Category Archives: Liturgy

Enriching Our Worship Available in PDF

When I was appointed to the Standing Commission on Liturgy & Music (SCLM) and became chair of the Digital Publication committee, I discovered in the course of my research that we had never actually acted upon General Convention resolution 2009-A102. This is the resolution that re-authorized provisional use of the “Enriching Our Worship” series under the authorization of a diocesan bishop or equal ecclesiastical authority. The second Resolve resolves “That these liturgical texts be freely available in electronic format on the internet.”

I can now report that we have accomplished this with the partnership of Church Publishing.

Enriching Our Worship 1: Morning and Evening Prayer, the Great Litany, and the Holy Eucharist

Enriching Our Worship 2: Ministry with the Sick or Dying; Burial of a Child 

Enriching Our Worship 3: Burial Rites for Adults, together with a Rite for the Burial of a Child 

Enriching Our Worship 4: The Renewal of Ministry and the Welcoming of a New Rector or Other Pastor 

Enriching Our Worship 5:Liturgies and Prayers Related to Childbearing, Childbirth, and Loss 

There is no news as of yet on the accompanying “Enriching Our Music” service music that goes with it.

Now, as some readers know, I am not EOW’s biggest fan. Indeed, I’ve only read through some of these liturgies, and have only experienced a few of the Eucharistic rites one or two times many years ago. On the whole, I was not overwhelmed.

There are some assumptions that EOW reflects what “the next prayer book” will look like. They are just that—assumptions. Per a discussion at the last meeting of the SCLM, these rites have no official status. There are certainly those who want to see them as the next step, and as heading in a prayer book revision direction, but that is not the mind of the SCLM now, and I am not eager to see any work of prayer book revision anytime in the near future.

What this move does do is signal a move towards a more digitally-friendly publication process. It’s a first step in a better direction. These liturgies are still under copyright and they remain in a PDF format. We still have a ways to go in order to get the kind of commitment to digital mission and evangelism necessary in the coming years. But we are getting there…

On the Penitential Orders

Or, more properly, on the “Penitential” Orders.

A little bit of back-story first…

Regular readers will know that I grew up Lutheran in an ELCA church. While it used the Service Book & Hymnal (aka “the red book”) in the first few years after my birth, it’s fair to say that I grew up as a child of the Lutheran Book of Worship (aka “the green book”). Every Sunday, worship began with the Brief Order for Confession and Forgiveness. This has a few basic elements:

  • A Triune invocation
  • the Collect for Purity
  • 1 John 1:8,9 (If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us…)
  • Confession of Sin
  • Absolution

Then the service starts as usual and goes on its merry way. (I’d love to know if it still appears this way in the new Evangelical Lutheran Worship aka “the cranberry book”)

As Episcopalians know, our Confession of Sin appears after the Prayers of the People (as long as we’re not using Prayer D…).

But, why…?

The Eucharist in the 1549 prayer book places the Confession of Sin at the very end of the service right before the reception of the Eucharist. The 1552 book adds in several more Confessions and moves it to what will become its normative spot in the Anglican rites. [Edited to fix my original error that Michael pointed out…] In this book, a Confession of Sin kicks off Morning Prayer (and thus the whole Sunday rota), then comes the Litany. Then, in the Communion service, another confession is added—but only for those (few) people who are remaining for the Eucharistic rite; everybody else gets dismissed beforehand. In both of these books, the reason for placing the Confession late in the service and in particular after the Prayers  derives from the (odd) custom of only a few people remaining for the act of Communion, and a redundant Confession being offered for them at that point. (For all the heinous sins they must have committed since being absolved at the beginning of Morning Prayer…)

In the Historic Western Liturgy, the Confession occurred before the proper start of the Eucharist: in the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar. We see this in the Sarum and in the Tridentine books. Thus, the Lutheran placement that I grew up with is more “mainstream” in that it follows the classical placement better than the Anglican placement does which was related to a practice of restricted Eucharistic reception.

So—all of that having been said, the current Book of Common Prayer includes optional orders (one for each Rite) before the Eucharistic services proper with the ominous-sounding title “The Penitential Order.” What’s in these orders when used before a Eucharist (rather than as a stand-alone service)?

  •  The three standard options for the Opening Dialogue
  • The Decalogue (Ten Commandments) [optional]
  • One of three Scriptural sentences [optional]
    • Mark 12:29-31 (Jesus’ Summary of the Law)
    • 1 John 1:8,9 (If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves…)
    • Hebrews 4:14, 16 (Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens…)
  • The Confession of Sin (just as it appears after the Prayers of the People)
  • The Absolution (just as it appears after the Prayers of the People)

Question: what exactly makes this penitential?

The Decalogue is penitential specifically because of how it’s framed. That is, following each commandment with “Amen. Lord have mercy” or “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law” is an indirect acknowledgement that we have failed to do so.

