Author Archives: Derek A. Olsen

Updates

  • Everyone survived the start of the Christmas season.
  • The Christmas pageant was a roaring success. Some parent helpers jumped in and everything went just fine. We only had one little clash—someone wanted to remove all of the identifying names out of the Luke 2 passage as being “too difficult for children”. Fortunately I had a couple of days between hearing about this and seeing the cast again so I could think of a more polite and tactful way to respond than my initial reaction. I explained that if we took out the names we might as well start it with “Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away” and that the whole point of the names is that it happened in a very particular time and place and that matters. They didn’t like it, but the names stayed in and the kids did great with them.
  • (I found it odd that my reader had more trouble pronouncing “Syria” than “Quirinius”…)
  • Most memorable exchange—Parent: “Well, what matters most is that the kids feel good about what they did.” Me: “Hmmm. I think that what matters most is that the kids learn the Gospel…” Parent: [unconvinced] “Oh—right…”
  • We had a wonderful trip south to the ordination of Chris (aka the Lutheran Zephyr) and he’s got a nice photo with M up too.
  • M read the prayers, my role was sitting with three PKs (only one of which was mine)—all girls under the age of 6, all perfectly behaved.
  • About halfway through Lil’ G turned to me and said, “So, Daddy—when are you gonna get ordained?” I was a little stunned by that but mumbled that I was working on it…
  • For Christmas 1 we had a Lessons and Carols service at M’s parish that was quite nice. But in the midst of Von Himmel Hoch Lil’ H started singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” at the top of her lungs. And continued with it whenever we started singing another carol. Several peopled noticed her singing; thankfully no one noticed what she was singing.
  • While you’re rounding up nice Christmas messages as the season continues, don’t miss the sermon here from friend-of-the-blog Fr. McCoy, OHC.
  • Dissertation progress has bogged down in Chapter 3. Trying to condense some 15 years of study of monastic liturgy into twice that many pages isn’t as easy as it sounds… I’m trying an ultra-minimalist approach but I have to keep reminding myself of that every sentence or two.
  • (And if anyone happens to have  copy of David Knowles’ The Monastic Order in England handy, could you tell me when [on p. 714 or so] he starts Matins and Lauds in the summer? I’m missing that page…)
  • For the SBB alpha-testers, I’ll have a new kalendar up before Jan. 1 with, hopefully, a choice of two…
  • I’ve got a few pieces for the Cafe in the pipeline, but blogging will continue to be light…

Liturgy. One More Time…

There’s a post at the Cafe about what Episcopalians can learn from Baptists. To my eyes, it repeats the usual tropes about hide-bound, static “book” liturgy as opposed to free and spontaneous “spirit-filled” worship.

It’s a tired rhetorical dichotomy that really needs to die because it’s based in a fundamentally one-side understanding of pneumatology.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, liturgical worship certainly can become hide-bound, stodgy and dead. But it’s false to say it all is—or even most.

The chief reason why this hacks me off, though, is the assumption that most Episcopalians are at the place where they can profitably learn things from Baptists about liturgy. Unfortunately, we’re not there yet! Most of the Episcopalians I know need to learn a lot more about Episcopal worship before we start looking to see what we can learn from others.

Etiquette and Ethics

We can look at manners and etiquette in three ways:

  1. It is the grease that oils the cogwheels of the social machine,
  2. It is something that belongs to the realm of aesthetics,
  3. but we can also look at them as they belong to the realm of ethics—as having to do with how we treat one another in everyday life.

–P.M. Forni, professor of Italian Literature at Johns Hopkins and one of the co-founders of the Civility Project

I heard this fascinating interview on the radio yesterday on etiquette, the true aims of Emily Post, and the odd place of etiquette in American culture. I bring it up not only because it’s quite interesting but because it occurred to me that there are some very close parallels between etiquette and liturgy.

Just as etiquette helps structure our social relationships, liturgy helps us structure our religious ones.

Give it a listen and let me know what you think…

Neo-Colonialism

Had to note this.

My crystal ball predicts that things in Africa will be getting worse for the grand majority of residents over the next several decades as the industrialized economies calculate the exact limits of our zero-sum resource game.

Not all are in for bad times, though; I imagine arms dealers will do quite well…

Haitus–Again

I’ll not be around much—perhaps at all—during this Advent. I’m determined to finishing the dissertation this calendar year and that means roughly a chapter a week to get through it

I hope to finally get this thing done.

Long-time readers will recall, of course, that I’ve made this same determination several times before; I can only hope I’ll be more successful this time around… :-D

Liturgy for Families with Kids for Advent

I’ve mentioned online before about how as a family we use the brief services found on pages 139ff of the BCP. At the urgings of bls, Christopher, and others, I’ve put together the first bit of a projected small liturgical project for families with young children tentatively entitled “Episcopal Family Brief Breviary”. It simply uses the framework included in the BCP for the quick office-like services but is made vaguely seasonal by changing the Scriptural sentence to a seasonal one (users of the traditional breviaries will note that it’s the little chapter from Lauds and Vespers respectively) and we introduce either a liturgical text we’re working on or an appropriate hymn. (Again–from Lauds or Vespers.) For the hymns, I’m  indebted to Fr. John-Julian as I’m using his translations.

I call it “Episcopal” rather than either “Anglican” or “Christian” because the bulk of it comes out of the ’79 BCP, but it’s entirely appropriate for any flavor of Christian… It’s here as a pdf (episcopal-family-brief-breviary-advent) that can be printed out in a handy front/back format.

Ascetical Theology at the Cafe

Ok, Annie–you asked for it—so now it’s up.

Well, it’s not a summary of the piece, but it’s an introduction to the topics he was discussing. Now, you’ll notice that the abbot uses the term “moral theology” where I use “ascetical theology” the reason is because all of the items in moral theology of which he speaks are congruent with and used in a manner that I associate far more with ascetical theology. Moral theology for me reaches its hey-day later and is found in the writings of St. Alphonsus Liguori.

In any case, there it is…