From darkness to light

For the past 6 weeks a group have been meeting as part of the Exploring our Faith course. This term the group were looking at the history of liturgy in the church and at the end of the term they had to design an act of worship. Being off work for 6 weeks has meant that I did the first session and then left poor +Alan to do all the rest but clearly he did an excellent job for last night the group offered a wonderful Advent service.

We started in darkness in the narthex and heard a voice in the distance (at the Advent wreath) bringing light into the darkness. The light was brought to us and we sang as we processed to the lectern for the first reading.  Then we moved to the 2nd lectern for more reading and another hymn. We listened to scripture and to why we need to reflect in these weeks before Christmass. Then we found a picture of jesus that spoke to us before moving to the star to reflect upon it. The seats were in a star shape around lots of candles which we all lit and gradually the light grew. it really was beautiful.

 

WE reflected on why we had picked ‘that’ Jesus and then sang a Taize chant for Advent.

The service continued with the right balance of quiet and words and music. (Love that Wachet Auf – and yes it does sound like a German curse!)

And mulled wine and cake after!

It really was a wonderful evening and such a joy for me to sit and ‘be’.  Loved the star seats, which we’ll keep for morning prayer this week, and the ever-increasing light.

So thank you little flock-group for offering yourselves and your worship to us.

PS. This is what I’ve been working on for the last week. In Hobbycraft you can buy cardboard letters which you can paint. Don’t they look good?

Blessing of the hand sanitiser

Thanks to MadPriest for this one. It fair brightened up my morning.

H1N1 Eucharistic Prayer

Worshipping in the round

Yesterday we tried something new chez St Mark’s. With a bit of furniture rearranging we worshipped around the altar. Courtesy of the old St Aidan’s church, whose altar we have in a side aisle, we moved said altar into the middle of the church and arranged the seats in two concentric rows around it. Of course the vast majority of people squeezed into the back row and some even found seats outwith the circles. But with a bit of coaxing we managed to be together.

Bishop Alan blessed the celtic stoles that we got on Iona. the choir sang some beautiful Scottish melodies, and we used prayers from the Gelasian Sacramentary and Carmina Gadelica (sshh, don’t tell the Liturgy Committee!) St Aidan’s Rest was well and truly celebrated. We passed communion to each other, including the children, and there were tears of joy at that. It was a beautiful thing.

The consensus was that we loved it and want to do it in the round for all our Family services. (Furniture movers, please note.) The singing was incredible and I confess to a shiver on more than one occasion.

It is good to change.

Festal Evensong rant

OK, so you’ve got a bunch of Anglican Bishops and spouses from the far corners of the earth to entertain for a weekend before they head off to Lambeth. What would you do with them? How would you welcome them?  Send them out to parishes seems like a good idea and I heartily agree. Let them get a taste of how we operate here in the Edinburgh Diocese, and give them a flavour of good Scottish hospitality and good Scottish liturgy. And I believe that they all preached in the places they were sent which is jolly nice too. No problems there then.

Then it seems like a good idea to have a Festal Evensong in the Mother Church of the Diocese to send them off filled with the best liturgy and music that Scotland can offer. Good idea, right?  Was that what happened tonight? Was it heck.

First there was the liturgy – that would be the 1929 Scottish Prayer Book evening prayer. (“But we always use that in the Cathedral”) Yes, that’ll show them Scottish Liturgy at its best. The setting of course was Dyson in D – that well known English composer of the early part of the 20th century. The Introit was Stanford’s ‘O for a closer walk’ – Stanford being Irish but brought up in England at the end of the 19th century. The Anthem was Ireland’s ‘Greater love hath no man [sic] than this’ – Ireland being English naturally, and again from the first half of the 20th century. The final hymn was one of my favourites, Thy hand, O God, has guided, but in the original version which mentions ‘fathers’, ‘men’ and ‘man’ several times. Well we must keep the women feeling included and welcome after all. And then, at last we have something modern – Rutter’s Irish Blessing to see them off which was beautiful but not exactly Scottish, followed by the Voluntary by Herbert Brewer and yes, you guessed it, he’s English and long since dead.

So, basically, they have seen the English Church at prayer. The Cantor was English, prayers were by the Provost, readings by the retired Bishop of Jarrow and an English woman. The choir were made up from ‘Choirs of the Diocese’ (ours wasn’t invited, btw!) and not robed, but they did sing well. In fact, it was all beautifully done but just not Scottish or very inclusive or particularly welcoming to the Bishops who only got mentioned in small print on the front of the pew booklet as ‘attended by Lambeth Delegates’.

Grr. Where’s a Suggestion Box when you need one?

Traditional or modern?

I only ask because I was visiting another church this morning and they used a combination of the two. It was rather weird and easy to get the responses mixed up. I suppose it is to please everyone. Hmm.

Beautiful censing of a nave altar in slow motion though. Clouds of incense building up in the gloom which was very atmospheric.

Long periods of silence too which I found rather unsettling. I am well aware of the fact that we don’t have enough silence in our liturgy but I do feel that the Eucharist is not the place for it. (Except after the sermon, during the intercessions and post communion.) No, this kind of silence left you wondering if someone had forgotten to get up to read or do something, and if the organist had lost his place (he was new). Silence should be led and given boundaries, I think.