But if the Decalogue is not used, what qualifies this order as penitential? Because it has one sentence of Scripture that may directly (1 John 1) or indirectly (Mark 12, Hebrews 4) refer to the fact that we have sin?

Hatchett’s commentary states: “A penitential order is provided for optional use in Lent or at other times when it is desired to emphasize the penitential element in the Eucharist or when a special service of preparation for the Eucharist seems appropriate” (p. 311). Personally—I’m not feeling it. In particular, I can’t help but notice that we have three options for the opening dialogue and they are—get this—the standard one (Blessed be God: Father Son and Holy Spirit…), the Easter one (Alleluia. Christ is risen…), and Lent/penitential one (Bless the Lord who forgives all our sins…). Silly me, if this were intended to be particularly penitential, I’d think we would only have the last, and would certainly not include the Easter one!

Maybe it’s my Lutheran roots showing, but the more I look at these, the more I think that they make perfectly good sense for regular Sunday use. Why?

  • They place the Confession back in its proper historical location and not where it was put for the sake of reduced-reception Communion.
  • We get at least a sentence of Scripture which reminds us of the reality of sin and our need for grace.
  • We provide a place for the regular (though optional) hearing of the Decalogue. The Church has historically maintained—even through the medieval period—that all congregants should know the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments in their native tongue; this gives us a liturgical framing for it.

There’s only one good argument against it to my mind: as currently written, the Penitential Order and the Collect for Purity sit in an either/or position. If a Penitential Order is used, the regular Eucharist picks up with the Gloria/Kyrie, omitting the Collect for Purity. The irony, of course, is that this “penitential” order is exactly where the Lutheran Book of Worship inserts the Collect for Purity!

Modern seminarians are taught to believe that “penitential” is a bad word. In turn, that’s what they teach their congregations. Saddling this rite with the title “Penitential Order” unduly prejudices what we find there. The reality is that it’s more a reassembly of elements into the classical order than the addition of a great liturgical or psychological burden. The truth is, I think its more frequent use would be a great benefit—particularly with the “unlawful” addition of the Collect for Purity in its natural spot. And, hey, if anyone gives you grief about the insertion, you can say you’re just honoring our Full Communion agreement by prefacing the Episcopal Eucharist with a Lutheran service…

On the Essence of the Seasons

Here’s a section from a chapter on the essence of the Calendar. It’s not the full thing because I’m still dithering about how to talk about the divisions of the day. I’m being sorely tempted to talk about the eightfold division that we see talked about in the late medieval devotional material and how various points in the day were linked with complementary Scriptural notions and narratives (as represented in the bit from the Myroure below). And yet, to what degree those divisions appear within our current prayer book are tenuous at best. I’d argue that they can inform our current book, but it still seems like a bit of an external imposition. I’ll have to keep thinking about that. In any case, here’s a section on the seasons.

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Now, I want to talk about the Christian year from two different perspectives. The first relates to its connection with our doctrine, this seconds relates to its connection with our emotion. We grasp the church year most completely only when we see both aspects, and when the two are understood to be complementary parts of a whole.

Living the creed

Modern Christians like to fight over the creed. What exactly is it, and what is it for? Most often, one of three perspectives prevails: either the creed is a laundry list of ideas, or it is a set of litmus tests for true believers, or is something to be transcended and left behind. Let me suggest that none of these options quite capture the role and purpose of the creed in the life of faith. I believe that our major problems with the creed are due to the fact that we have disconnected it from its proper function: it is a framework to guide our reading of the Scriptures. It turns out that some of the greatest problems and heresies of the early church came about not in spite of the reading of Scripture, but precisely because of it! That is, the Scriptures can be read in many different ways. We can approach it from many different angles. Once we acknowledge – as we must – that Scripture contains both literal and metaphorical material, then one of our chief tasks is to determine which is which. The creed represents a set of interpretive boundaries. It doesn’t tell us what to believe about everything, it just nails down certain points of controversy and renders a clear judgment on the church’s perspective.

It’s worth giving some emphasis to the “points of controversy” notion; I’ve often heard questions and concerns about why the life and ministry of Jesus is not discussed in the creeds. It’s not because the church didn’t think these were important, rather, it’s because there weren’t fundamental arguments about it. The orthodox and heterodox alike believe that Jesus lived, taught, and worked wonders – there was no controversy about these things, and hence no need for clarification.

Rather, the creed addresses specific points of controversy that have practical implications both for theology and for Christian living. For instance, when we confess that God is the creator of the heavens and the earth, we are confirming our belief that the creation of the material world came about through the God who is the father of Jesus Christ and not some evil, lesser god who sought to trap the spirits and souls of humanity in flesh. This is in deliberate contrast to a dualistic impulse which tried to see all spirit as good and all matter as evil and was convinced that no good God would get himself tangled up in material things. But that’s precisely what we believe! Not only did God get himself tangled up in material things, but took the material world so seriously that he became incarnate within it. But that conviction begins with the belief that God is the God of creation and that creation is not what we need to be saved from.

