Yearly Archives: 2008

Final Spider Bite Update

At long last we close this painful chapter…

Ten months after the original bite, I’m 100% back to normal with no more infection. From not being able to walk for two months, I finished an 8K cross-country race yesterday. 

In the aftermath of the bite, M and I have been doing a lot of lifesyle reassessment. The doctor told M at the time that the only reason I was survived was because of my good physical condition. Since then, we’ve committed to keep ourselves in better shape. Last month M made the determination (and I jumped on board) that not only would we run more and get into decent cardiovascular shape but that we would enter at least one race a month to give us something to shoot for. She ran her first 5K last month; my first competitive race since high school was yesterday.

My time qualified me for our next big training milestone: The National Half-Marathon next March in Washington, DC. If any of you DC area readers want to join us, just let me know…

Mass and Office Anglicanism

Christopher has a great post that sparked this one.

What he, I, and a number of us talk and dream about is a way of taking seriously the connection between spirituality and the daily grind: how does the daily grind become transported into a a day that is productive and meaningful yet grounded in the deep mysteries suffused by the love of God?

We keep fussing around the notion of Mass and Office practice that grounds our spirituality in specific daily habits that then give shape to the days, seasons, and years of our lives.

Specifically this means:

  • A grounding in the Psalms: The Book of Psalms is the most human and visceral book of Scripture that explores what it looks like to live a life in the presence of God that acknowledges joy, sorrow, pain, despair, and delight. It offers glimpses of faithful people overly certain of their own apprehension of the mind of God (“…Do I not hate them that hate thee, O Lord?…I hate them with a perfect hatred…”); it shows souls intent on God that yet languish in despair (…Thou hast caused lover and friend to shun me and darkness is my only companion.”) In short, it holds a mirror before our soul and dares us to deny our baser instincts and our capacities to transcend insisting that as realists we embrace both not only as who we are but also as what we bring to the spiritual life and with which the spiritual life must grapple. 
  • An embrace of the seasons: The seasons of the Church Year are designed to guide us through the full rota of the Christian affections—our emotional orientations and ways of being that parallel and bring depth to our intellectual and rational understanding of the faith. That is, joy, hope, repentence, expectation are to characterize our fundamental orientations and outlook, to form the fundamental syllables of our grammar of faith and our song of life. And the seasons enable the patterning process that sets these things in our bones.

Christopher notes: “Paul Bradshaw asks, ‘What is our intent for the Office?'” And I answer from my research and grounding in early medieval monastic liturgy that the function of the Office is catechetical while the function of the Mass is mystagogical. That is, the Office gives us the basic data that forms our life. In it we ceaslessless read through the psalms. In it we read through (ideally) the whole of Scripture. It forms us in the basics. The Mass excerpts and illuminates particular facets of the light of Christ as perceived through season and Scripture that illuminate the mysteries within which we live.

The Office provides the fundamental context within which we understand the Mass. The Mass gives us the moments (and means) of grace that shock our daily patterns deeper into a life hid in God with Christ. 

Without the Office the Mass offers disjointed and discontinuous vignettes offering little by way of a framework and master narrative. Without the Mass the Office becomes pedantica basic teaching repeated again and again lacking the hints that direct us to the spiritual depths therein.

Historically within the Western liturgy—and I think primarily here of my early medieval research subjects—Mass and Office have been bound to one another and to the season by four fundamental links:

  • Antiphons: both seasonal texts and materials from the Mass lectionary informed the psalm and canticle antiphons used with the psalms in the Office.
  • Hymns: The sense of each season was provided by the hymns which, placed after the psalms and the short Scripture “chapter” (usually a line or two long) sounded the key notes of the season that moved the prayer of the Office from the Psalms to the gospel canticle 
  • Preces: Particularly in major seasons the Epistle from the Sundays Mass would work its way into the preces, the systm of bids and responses that followed the gospel canticles in the major offices of the psalms in the minor ones.
  • The Collects: The collects of the major offices bound the season, Mass and Office together, uniting them in a common, brief, memorizable and memorable prayer. Snatches of Scripture from the Mass Lectionaries—both Gospel and Epistle tied (or had the potential to tie) the connections between season, Mass, and Office even tighter into a harmonioous whole. 

Looking at traditional Anglican Offices, though, the Books of Common Prayer have consistently jettisoned the first three and retained only the forth. However the combination of the ’79 American Prayer Book and the adoption of the Revised Common Lectionary have, through ignorance or disregard, further eroded the ties that bound the three together in the collects.

Nothing short of a complete overhaul of the prayer-book collect system will make this pedagogical and theological vehicle operative again. 

And yet we are not without classically Anglican resources or hope. Catholic-leaning Anglicans have kept the breviary hymn tradition alive for centuries forwarding both Roman and Sarum options for the continued use of praying communities. And the 1662’s use of seasonal collects for Advent and Lent, the octave retention of the Collect for Christmas  signal an awareness and a need for the seasonal patterning in both Office and Mass.

Beginnings

Ok—that’s all very theoretical and all. So what do we do now? I’ve got a suggestion. It’s a simple one but it’s a place to start.

Can busy modern households manage full offices everyday?Can we incarnate full-on Mass and Office Anglicanism in modern family communities? Well, it’s not been our experience. Individuals in the households can pray the Offices given schedules with flexibility, but not the whole family, not together. However, what has been working for us is the use of the Brief Offices on pages 137 to 140 of your BCP. At breakfast we pray the morning one (p. 137) at night we use Compline (p. 140) for bedtime prayers. 

