I’m working up several things to show you all, but none of them are quite ready yet… I keep writing things, but they’re not quite finished yet, and then life happens, so several things are in the queue.

This is an easy one, though… I was asked about a csv file with the current contents of Lesser Feasts & Fasts, 2018. I do have such a file and am sharing it here. Naturally, it meets my needs, providing the month, day, title, and collects  (Rite I and II) for each liturgical observance of Optional Observance. (I.e., it contains no Sundays or Holy Days, only those observances falling within section 5 of the BCP’s Calendar breakdown.) Nor does it contain biographies or biblical lections as the latter are intended for Eucharists, not as replacements for the Daily Office in-course lections which only give way to Holy Days.

As is well known by anyone who has read these pages for any amount of time, the current Episcopal concept of sanctity is rootless, fragmented, and ultimately incoherent. I literally laughed-out-loud  when last I ran across the flavor text at Church Publishing for LLF2018 which informs the buyer that: “Lesser Feasts and Fasts has not been updated since 2006. This new edition, adopted at the 79th General Convention (resolution A065), fills that need.” Both of these lines are quite incorrect.

In the first line, LFF has received a lot of work since 2006—it’s just that none of the items produced has satisfied the complex and contradictory demands of both houses of  General Convention. And Liza and I have the files and correspondence to prove it!

In the second, LFF2018 was not “adopted” flatly as the text suggests but is in a period of trial use. Furthermore, the current text is not what was proposed, but is a mash-up up several offerings that actually miss the point of what Liza and the sanctoral team was trying to accomplish with what they did submit.

What is an improvement here is the overall quality of the collects. Not all of them received the treatment they needed, but a few of us did manage to do some solid work on several of them that needed some serious repair. In particular, I tackled many of the saints in the first millennium when I was overhauling things for Great Cloud of Witnesses, and then addressed several more as final drafts of LFF2018 were going before the Legislative Committee at GC. So—I’d like to see more attention paid to the collects here.

Enough chatter—here’s the file: Episcopal_LFF2018_DAO