, and the final one is the sending-out (the blessing and dismissal). The liturgy is not complete, he said, until the people of God are out of the building and back into the world, disseminating the blessing to the world. The liturgy is not just for the Church, but for the world. We shouldn't keep it to ourselves. I loved his idea. But I have to admit that I've never felt quite the same since about the trend for staying for coffee after church. This nagging voice in my head says - "don't hang about here, get out there and get on with it..." 

poems for Christmas: mary's song

My book on Advent and Christmas (Order from Amazon, or from the publisher) includes a good bit of poetry; one of the poems that inspired me concerning Mary's story is this lovely poem by Luci Shaw:

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest …
you who have had so far to come.)
Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world. Charmed by doves' voices,
the whisper of straw, he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed who overflowed all skies,
all years. Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught
that I might be free, blind in my womb
to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.

Luci Shaw

more reflections on Advent and Christmas here

when does Advent begin?

(Edit, November 2007: My recently published Advent book contains lots more material on Advent - Order from Amazon, or from the publisher

I read somewhere in the press this weekend (forget where) that Advent is "24 days" long...

Contemporary "Advent" does seem to be 24 days - Advent candles and calendars always begin on the 1st December. But that's not how it works in Church tradition. Way back when (like around the 6th century) Advent was about 6 weeks long, but in recent memory Advent has always begun on the eve of Advent Sunday. Advent Sunday is the first of the four sundays before the 25th December. It's easy enough to find - go to the calendar, find the 25th December, and then count back 4 Sundays before that.  Therefore, if the 25th December falls on a Saturday, Advent will therefore be almost the full 4 weeks, but if Christmas Day is a Monday, it's only just over three.

Liturgically speaking, Advent begins the evening before Advent Sunday. Last night my son and I lit the Advent candle that he had made (marking all the way down a tall white candle with the numbers 1-24) and as the eve of Advent was the 2nd Dec we had about half an hour of candle burning before "2" had burnt down and it was time to blow it out. We also lit the first of the advent wreath candles, which represents the Patriarchs (the other three represent the Prophets, John the Baptist and Mary. 5-candle wreaths also have a white candle representing Christ, which is lit late on Christmas Eve.)

for more on Advent and Christmas, see my book Beginnings and Endings

Fauré Requiem

One of the things we do at Robinson, regularly but not often, is to take a classic piece of choral music that's usually heard as a concert piece, and "perform" it as a liturgy. I think we may have been unique in constructing a liturgy around the wonderful Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms. We did Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man about 3 years ago as a Eucharist for Remembrance. Not so unusual, but still a different experience from a concert, was to do Mozart's Requiem last year as a liturgy. This weekend, for Remembrance Day, we are doing the same with Fauré's Requiem. We aren't a professional choir - it's a choir of volunteers, run by two of our students. And 68% of our Choir is new this term, so they've only been singing together for 5 weeks. It's a brave move, but it was sounding nice in rehearsal, and we are looking forward to it.

Fauré said some stuff about his Requiem that may well chime with Emerging Church afficionados - he wanted to do something that was a funeral but not as we know it, church but not as we know it. His own faith and belief were an interesting mix of orthodoxy and complete maverick individualism. But then he was an artist, so that's pretty unsurprising. Creatives are often feared in the Church because they want to reshape things. Odd, perhaps, that displaying creativity - that most God-like of qualities - often sidelines artists within Church circles.  Anyway, here's what Fauré said about his Requiem:

"It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience. The music of Gounod has been criticized for its overinclination towards human tenderness. But his nature predisposed him to feel this way: religious emotion took this form inside him. Is it not necessary to accept the artist's nature? As to my Requiem, perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different."

If you want to join us for our Choral Requiem for Remembrance, it's at Robinson College Chapel, Grange Road, Sunday 12th November. 6pm.

in the church but not of it...

For those who were at "Toolkit" this weekend, here are the links and themes that we discussed in the workshop "Doing the Rite thing..."  Most of the themes from the session are referred to in my chapter in The Rite Stuff.