However, it was nice to see so many clergy in the pews. Obviously this is the place where they all go when on holiday, along with an ex-Primus.

Off on retreat tomorrow so no more blogging for a while. Any comments posted after tomorrow morning may take a week to appear.

Holy Island beckons. Will I go tide crazy? How much fun can you have on a very small island with no TV (thus no Big Brother)? What am I thinking of? I’m not going for fun – I am going for R&R (Rest and Reading).

Burglars, take note. Son #2 is still in the house! So unless you feel like giving it a tidy before I come home, forget it.

Update on Daily Prayer

I had a lovely email from our delicious Communications Officer to tell me that Daily Prayer (the blue one) is being reprinted and revised. They are updating and adding further information eg further listings in “variable psalms”.

And apologies for castigating the I&C Board – I should have been having a go at the Liturgy Committee.

I can’t wait, can you?

Protest

In fact, now that I come to think of it – this is ridiculous. We had a group shouting about saving our 1929 Scottish Prayer Book and it has been reprinted. Plenty copies of that in the Cornerstone.

But did they have a copy of our current Daily Prayer book? No. Nada. Not one. And its been out of print for ages. How mad is this?

Come on SEC! Get a grip. Or I am going to form a protest group to save our current Prayer Book. Blimey, its not enough that we have to put up with a pathetic spiral bound temporary looking affair, unlike the 1929 afficienados who get a lovely bound book. But we can’t even get copies of the wee spiral thing either.

So let’s write to our Bishops and Information and Communication Board. SDP! Save Daily Prayer. Now!

Loose liturgy

I was chatting to the guys at Synod about Liturgy and how nice it would be to have our own Book (properly bound with gold ribbon markers etc) of Prayer with all the liturgies in it. The Church of Ireland has just published theirs. Instead we have a pathetic spiral bound book for Daily Prayer, and then wee bookies for the different liturgies. It all seems rather ‘done on the cheap’. I would go even further and say that I’d like a Daily Missal with the readings in it too, but I know we are talking big expense here. In the meantime I have to make do with the RC version and its strange syntax and not inclusive language.

However, it would appear that down south not all are happy with their new Common Worship. There may even be a movement to go back to the ASB if the news in Blogland is to be believed. One of the complaints is that there is just too much on offer in it, and that they harken back to simpler formats. (And the typeface gets a slagging too – and I know how important that is in design. Don’t start me on the subject of magazines and pewsheets wot I have seen!)

Up here there was a time when there were ringbinders abound into which liturgies could be put and then easily updated. But they never really took off. Probably because they were unwieldy and not particularly attractive. There is nothing like a leather bound book with gorgeous ribbon markers to make you want to delve in and pray.

However, the more I have thought about it, the more I have realised that I am wrong. A beautiful book is too limiting. We become tied to the book and lose our ability to be creative. The costs involved in publishing such books make it too easy to stick with the one we’ve got rather than update. You only have to listen to the ‘Keep the 1929 Scottish Prayer Book alive’ lot to see what I mean. (I got one of those at my Confirmation and read the promises a priest has to make at Ordination and it scared me so much I’ve hardly opened it since.)

So I think I’m glad we have our wee bookies. When they get tatty we can replace them at little cost. When we want a new liturgy we can do that – albeit slowly if this Synod was anything to go by. (Imagine how long it would take us to agree what would go in a whole book!) And in the meantime I shall keep coveting my New Zealand Prayer Book which is the best resource on my shelf.

We are a Church which will not be limited by books. That has to be good.

Synod news

Diocesan Synod today. It is good to meet in a place which allows you to see who is there. Most places you sit in rows and can only see the backs of peoples’ heads, but this place is sort of horseshoe shaped so you can see everyone’s face. Also interesting to see who shows up in the morning, signs in for attendance, and then slips out 15 minutes later, never to be seen again!

If you’re interested we discussed becoming a Fair Trade diocese; where our Quota goes and why we pay so much; the new baptismal rite (which could be revised a million more times by the sound of it so don’t print a lot of copies yet); stewardship and how to stop the Province taking it away from us in Quota; revision of a few Canons and an attempt at getting the 1929 Prayer Book back in vogue (the motion was defeated) and that was about it really.

The afternoon’s comments were more brief but that may have had something to do with the Rugby International.

Oh happy Lent

My second day on the job and so far I have presided at three masses – 2 for Ash Wednesday (not well attended) and one this morning which was very well attended. I am having to get used to using the Grey Book again (1970 Liturgy) and trying to remember the words when I turn from an eastward facing altar. I hope noboby spotted me birling in a complete circle at one point yesterday morning!

I am planning on re-ordering the church sanctuary after last night’s service. The sedilia was moved back into a corner which I discovered was too dark and miles away from the people for the Liturgy of the Word. Its all very well creating a sense of mystery but when you can’t see the people and they can’t see you then it’s not much good. I ended up wandering about in front of the altar and it really was quite messy.

Great crowd this morning though and we had a laugh over coffee after the service. Remembering names is my next task. Oh how I wish everyone wore name badges for the first six months!