Happy Proper 2!

Easter has ended and we have turned the corner into Proper time… As you’ll see from the table on page 884 in the BCP, the first Propered Sunday after the upcoming Feast of the Holy Trinity will be Proper 4, but for we who pray the Office, the Propers begin today with the readings—and collect—for Proper 2.

Thanks to those who alerted me that the breviary had still been showing the collect for the Ascension; that was a manual fix that I’d neglected to correct. Apologies for that, and we’re back on track now…

Also, I’ve been catching up with some of the fixes noted in the comments—which are very helpful, please keep them coming! One attempted fix late last night hung up the data feed for this morning, but it’s restarted now.

So—lots of stuff going on, I’m projecting that the new Liturgical Look Forward will be up a little later today and a bonus video should also be appearing on the feed in the next day or two…

New version of the St. Bede’s Breviary

While I’ve been quiet here for a little bit, it doesn’t mean that nothing’s been happening… There are a number of things in the works and some of them are actually—finally!—coming to fruition. The first of these is a new version of the St. Bede’s Breviary.

There are several changes with the new version…

First, it uses a completely different set of technologies to get and display the Offices. This doesn’t matter for most folks; it’s under-the-hood stuff, but is important for the development of the software generally and for keeping up with where technology’s going.

Second, it integrates directly into a WordPress environment. This is a big deal because so many church websites use WordPress. Once this version matures, it could be integrated into a lot of church websites pretty easily to help promote the spread of the Daily Office and the disciplines of Morning and Evening Prayer.

Third, it gets rid of the cookie system to keep track of options. Instead, the options are available on the page itself. I am working on a way to save your selections as you go, but I’ve not figured out that piece to my satisfaction yet.

Fourth, if you exercise all of the options, you’ll note some blue text in there. There’s a reason for that… I make the claim that this breviary follows the Book of Common Prayer strictly—and it does. But I have had some people challenge that assertion on the grounds that I introduce materials not authorized by the prayer book. This is true. I do include “catholic” options found in the practice of the liturgical West not in the prayerbook itself. In my eyes, these are legitimate private devotions that are not part of our public common prayer, but are part of our classical liturgical spirituality. So—in this version of the breviary, I have identified these by indenting them a bit and making them blue to distinguish them visibly from the text of our common prayer.

Fifth, I am still working out some cosmetic bugs, and some technical issues may also pop up as we move along. clearly, I’ll try and address these as soon as I am able as I become aware of them.

Enough chatter—the link is here and you can also access the page from the “WP Breviary” link in the menu at the top of the page. Let me know what you think!

Sermon from Sunday

Since I’m sticking things up on YouTube at the moment, I decided to stick up my sermon from this past Sunday. As it was Mother’s Day, the parish decided to celebrate by letting Mother M off the hook for her sermon; I got the job instead… Because all of their services are livestreamed and archived, I could clip out the sermon and post it. So—here’s me preaching!

(And let me note for the record, there was only one surplice in the closet. As you can tell from the sleeve length, it was intended for someone a foot shorter than me…)

 

Thoughts on the YouTube Experiment

Initial thoughts on three weeks of the YouTube experiment…

1. Creating graphics, writing, shooting, and editing takes more time than I expected. That’s ok when it’s a regular week. Last week wasn’t regular, though. I was on the road doing the clergy conference for the Diocese of Long Island, then doing an Inwardly Digest weekend at two parishes up there. That really threw off my timing resulting in a very late upload.

2. I’m still in the editing learning curve. There are several new things that I want to try to make the video quality better (better transitions, add music, add end cards, etc.) but with the time crunch on the previous video couldn’t spend the time to head down those rabbit holes.

3. I notice that—I’m way more fun live than recorded… I observed that during my Long Island trip. I think I’m better and more engaging when I’m interacting with a live audience than talking to the camera. Maybe it’s the narrow focus of the videos but I’m not sure.

4. My Digital Strategist believes that the videos are too long. She’s recommending a short version and then maybe an expanded cut for those people who care to hear more.

5. I’m still wondering what my best media options are between blogging, podcasting, and the videos.

I don’t know—what are your thoughts?

New Experiment

After a bit of thought and a couple of false starts, I’m trying out a new experiment: YouTube videos.

One of the things that I’ve noticed is that, even though I’m a biblical scholar, I sometimes lose the thread of exactly what we’re doing and where we are in the various Scripture lessons of the Daily Office. I figure that if I have this problem and I’ve got a Ph.D. in the field, it may well be happening to other people too…

So, to address this gap, I’ve started a series of videos entitled a Liturgical Look Forward. The goal is to look at the three Office readings for the upcoming week and locate them within the books that we’re reading through.  In the event of a Holy Day (like the Feast of St. Mark that falls on Wednesday), I mention what we’re missing—but also what we’re getting in the feast itself.

It is, of course, An Experiment. It may not last. Also, as it’s experimental, I have no real idea what I’m doing… The video below is the first video I’ve ever shot and edited for public consumption. The intriguing aspect of this whole realm is that I’m constantly calling in my teen-aged daughter to help me navigate the YouTubes; I’ve never had to rely on younger help to navigate anything digital and it’s quite the humbling experience!

In any case, here it is—let me know what you think.

(And click “subscribe”!)

Not Dead Yet…

I hadn’t intended to do a blog-fast for Lent, but functionally that’s the way it’s worked out…

There’s a lot of stuff going on including some big life stuff that I’ll talk about in a bit.

This is just a quick post to let everybody know that I’ll be appearing tomorrow (March 20th) on the Society of Scholar-Priests Webinar series! It’ll be an hour-long chat and the last 20 minutes or so I’ll be taking audience questions. So—if you’ve got some burning questions you’d like me to answer in front of a lot of priests, tomorrow will be your chance…

It’s a zoom webinar and will be here: https://zoom.us/j/4751945823%EF%BF%BD at 1 PM Eastern/10 AM Pacific.