The first theme was "in the Church but not of it" - which you can find more on in  this piece: emergingchurch.info > reflection > maggi dawn.

We went on to talk about change. There are two major mistakes the church seems to make concerning change - one is to adhere to the idea that nothing must change, if we are to remain faithful to tradition. The other mistake is to buy into the belief that tradition is out of date and everything needs to change. Neither of these are true. If you try not to change, then the world, which changes around you, will change the meaning of the thing that you try to preserve, so you and your tradition will change anyway. If you try to change everything, you will deny your history, lose your connection with your inspiration, and end up with a pale imitation of what went before. (Just look at the 70's housechurch movement - how it tried to change everything and so rapidly became just as "brethren" as its roots.) The kind of change we want to embrace has to do with understanding and appreciating our own history, without feeling bound to preserve it with museum-style awe. It's a living tradition. Igor Stravinsky, the composer, once said "Real tradition is not the relic of a past that is irretrievably gone. It is a living force that anticipates and informs the present." I wrote more about this theme in my chapter "You have to change to stay the same" in The Postevangelical debate. If you find it hard to get hold of a copy let me know.

Our next theme was how to understand the traditions of worship that we already have. I gave a big-brush-strokes description of the two main types of Rite that almost all Christian worship fall into - the rite of the sacrament, and the rite of the word. For more on this theme, see my chapter in The Rite Stuff.

We talked then about sacrament, and how one of the problems with young people and the Eucharist is either that they do not participate in it at all, and therefore need some other means of entering into an understanding of sacrament, or that if they are allowed to contribute to a service, there is often a sense that the "young people's contribtuion" is something different from "what we usually do", rather than part of what we are doing now. We talked about how all the artefacts and elements involved in a communion service can be handmade - from bread and wine to corporals, candles and chalices - and that a group hand-making all the items and learning, as they go along, about what these thingsa re for, and the meaning they are invested with, is one way of giving ownership of the worship to a group.

I drove home wondering why, in a church that has approved children receiving communion, teenagers are still holding back from it. There is a theological fault line there, I think. See here and here for more thoughts on that.

Thanks to all at Toolkit for your company earlier this weekend. I hope you enjoyed it!

liturgy and language ii

Mark raises some good points in his comment on the post below:

...parts of the Eucharistic Prayer were extemporised in the early church. So this is part of our tradition, and we might be wise to think about how we appropriate it for present times...   There is also a great difference between top down liturgy where the words are handed down by elite committees, and bottom up - where in an organic community new and vibrant liturgical voices are heard in the places where liturgies are authorised... in the words of the 1989 New Zealand Prayer Book liturgy might be a deliberate attempt 'to allow a multitude of voices to speak'.

I agree that we should hold planned and authorised liturgies in tension with local colour and some degree of spontaneity (see my post Planning v. Spontaneity for more on this). But I suppose another element in this is that we need a corporate voice. It's very difficult, in a society that recognises the importance of individual voices, within a world that is culturally varied yet closely in touch across cultural divides, to find a way to speak as one body. That is precisely the current dilemma for the Anglican communion. It seems that many CHristian communities take it as unquestionable that we should adopt a policy of freedom of expression in liturgical settings. But going back to what AKMA said in his post, we shouldn't underestimate the value of having some core at the centre that we can all "say" - that we can speak as one body, not as a collection of individuals all of whom want to define the terms. In addition, there are issues of beauty-as-truth involved here - liturgy that emerges from multitudes of voices can be beautiful, but all too often it turns into a homogeneous mush. That's a strong reason for placing a high value on our artists, our poets, our theologians and our liturgists. There are weaknesses as well as strengths in a democracy of expression.

"spirit-led worship"

"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
-- Mark Twain

Sermon-givers, worship leaders and spontaneous pray-ers, take note.

Update: Simon Marsh writes a good counter-balancing reply here

ASB

The A P Lunchington Memorial WibLog. - someone who, like me, liked the ASB better than Common Worship. And also finds the responsories deeply annoying. And doesn't like the typeface...

