Lent and a Trial Liturgy

I’m not doing much this Lent. My work schedule is so involved and I’m getting so little sleep that I think any sort of physical ascesis might lead to health problems. I’m abstaining from meat on Fridays but that’s about it in that department.



Instead, I’m recommitting to good habits–some that had fallen by the wayside.



First, I recommitted to doing the Office as much as possible including saying Compline with M when my work schedule allows (i.e., the nights when I *don’t* end my shift at midnight).



Second, I recommitted to memorizing and mulling over the weekly collects.

Third, I decided to memorize the seven penitential psalms, taking one a week or so.



Two and three are going well; one is difficult as a function of time with the Office Book. I do have time–it’s during my commute which is more by car these days than mass transit and I’m not going to try and read while I’m driving in this town! While the Brief Devotions in the BCP are ok for bedtime prayers with G and H, I can’t see the morning one as a substitute for MP. Thus, I’ve been trying to work up a fully memorizable Anglican Lauds for the mornings when I can’t get to the prayer book. Here’s the pattern as it currently stands:



Opening Versicles

Ps 51

Little Chapter [Seasonal]

Hymn [Seasonal]

Benedictus

Pater Noster

Collect of the Day

Closing Versicles



Those familiar with the Anglican Breviary will recognize the ordo as a stripped-down version of Lauds 2 straight from there. I invite any interested to give it a try and let me know how it goes. Note that it can be used as a supplement in addition to MP as well as a replacement for it. Let me know what you think…

Thoughts on the Thursday Question

Jim Naughton has been wondering out loud about something I’ve been pondering for a while. Since he brought it up, I’ll extend my thoughts on it a bit…



He suggests that one of the best reasons for TEC to turn down the Communique is the opportunity that such a move might make for evangelism. I don’t think he goes this far–but I will: perhaps turning down the Communique would give TEC an opportunity to evangelize the socially liberal/progressive for whom the “traditional”–read “socially conservative”–moral message with which the Gospel of Jesus is normally associated is a stumbling block. To put it another way, has the Good News of Jesus’ reconciling work through the cross and empty tomb been entrapped by a culturally binding morality which prevents it from being heard?



I don’t say this lightly. After all, I’m more on the socially conservative side myself. I’m not posing this as a rhetorical question that seeks to persuade but as an open question for discussion.



If–IF–this is the case, then perhaps TEC does have a calling separate from the Anglican Communion. As far as I’m concerned, we have a clear picture of what we don’t want–Europe. A continent where, according to all the reports I’ve seen, the Gospel is more often than not regarded as irrelevant for modern humanity. What is to say that will not characterize the US in fifty years?



One of the key issues that gives me pause, though, is this: I can’t think of a single denomination where the majority both embraces a liberal social vision and proclaims orthodox, Nicene, creedally grounded Christianity.



Is that because it hasn’t been done…or because it can’t?

Cool Tunes and Other News

On a more cherry note, I positively and whole-heartedly endorse a new (to me) recording: Thou art My Refuge: Songs of Salvation and Mercy by Gloriae Dei Cantores. (It’s on Amazon–can’t get the link to work.) It’s a collection of 21 psalms using the classical Coverdale Psalter sung with Anglican Chant. Great stuff…

In other news, Fr. Director has indicated that he believes there are three almost-done chapters in the big box o’ crap. In delineating these three he has restricted the scope of the project to something more manageable. This is very good news…

Tanzania Reflection

I had a comment on the whole
Tanzania thing but had pretty much
decided to pass it by… Then the ABC’s address to General Synod came yesterday. Included in it is this line in reference to the Communiqué and its
directions/instructions/commands to the Episcopal
Church:

“Much here depends upon goodwill and
patience.”

…and that’s precisely why it will
fail. There isn’t good will and there isn’t patience. That’s why, at the end of
the day, the Panel of Reference isn’t worth a hill of beans nor the Delegated
Episcopal Oversight process. They begin from the premise that both sides want
reconciliation and are willing to do the hard work required and that’s simply
not the case.

Pray for the
Church…

Cool Tunes

On a more cherry note, I positively and whole-heartedly endorse a new (to me) recording: Thou art My Refuge: Songs of Salvation and Mercy by Gloriae Dei Cantores. It’s a collection of 21 psalms using the classical Coverdale Psalter sung with Anglican Chant. Great stuff…

 

In other news, Fr. Director has indicated that he is ready to speak words of judgment on the “big box o’ crap” that I hope contains something like a dissertation.

 

 

Announcement for the Night

It’s late–I’m headed to bed after thinking about what I’m going to teach my preaching students about Style later today. (Don’t let “sermon illustrations” suck you in! They’re just one tool of many–think, rather, of Auggie’s take on Tully’s description of the three styles!)

That’s not the announcement. That’s the official notice that the announcement will be brief.

The announcement is that Fr. Director and I had a momentous lunch where I told him that I simply can’t finish the dissertation given everything else going on–foremost among them my need to put food on the table.

Fr. Director’s response was–your first and highest calling is to your family, then worry about the diss. He’s so awesome…

He’s now in possession of my “big box o’ crap” and will read through what I’ve written so far (volumes, just fragmentary and unorganized) and we’ll cobble a dissertation out of that.

So–no, I’m not quitting, but the scope must be restricted.

