Have mercy upon us miserable offenders...

Today sees the end of three weeks of morning prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. Yesterday’s chapel service started with a clip from the Lord of the Rings – the struggle between Gandalf and the Balrog – and included intercessions before the Lord’s Prayer and petitions, after a homily (a Thursday Ridley custom). All fairly typical of the Ridley way with BCP, except we didn’t sing a hymn or song. It wasn’t awful. But it set me thinking about the integrity of liturgy and how far we can fiddle with it. We seldom, if ever, run the CW or BCP morning office as writ. This is partly because we have quite a tight time limit – lectures start at 9.05 am at up to 15-20 mins walk away. And also we are encouraged to be imaginative about worship, quite rightly. But how much can you play around with Cranmer’s finely crafted common prayer for the people without destroying its integrity?
I’m not a particular fan of BCP – love the poetry of it but it sends me straight back to being a child at church. I know most of it by heart. But there comes a stage in experimenting when even I think ‘This has lost the point.’ Cranmer had very good reasons for structuring BCP offices as he did, confirmed by a few centuries of tradition. The postmodern take tends to be that doesn’t matter too much if we just slip that in here, drop that out, change ‘Queen’ to ‘rulers’ or don’t follow the rubric. But then it isn’t really BCP…
Does that matter? How far do we go down the apologetic route that says that it has to be accessible and relevant to today’s culture before we lose the plot? Liturgy of any sort seems to be a novel concept to some ordinands, let alone the possible person in the pew or café church. Does it matter if ‘Te Deum’ comes out as ‘tedium’ as long as we do praise you, O God? My heart says that it does but my mind is just confused.

And, scary thought, is there a Precentor or liturgist inside me struggling to get out?

Pawn to Queen's Bishop...

On the staircase this term we are mostly wearing purple (my favourite colour – I will have a purple clerical shirt, I will, I will…). Or, more accurately, that peculiar claret pinky-purple worn by bishops. Every other guest seems to be a bishop. We even have a resident bishop – which must mean that Simon and I are Deans of this staircase Cathedral? But after this week’s crop of guests, we’ve raised our sights – Archbishops only please. Admittedly this particular exotic Archbishop wore black not purple but the headwear scored mega-points. Fab hat, Your Grace! Going home late evening earlier in the term, I stepped through the small outer door and found myself nose to nose with one of our home purple Archbishops. What does one say…? Hopefully I will have a bit more time to sort that out when the other one visits here very soon.

But what I am really looking forward to is the sighting of the female of the species…

Hail, hail bright Cecilia ...

Today is St Cecilia's Day

Thank God for music! – life would be so much emptier without it. On Saturday evening I will be in Ely Cathedral as one of the chorus in a performance of Duke Ellington’s sacred music. Gospel hits jazzzzz… The rehearsal last night promises that it will be a good evening.
There is just something about making music in company with others that takes you out of yourself, maybe it's just about teamwork, maybe there is more to it. At its best it is transcendent, a glimpse of something other. I was singing once next to the percussion in a come-and-sing in the Royal Albert Hall. For the second half the timpanist’s mother-in-law, a non-musician, came and sat with us. She was overwhelmed by being in the middle of the music making - something she had never experienced before.

Praise the Lord!

Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament!

Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his surpassing greatness!
Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp!

Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!

Praise him with clanging cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord!
Psalm 150 (NRSV)

Good luck to the Decibelles singing tonight in Brighton – sing it out, sister!

To be or not to be...

This term we are mainly agonizing about ... formation. Well, and the new BA. The returners have correctly identified that the two reasons for being at theological college as ordinands are 1) to get the bit of paper and 2) formation - a strange term thrown at you by DDOs, Bishops' Advisers and tutors. In essence it means to become the person you really are and are made by God to be - and so is not exclusive to ordination training at all. It is, or should be, what we are all aiming at. But at college it assumes a prominence that it often seems to lack in churches.
What puzzles me is how it happens. I recognise formation milestones in myself and others but not how I/you got there. During my (wonderful) placement I realised I had been formed to the extent that I had become 'clergy', that I had moved from pew to pulpit. It took a visit to my home church to jolt me into seeing that but my placement supervisor, who is responsible for preparing ordinands during the last few days before the donning of the dog collar, commented that it had happened in my first day with them. And please would I think about what it was that made that change, because knowing that would be very useful on ordination retreats when faced with the problem of moving an ordinand from 'there' to 'here' in two or three days.

Some second years want a course on formation - which I suspect sort of misses the point because it happens to you, you are formed. I think that it is about your focus moving outwards from yourself to others, and through them to God. It happens to you in the everyday, in college and among people, and has to be a very individual thing because we all start from different places. One size doesn't fit all.

And, of course, we won't leave here fully formed, just a bit more so.