Update: Ash comments below that he's read more of Common Worship than ASB (Alternative Service Book) simply on account of the fact that CW came out around the time when he started reading it regularly. The same goes for me and the ASB - I suppose I must be about 20 years older than Ash, in that case! When I started on all things Anglican the ASB was brand new, and therefore a misture of ASB and BCP were the "formative" liturgical texts for me. One of the things that is hard to unravel is whether I like the text because it's what I grew up with, or because it really is a better text.

I had no choice about adopting CW - it came out a couple of years after I was ordained, just after I had learned my way round the ASB from the priest's point of view. But I have worked really hard at inhabiting the Common Worship texts, because I don't want to turn into one of those crusty old people who dismisses anything less than 35 years old just because they can't be bothered to make the effort to feel their way into something new. But after 6 years of Common Worship, I still find that the bits that seem to work the best are the bits that were kept from the ASB. There are, of course, a few good things in it. But its layout is a bit website-in-a-book (not a good thing, in my view).

What I do like - a lot - about Common Worship is the web facilities. You can download, cut and paste very easily. The accompanying Visual Liturgy was a good investment. All the same, I find that a basic, daily liturgy is much harder work to produce than it was from the ASB - hence I have gone back to the old photocopied service sheets thing. We have made a series of photocopied service sheets made up of the bits we have chosen, and never read straight from the book. I think daily liturgy should be easy as clockwork. If you are going to spend a great deal of time and effort simply producing the liturgy, it should be for a special event - whether trad or alternative. You simply can't put that number of hours into twice-a-day liturgies. 

What I would like to know, is whether there are any readers that like Common Worship better than BCP or ASB?

Update: I wrote some time ago about my beef on the positioning of the prayer of Humble Access.

we haven't only left Kansas, we've left the planet

some nicely worded thoughts from my friend Chuck Fromm here

worship posts

I keep getting requests for several of my most popular posts on worship and liturgy. I've re-published a couple from the old blog, and put up a new typelist (on the left sidebar there) - hope that helps! 

my heart is not raised up too high...

My heart is not raised up too high,
my eyes don't search beyond the sky,
I do not seek what can't be known,
nor fret myself over mysteries.

But I have calmed and soothed my soul
like a child at rest in its mother's arms;
like this child sleeping by my side,
my soul in God knows peace and calm.

All you who love and trust your God,
in this God shall you put your hope;
for there you will find unfailing love
from this time forth and forevermore.

Words and music by Maggi Dawn (c) 2006 Kingsway's Thankyou Music 

WILDERNESS

We are in the midst of planning a week of "Alternative" chapel -
spirituality for the non-religious as well as the faith community, Chapel for those who don't usually attend. We're going to turn various corners of the Chapel into forest, desert, theatre, hillside...  Watch this space, and put 10-17 March in your diary if you are Cambridge based!

Magnificat

The angel did not draw attention to himself.
He came in. So quietly I could hear

my blood beating on the shore of absolute
beauty. There was fear, yes, but also

faith among familiar things:
light, just letting go the wooden chair,

my knife cutting through the hard skin
of vegetable, hitting wood, and the noise

outside of children playing with their dog,
throwing him a bone. THen all these sounds

dropped out of hearing. The breeze
drew back, let silence come in first,

and my heart, my heart, was wanting him,
reaching out, and taking hold of smooth-muscled fire.

And it was done. I heard the children laugh
and saw the dog catch the scarred bone.

from Magnificat, by Noel Rowe (Australian poet born in 1951)

find more material for Advent and Christmas in Beginnings and Endings

end of year reflections...

Our final evensong of the academic year was on Sunday. Next weekend I take the Choir on tour to Slovakia and Moravia, and on our return we have a service for Graduation, which - if last year was anything to go by - will be the largest attendance of the year.  Then Summer Vacation - which for me includes working hard to complete a manuscript for pbn, helping out on Sundays at a couple of Churches without a Vicar, a trip to Greenbelt, a retreat and a couple of weeks of holiday with my son.