That is all…

Announcements

I’m only taking 3:2 odds on a big announcement out of Abuja and its Virginia suburbs tomorrow…

In other news, I will most likely be making an announcement about my studies–but it will be of little or no moment to the Anglican Communion.

Keep us all in your prayers.

Anglo-Ninjas et al

Anybody heard about the deployment of Anglo-ninjas who will creep into our houses and churches and steal all of our Books of Common Prayer?

Me neither…

No matter what happens this week in Tanzania our liturgies and ways of being formed around the prayer-book will not change.

 

In case you’re wondering why +Minns, Sugden+, and Anderson+ (big players in CANA, Anglican Mainstream, and the American Anglican Council) are camped out in a hotel room next to the conference center in Tanzania, the good people at Stand Firm are assuring us that it is because they are team players just there to support their guys. In fact, some commentators said that they’d be horribly offended if these folks weren’t there because it means they’d be leaving their comrades in the lurch.

Absolutely.

One hopes that these stalwarts will find it in their hearts to forgive the weakness of others like +Wright, +Iker, +Nazir-Ali for not coming to support their buddies at a meeting to which they had not been invited… 

 

And in other news on this frigid February day—my desktop thermometer now indicates an outside air temp of 68 degrees…

 

It’s Complicated

I’m teaching my preaching class about reading the Bible for preaching tonight. I find myself in a quandary. I’m a professional biblical scholar. I’ve done the coursework; I’ve read the dead German guys; I know the classic source/form/redaction kritiks; I know the postmodern/poststructuralist/postcolonialist theories. And as a result—I go back to the Patristics and their methods of basic and advanced grammatical exegesis.

And that’s what I want to teach my students—on one hand.

On the other hand—I’m on the far side of the modern critical morass. I’ve been there/done that/used the t-shirt to clean my kitchen. I know where the dead-ends and wrong turns are for meaningful parish use. But they don’t and they’re not.

It’s one thing to poo-poo form-criticism when you know its flaws and pitfalls from the inside. It’s another entirely when you have no idea what it is to begin with…

That’s my struggle: there are real reasons to recognize the issues and purposes and benefits of the modern and postmodern projects in order to move past them. But how is that suppose to happen in under an hour?

*Sigh*

At any rate, if I can instill some good habits and disciplines for reading the text carefully and preaching clearly I’ll call it a success.

What is in a name

The epiScope’s whole Left/Center/Right thing and some discussion at Canterbury Trail and general things around this corner of the web have me thinking again.

M and I were having a conversation about this the other night and I finally vocalized some things that have been rolling around in my head for a while. Some people are against labels. I’m not, particularly, since I think there a helpful way of categorizing the world as long as you recognize and remember their limitations. For the purposes of political debate and influence in discussions about things that matter, they have a particular function—they concentrate opinion and signal a distinct outlook.

I’m looking again for a label that has a bit of precision to it.

What do you call something…:

• That breathes deeply of the spirit of monasticism, especially that of John Cassian and Benedict, but is for people who live in the world?
• That both upholds critical reasoning under the principle that all truth is God’s truth and also the Traditions of the Church—recognizing both the gifts and benefits of modernism and postmodernism as well as their problems and dangers?
• That is not a branch of the Christian Historical Society seeking to transpose worship practices of some other time and place into this century but rather believes that some of the best ways of proclaiming the Gospel in this time and place can be found in the resources of the past?
• That believes deeply in the Sacraments and the Mass and therefore recognizes the importance of the institutional church and the place of priests but balances that with the Offices, a liturgical path of living that needs neither priests nor institutions (indeed—Benedict was suspicious of allowing priests into monasteries in the first place…)?
• That sees the joint liturgical paths of Mass and Offices as places of awe, holiness, and mystery where the Living God is most fully encountered and form our minds and habits in the Mind of Christ?
• That furthers this journey into a disciplined way of being that, in the search for the Kingdom, seeks to cultivate virtue and suppress vice within ourselves and sees the cultivation of justice and compassion in the world as part of God’s plan?

I’m conflicted… I’d like to call it “Episcopal” but I don’t find these elements affirmed and upheld by all sorts of Episcopalians. The way that M and I practice it, it looks like, lives like, and shades into Anglo-Catholicism. But the difference I detect is a privileging of the monastic and contemplative ways and a Stoic philosophical base rather than the Scholasticism and Aristolelianism that so often grounds the former. This comes to a head, of course, in what I see as the Scholastic focus on mechanism, the how of the divine mysteries, which leads to a calcification of what I believe to be accidentals into essentials—i.e., God is incapable of conveying sacramental grace through beings who lack penises…

My first thought, and the one that M favored, was “Benedictine Anglicanism” but that has some problems since I, we, are not nor are we seeking to be Benedictine monks as the name might imply (becoming an oblate is a different story, of course)—nor are we all Anglican. LutherPunk fits these criteria and I dare say Andy, Lee, and others may as well who are not themselves Anglicans.

A much less specific term might be “Regular Christian” in the sense of a regula or rule but it neither captures it all and is also a bit too subtle, I think.

I like a term that Young Fogey has used on occasion, “Mass and Office catholic,” as I think that captures much of it—but I don’t know much about the origin of the term. I think it implies a way of life that these liturgies form but it certainly doesn’t require it.

I don’t know; I’m open to suggestions…