Lil’ G (the 5 yr old) memorized the latter when she was 3 and is the major driving force for morning prayer at breakfast.

No, it’s not immersion in the psalter but a bit of a couple of psalms everyday is surely better than none at all. Why not include a seasonal hymn in the space provided for it there and add in the collect of the day before the concluding collect of the office?

It’s basic. It’s doable. It points us towards the pattern of Mass and Office Anglicanism.

Junk Mail Catch

In clearing out my junk mail folder, I discovered a message from Liturgical Training Press. It seems they’re offering 25% off your next purchase if you’re willing to sign up on their email list. Given all the v1@gra spam I have to wade through anyway, a note from a press I actually like seems a small price to pay for a nice discount…and I thought some of you might feel the same.

Of course—I don’t know if this extends to the allied Cistercian Press or not, but if it does, it’ll make me even happier!

The path you must follow is in the Psalms–never leave it

Hie thee over to the Byzantine Anglo-Catholic’s place for a fascinating post on the Camaldolese order and their spirituality. I’m stealing from there the entirity of the Brief Rule left by their founder.

Brief Rule

Sit in your cell as in paradise.
Put the whole world behind you and forget it.
Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish.
The path you must follow is in the Psalms–never leave it.
If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of
your good will, you cannot accomplish what you want,
take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart
and to understand them with your mind.
And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up;
hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.
Realize above all that you are in God’s presence, and stand there
with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor.
Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God,
like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.

A REAL “Listening Process”

Christopher has a nice post up on his take on my previous post.

I want all the bishops and archbishops who read my blog to sit up and pay close attention now.

It struck me as I read through it that “this here” is the vaunted listen process. It’s about people sharing how they do family and do life in the sight of God.

A listening process doesn’t happen when strangers with pre-determined decisions show up in a room and argue for a couple of hours. A listening process doesn’t happen when a large organization comes and has a “conversation” which is a monologue wherein a particular view is shoved down everyone’s throat.

A listening process means sharing the realities of our mundane lives and exploring whether and how God is at work in and through them–listening for the footsteps of God in the midst of life. And noting where we fall into moments or patterns of sin where love is denied or distorted.

A listening process is listening to Christopher talk about the daily realities and ups and downs of family life. A listening process is getting to know bls’s take on art, music, and the events of the day. And about listening and discerning what’s there as well as what’s going on with Chris and Jessicah, Caelius, LP and Mrs. LP, the Postulant and his M, me and my M. (See how inclusive we are here? We’ll even listen to Lutherans! :-D) This is the heart of it–not talking “about gay people”–but talking to and hearing from people–friends–married, partnered, single, dating, talking about the realities of their lives and recognizing the presence of both God and sin in each and all.

The sad reality, of course, is that this will not be recognized. Activist will struggle against activist. The shrillest voices with the keenest pitches will be the “listening process”. Talking poinst will be weighed against talking points and none will be persuaded. So sad—what a mess…

Teaching Men about Women’s Issues: Home Edition

1950’s paradigm: Man goes off and earns the paycheck; woman stays at home and does the child-rearing and housework.

200X paradigm: Man goes off and earns a paycheck; woman goes off and earns a paycheck. oh btw…woman gets to do the child-rearing and housework too…

M and I don’t consider ourselves awfully progressive. In fact, on a lot of things, we’re quite conservative. When we got married, though, we discussed that we saw ourselves as part of a team and that household chores should be split in ways that make sense. I’ve always tried to be an active dad, and when G was little stayed home and watched her mornings and worked in the evenings. Furthermore we worked on the input-output rule: M breastfed so I changed all the diapers. I still change a lot even though the breastfeeding days are long over and H’s diaper days are drawing to a happy end.

With M going to work, I’m the at-home parent since my commute is to my office in the basement. Since our schedule is currently arranged so that M works out in the mornings before work I’m:

  • waking the girls
  • making four breakfasts
  • packing three lunches
  • dressing 2 girls
  • taking 1 girl (G) to the bus stop
  • cleaning the  kitchen.

Then my “real” day starts with spreadsheets, coding etc…
[Insert laundry here as I work near the washer & dryer]
Come lunch-time…

  • sneak in a run
  • plan dinner
  • start dinner prep

Then it’s back to the spreadsheets until:

  • pick up G from bus
  • finish cooking dinner

sometimes in the midst of spreadsheets. I was dicing onions during a conference call the other day…

Then after dinner it’s:

  • clean kitchen
  • help G with homework
  • put girls to bed.

Is this lifestyle what they had in mind with “women’s liberation”?!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining; this is just what we have to do to make sure everything moves steady. Nor am I listing all of the stuff that M is doing—so please don’t think for a minute that she’s slacking or that I’m accusing her of it. Far from it!

Rather, it’s opening my eyes to the assumptions that we men tend to make about who does what and how we contribute to the household. And, it’s making me realize that M has been doing far more than I’d ever guess while I work away.

So—thank you, M!! And the rest of you guys with households–get off your butts and lend a hand… ;-)

 FYI, today’s run will become a literal run to the grocery store to pick up a couple of missing ingredients for dinner. I’m shooting for butternut squash risotto with balsamic marinated chicken and brocolli. Feel free to stop by—and bring a fork… :-)