Things that have inspired me this year:
a couple of really adventurous services, like the Choir's rendition of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, and the combination of Craig Armstrong and Gesualdo at the Tenebrae service.

readers who read the Bible as if it's a real book, not a holy text that needs a special voice (We have quite a few readers who are really good at this).

Various members of Chapel community who have seriously pitched in with creative ideas and effort to get things off the ground.

this prayer:

Disturb us, Lord,
when we are too well pleased with ourselves;
when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little;
when we arrive safely because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess
we have lost our thirst for the Waters of Life;
having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity;
and in our efforts to build a new earth,
we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly -
to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery;
where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.
We ask you push back the horizons of our hopes,
and to push us in the future with strength, courage, hope and love.

Faith and Desire

come to Robinson Chapel tonight to hear the Rev'd Duncan Dormor, author of Just Cohabiting?,  speaking on FAITH AND DESIRE

6 pm in the Chapel at Robinson College, Grange Road, Cambridge

Planning v. spontaneity

Spontaneity can be overrated. Worship is sometimes diminished by the erroneous belief that to be led by the Spirit is to be entirely spontaneous. This often leads to rambling, unimaginative, over-long services, lacking in content and true beauty. I would no more lead unplanned worship than I would go to church in my Pyjamas - a little preparation of the self is required both of body and soul.

But too much preparation can also be a bad thing (just as too much blow-drying and make-up can). I read somewhere that early liturgies were never recited word-for-word, but were agreed formularies that were recited more-or-less the same. Not read off the sheet, but said with a mix of pre-planning and learning, and of-the-moment personal interpretation. I recite the Eucharistic prayer in just this way - it's almost word-for-word (because I've said it so many times I can remember it near enough, apart from the seasonal add-ons) but if ever I lose a word or two I just say something that means the same thing - because I also know what's meant to come next  in terms of the SENSE of the thing.  (Of course, very occasionally this leads to a comedy moment, but neither I nor my congregation seem to mind this particularly.)

Plans for worship, including liturgies, shouldn't be tight boundaries within which things must happen, they should be a skeleton into which life can be breathed. Enough planning and preparation for true beauty to emerge. Enough freedom to make it fit the moment, stretch to the local setting. Filling souls, not ticking boxes.

Pentecost aftermath: the further adventures of a pyromaniac...

We resorted to dozens of candles in the end: Big and small candles all over an altar draped in various lengths of red, orange and pinky-red cloth; candles in flame-retardant paper bags creating a lovely glow from the balcony ledges; six monster candles in what purports to be a flower stand right in the middle of the room; candles in little paper collars for everyone to hold and "pass the flame" during the last hymn.

But despite my disappointing efforts with meths earlier in the week, further experiments demonstrate that:

small chunks of pumice soaked in meths do indeed produce a lovely flame, but being small it doesn't last very long (About 5 mins). It proved impossible to find big lumps of pumice stone in this corner of the UK.   

a large size firelighter set in a flower-pot-saucer of sand, and surrounded by flat stones, will burn with a lovely, safe flame for about 15 minutes, but is a bit smelly and produces a fair bit of smoke (might stain the ceiling?) If you are out of doors or in a very large and not very precious building, this one might be a good option...

If you fill a pie tin with dry play sand and then soak it through with meths the flame lasts longer than with the small pumice stone.

Diluting the meths 10% with water makes the whole exercise last longer.

My previous disaster, it seems, was becuase some air got mixed in. It was the air that caused the pops and bangs (though nothing too dangerous really).

disclaimer - If you're going to try any of these for any reason at all, try them out of doors first, and make sure you have a responsible adult with you (etc etc a la blue peter, captain sensible, primary school teacher)

pentecost grid blog:: (4) lectio divina

our pentecost service was an interesting mix in the end. I did a fairly minimal part of the planning really - just the executive holding of the reins - all the interesting stuff came from the wonderful  SerenaSnape and Rox, our Ordinand in training.  Serena is our Christian Aid rep. And we decided we should combine the themes of Pentecost with the part of the gospel that calls us to "feed the hungry; care for one of these little ones..."

In the event all the component parts of the service were good and interesting, but a few technological hitches here and there made its execution a bit less than sparkly. But never mind. Nothing ventured...

One of my favourite bits - the brainchild of our Ordinand, Rox - was to replace the sermon with a variation on Lecto Divina. I explained briefly what Lecto Divina is all about, and then we read Acts 2:1-4 - the passage about the coming of the Holy Spirit "like wildfire" as The Message puts it, and the disciples speaking in many different languages. Instead of reading smaller and smaller sections between the pauses, however, we read the whole thing in seven different languages - New Testament Greek, Afrikaans, German, Swahili, Norwegian and English. If I'd thought even harder (I realised this as the congregation flowed in) we could have had more - there were French, Spanish, and Latin speakers in the congregation, and probably a few more languages represented that I don't know about.

The effect was something like poetry. The idea of the passage came to life through hearing many languages, and in addition that feature of poetry - that the sound of the words is as important as their etymological understanding in grasping what they mean - came into play with various words for "pentecost", "rushing wind", "flames of fire". 

EDIT: Lectio Divina, which might be translated "prayerful reading", is one of the treasures of the Benedictine rule. In one form it applies to the slow, contemplative reading of scripture, allowing the words to penetrate one's soul in a devotional way, rather than focussing on the analytical, intellectual approach. (Although it must be said that the two are not mutually exclusive.)  Benedictines also apply Lectio Divina to any kind of sacred, spiritual, prayerful reading - for instance it is a common practice to eat meals together but without any chatter at all, listening carefully while one Brother or Sister reads from a spiritually enlightening text (not necessarily the Bible). One of Benedict's own sayings in the Rule was that at times (Lent, I think, from memory) books should be read straight through. It's worth thinking about the fact that the practice of Lectio Divina pre-dates the printing press, when the practice of reading would predominantly have been listening to someone reading out loud, rather than silent reading, which as an everyday practice only dates from early Modernism.

For some introductory notes to Lectio Divina, try here.

another planet

I keep meaning to post about this day event that I contributed a small thing to on Tuesday. No time, no time... but Kathryn has logged it here,  along with a nice comment about my chocolate-and-chillies. (For "wonderful hostess"  read "stressed-out, too tired to function..." But never mind. It was great to have Kathryn's forgiving presence in my mad house for a night!)

<>

here's a picture of the "splendid wineglasses", which I bought from one of those amazingly tacky stores where they sell mugs the size of teapots and yard-of-ale glass horns, and -as luck would have it - glasses that hold a full 75cl bottle of wine. I bought a few, and a tube of glass paint, and wrote the words of institution all the way round the glass. ( I'm now constantly amused by the fact that my beautiful gold-inscribed chalices, when they are off-duty, live in boxes with pictures of bizarre little figures swimming in a lake of wine and saying rude things to each other. If I was a real artist I would cover the boxes with something more suitable. But as I said earlier, no time, no time...)

spirit and fire

Ever since I read about e~mergent kiwi's meths-burning exercise last year I have been musing on whether I could get away with doing something similar here. I think we can. I have consulted with a couple of highly intelligent undergrad scinetists, who have explained to me volatility and various other odds and ends about smokeless fuels and safe flames. Experiments are about to proceed. If the blog, and the College, goes up in smoke in the next 24 hours, you'll know the reason why...

Mexican sunrise

I would really like to be here today:

but thanks at any rate to Visual Voice for five minutes of (virtual) space and restoration by the sea shore

when is a sermon not a sermon?

Si Smith asked in the comments last week:
i'm wondering whether there's a difference between a sermon and a lecture? and if so, what is it? what do you reckon?

That's a question I've turned over in my mind a number of times. Of course it's easy to give the classic answer (which I'm sure Si already knows) that a lecture is to impart information and a point of view, whereas a sermon should have Unction - usually translated as "anointing" or Divine Grace, it's that mysterious, intangible quality of engaging the listener not so much with information ABOUT God, but with God himself. In other words, a sermon shouldn't just teach you at an intellectual level, it should be a place where you get beyond the words of scripture to meet with the Word of God himself.

The distinction is liable to be very blurred, though. I have heard many sermons that would have been better if they'd never been preached at all, and which seemed to convey neither good information nor Divine Grace. And I've also been fortunate enough to hear lectures - many of them in my Faculty - in which, despite the lack of the visible "sign" of sacrament, seemed to convey both unction and first class intellectual content. I remember once as an Undergraduate leaving a New Testament lecture and going for coffee with another undergrad. She began to explain that she came to read Theology as a non-believer only interested in the sociological aspects of religion, and had gradually begun to waver over her faith in her unbelief. She had decided to sit in on the New Testament lectures to get a bit more gen about what Christians believe.  And there in the lectures, she found the presence of God. "What do you do with that?", she asked. And so another journey into faith was observed.

So - was it a lecture? - Yes; it was packed with well researched information and delivered in the context of a University for the purposes of delivering both information and a point of view. Was it a sermon? - No; it was not in a liturgical setting and laid no claim to any sacramental function either in form or content. But did it convey something of the presence of God? - YES! Absolutely.

Now of course the fact that it's subject was specifically Christian theology may make it unsurprising - maybe the boundaries are inevitably blurred in that instance?  But something strikingly similar has happened to me listening to lectures on Musicology, History of Art, History and Literary theory. It may well be that for - say - an Engineer, something about the beauty of a well designed structure might have a similar effect. (Anyone? Dave Airplane Paisley?)

Maybe the crossover is inevitable, given that (as a Christian sees it, at any rate) the mind, the soul, the heart and the body are not separable. If our intellect is completely engaged, and we begin to get some sense that this is "what we were born for" - isn't it quite likely that we feel the presence of God there? 

I end up thinking that there's a lot of crossover between sermons and lectures.

pat on the back

thanks Andy and Hannah for some much-needed encouragement! Maybe we are getting something right after all...

yes, I know I'm a pedant, but...

... next week is not Easter Week, but Holy Week. And the day after Good Friday is not Easter Saturday, it's Holy Saturday. Easter Saturday is the saturday AFTER easter.

Thanks. I feel much better now. 

tenebrae

this sunday 6pm. Come and join us

tenebrae

The office of Tenebrae is an adaptation of a service that was used in the early church. It is a meditation on the shadows that gradually grew darker and finally enveloped Christ in darkness as he journeyed towards the Cross. The service is therefore in a restrained and solemn mood. Readings from scripture are interspersed with music and periods of silence. Next Sunday is the last Sunday of our university Term, so, a week and a half early we will celebrate the Tenebrae office. Each of the eight movements through the shadows of anguish, humiliation, separation and death will be played out through scripture readings, music, dramatic action and silence. We are marrying together the richness of our choral music with the alt*worship tradition - taking ancient ideas and re-engaging with them by putting them into contemporary clothes.  New Testament readings, Isaac Newton and Gesualdo will sit side by side with Taize, Brian Eno, barbed wire and candles, fairy lights and red paint ...

One candle after another will be put out as the sight of the darkness closing in on Jesus. The last candles remain burning until Good Friday as a sign of Jesus’ death In retracing the steps of Jesus towards the Cross we will meditate on his obedience to God. We also think of our own life of sacrifice for Christ and those for whom he died. “If any person will come after me, let him deny himself and take up the cross and follow me. Whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospel’s will save it.” Tenebrae - A Service of Shadows
Sunday 13th March, 6.00 pm 
Robinson College Chapel, Cambridge

symphony of Psalms (ii)

that was really interesting.
Great music. The liturgy worked, mostly, I think. The sequence from despair through the up-and-down hope and despair of Psalm 42, to hope, to more hope in Psalm 16, to sheer unadulterated joy in Psalm 150 was good. Musically breaking between part 2 and part 3 was a bit of a hiatus. But to pray at all we had to find a break in the music somewhere, and to pray AFTER part three would have been hopelessly anti-climactic. Hmmm.
I was very happy with my choice of readings (42 and 16), and fairly happy with the prayers I wrote based on the themes of the Psalms.  Lots of blog-readers and bloggers there - any thoughts?  I ask because I'm thinking we should do more of this music set liturgically.

We are so lucky to be dripping with so much talent and enthusiasm from so many young musicians. It's quite wonderful.

Symphony of Psalms

Symphony of Psalms with liturgy for Evening prayer

Robinson College Chapel, Tuesday 8 March, 6.30 pm

`It is not a symphony in which I have included Psalms to be sung. On the contrary, it is the singing of the Psalms that I am symphonizing.' --- Igor Stravinsky

Tomorrow instead of our usual Choral Evensong we are doing a liturgical performance of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms in Robinson College Chapel.  The college musicians contribute a great deal to the life of the Chapel, and in planning their forthcoming repertoire we talked over some of their planned music, and I noticed that the Symphony of Psalms was thought of as a concert piece, rather than as music for worship. We then put our heads together and came up with the idea of a liturgical performance.

In our post-Christian age it is easy to overlook the spiritual significance that sacred works held for their composers. Like many composers before him Stravinsky chose sacred texts not because of the obligations of patronage or the conventions of the time, but following a profound personal engagement with the text. He wished to express something of that spiritual engagement through music, and in doing so to place their spiritual vitality in a contemporary cultural expression. ‘Real tradition is not the relic of a past that is irretrievably gone,’ he said, ‘It is a living force that anticipates and informs the present.’

The raw honesty of the Psalms has inspired their readers for thousands of years. The Psalmists expressed the range of human emotion from delirious joy to utter despair, often giving words to things that seem at first sight to be unmentionable in a religious context – emotions that defy expression, questions it seems impertinent to ask, questions that defy a rational answer. Both in unimaginably tough circumstances, and on the receiving end of undeserved blessing, the Psalmists demand “why?” of God. And even though answers sometimes remain elusive, the Psalms resolve into peaceful or determined acceptance.

Stravinsky begins with a Psalm of lament which reflects the fragility and temporality of human life, and walks close to the edge of despair. The second movement is a Psalm of hope, looking with faith towards the possibility of redemption. And the third movement is unreserved joy, calling people to celebrate God from the heart, with every kind of musical noise.

This liturgy uses readings and prayers drawn from the Book of Psalms to further draw out this movement from despair, through hope, to joy.

We will be joined by members of the choir of Girton College, and their Chaplain, Rev'd Dr Malcolm Guite.  The Stravinsky will be conducted by Alec Frank-Gemmill.

We do not presume... (or do we?)

Kathryn has pointed out on her blog what many of us have been thinking for the last few years... that the respositioning of the Prayer of Humble Access AFTER the invitation to communion destroys its sense.

I suppose it wouldn't matter so much if it weren't sucha  stunningly beautiful prayer. In the BCP it comes after the Eucharistic Prayer but before the Words of consecration. In the ASB it was positioned even better-  before the Peace, the Offertory and the Eucharistic Prayer, as the congregation began to contemplate the shift in liturgical focus from the Word to the Sacrament - it succinctly and elegantly expressed the extraordinary grace of God, without wallowing in overdone humility.

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness, 
but in thy manifold and great mercies. 
We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table. 
But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy; 
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, 
so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, 
(that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, 
and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and)
that we may evermore ever dwell in him, and he in us.      Amen 

The prayer of humble access was repositioned in Common Worship. I don't have the full gen on this, but I was told by someone on the liturgical commission that basically they couldn't figure out where to put it, but knowing that the English at prayer would be more appalled to lose this than any other prayer, felt it couldn't be ditched. So they bolted it in, not entirely in agreement as to whether the positioning was good. It is now placed at the end of the Eucharistic prayer, after the invitation has been made - "Draw near with faith... remember that he died for you, and feed on him in your hearts, by faith, with thanksgiving."

By that point in the liturgy, it has been well established that we stand at God's table through the grace and love of God. This is the moment of consummation, not the moment to step back and protest one's humility. Said at this moment, "we do not presume..." is in danger of taking on the oiliness of an Obadiah Slope, over-anxious to demonstrate his own righteousness, and doing so by protesting his own humility.  It feels like answering back to God - "oh, you may think you're very merciful, Lord, but you clearly don't understand how seriously humble I am...". It's not a competition with God to prove that we're at least as humble as he is merciful. There comes a point in a relationship when you either say "yes" or say nothing at all. And liturgically speaking, the invitation to communion is that moment.

I may be flouting Canon Law, but I know I'm not the only priest who has either reinserted the Prayer of Humble access back where it belongs, or left it out altogether.

Kathryn also has nice things to say about George Herbert - link here

An Invitation from Brian McLaren

Worship, Art, Liturgy, and Preaching in the Emerging Culture
An invitation from Brian McLaren and Emergent:

You are invited to join the conversation...

Christian leaders around the world are talking about ministry in the emerging culture – the culture currently characterized by a long list of posts: post-modern, -industrial, -Enlightenment, -colonial, -critical, -analytical, -denominational, -secular, and even post-Christian. There are many important conversations taking place about new territory in theology, evangelism, spiritual formation, and mission. But none of these conversations can be complete without exploring how public worship expresses and facilitates these developments.

It is in public worship that millions of Christians every week are either formed, reformed, and transformed for mission – or bored, pacified, and entertained as passive spectators. How can liturgists, worship leaders, musicians, artists, and pastors put the sixty or seventy-five minutes of public worship to best use fifty-two times a year?

This three-and-a-half day event will bring together Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Mainline Protestant, Anabaptist, and Evangelical/Charismatic leaders, thinkers, and resourcers to begin what we trust will become an ongoing generative conversation for all participants. Each of our heritages has treasures to share, and each has needs and questions to which others can speak.

We hope you will register now and reserve your place at this important event. Monday evening, April 18, and ending Thursday noon, April 21. Our host – Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, is easily accessible from three airports – Lexington (1/2 hour), Cincinnati (1.5 hours), and Louisville (1.5 hours). Please register now with other staff and laypeople involved in public worship – and even better, invite some friends from various Christian traditions to come along.

jolly jaunt

I am off to Kentucky in a few weeks time, to speak at this conference on liturgy, worship etc in the contemporary/emerging world. My talk is half-written, needs editing, polishing up and then the kind of "learning" that I always do for this kind of thing - I read from my script, but aim to make it sound as near as I can to speech. I hear too many speeches where you really can't believe the person reading it has even seen it before, let alone wrote it themself.

Things I'm looking forward to: that great feeling of freedom and perspective you get when you get airborne and suddenly remmeber the world is so much bigger than your little world.
I shall re-connect with Lilly Lewin. Hooray. And Jim Friedrich. Hooray again. And, assuming schedules coincide, I shall also get to meet Brian McLaren and Sally Morgenthaler IRL. Looking forward to that. 

This will only be my fourth trip to the US of A - having previously checked out Texas fairly thoroughly, and California (twice). It's a big place to get to know.

sounding the divine

A couple of years ago I was interviewed for a BBC series on hymns, and as is always the way with these talking-head things, I talked non stop for three hours (I know a lot about hymns) and they selected little bits here and there and inserted them in between lots of other stuff.

I wasn't aware that it was replaying until I turned on my messages in the office this morning and heard a whole string of messages congratulating me on what I'd said on the radio. Paranoia instantly set in... what was I on? what did I say?  Trusted friend filled in the details. I remember now. I think it was rather a good series in the end. Despite the fact that the edit seemed to imply that I didn't know when Jerusalem was written (the music was written towards the end of the First World War but not published & popularised until 1926). You can listen again if you go here.