Too often, we only note what the creed says – and lose sight of the mistaken interpretive moves that it prevents. We get so caught up in arguing about what it does say, that we forget that it is simultaneously shutting down other lines of interpretation that can have disastrous pastoral consequences and skew our understanding of and our relationship with the God whom the creed confesses.

So what does this all have to do with the Christian Year?

Quite simply, one aspect of the Christian Year is that it is a temporal embodiment of the interpretive doctrines of the creed. Almost each line of the creed has a corresponding feast or fast. For those who feel a little wary about the creed, this facet of the Church Year should, actually, come as good news! What the creeds state quickly, sparsely, the feasts explore at more leisure. The traditional liturgical material that grew up around these feasts reflect a more poetic, meditative approach that gives greater nuance and the opportunity for deeper reflection about the meaning of the event or concept celebrated by it.

Let me give you an example… The feast of the Epiphany concludes the season of Christmas and begins and emphasis on how Christ alternately revealed himself and was revealed to the world. The early church connected the feast of Epiphany with three different biblical events: Matthew’s story of the Magi arriving to honor the infant Jesus, John’s story of the Wedding of Cana identified as “the first of his signs…and revealed his glory” (john 2:11), and the Baptism of Jesus by John in the Jordan which is at least mentioned in all four Gospels. While these Gospel stories were eventually expanded to their own Sundays, an anonymous liturgist operating perhaps in the 6th or 7th century wove these narratives into a single antiphon as a way of driving to the heart of the feats:

This day is the Church joined unto the Heavenly Bridegroom, since Christ hath washed away her sins in Jordan; the wise men hasten with gifts to the marriage supper of the king; and they that sit at meat together make merry with water turned into wine. Alleluia.

Using the central notion of the wedding feast, the doctrine of the incarnation is made even more relational as the wedding of Christ and the Church by means of the sacrament of Baptism. The first miracle of Christ reflects the joy of the banquet, and the gift-bearing Magi hint at the inclusion of the Gentiles into God’s promise of reconciliation. This is the sort of liturgical play that helps us return again to the creeds with greater appreciation.

Of course, with Cranmer’s great simplification of the Church services, we lost sight of many of these liturgical gems, but the last hundred years has seen a renewed interest in their perspective and they can be found in several devotional resources like the Saint Augustine’s Prayer Book.

The Seasons and the Religious Affections

Doctrines—like those revealed in the creeds—are an important part of the Christian faith. They’re less important for their own sake and more because they help us get a clearer sense of this relationship that we are developing and the identity of the Triune God to whom we relate. More than being an exercise in right-thinking, the Christian faith has been described as a particular pattern of deep emotions shaped over time.

Emotions are tricky things, and the language that we use to talk about them is not always clear or precise. Feelings, having feelings, listening to your feelings is—and must be—an important part of the religious life as well as the whole process of self-discovery. However, we’ve all seen forms of religion that rely upon emotional manipulation—whether that manipulation is based on guilt or a feigned joy—and that’s not what I’m talking about. Emotions, like thoughts, are often fleeting things over which we have little control; they arise within us and we respond to them, express them, give vent to them, or not as we have ability. The affections are more than this; they are more like emotional habits, patterns of feeling that we choose and cultivate. There’s a difference between feeling anger and choosing to live out of an attitude of anger; similarly, there’s a difference between feeling gratitude and choosing to cultivate it as a way of being. The Christian affections, as identified by theologian Don Saliers in his work The Soul in Paraphrase, are gratitude, holy fear and penitence, joy and suffering, and love of God and neighbor.

In what may seem like a paradox, an important part of this “feeling” work is about ideas, thoughts, and doctrines. Just as what we know about a person may influence how we feel towards them, what we know and the ideas we hold about God shapes our feelings in our relationship with the divine. Because of this interrelation between thinking and feeling, the affections are a constellation of beliefs, of doctrines, and feelings that are shaped and reinforced by language that not only provoke emotions within us, but also offer us images and descriptions of reality that help us understand what living out of these perspectives looks like.

When we examine the emotional atmosphere of the great seasons of the Church Year, we recognize that each season provides its own particular entre into one or more of the affections. Lent disciplines us towards penitence; Easter explores holy joy. Advent teaches us about hope and expectation; Christmas also returns to joy—but from a slightly different angle from Easter. These seasons give us an opportunity to concentrate on an affection, to cultivate it, and to understand it more thoroughly. Too, recognizing the seasons as affectional frameworks helps free us from a particular kind of seasonal guilt. Sometimes, I’ll catch myself rejoicing in the Spring air and newly-warm sunshine and feel bad that I’m enjoying myself so much during Lent. Conversely, holidays—particularly Christmas and Easter—can be difficult for those who have recently lost loved ones or who experience familial conflict at these times, contradicting the joyous intent of the Church’s celebrations. If we understand the seasons as training opportunities rather than emotional straight-jackets, we can free ourselves from this unnecessary guilt; it’s okay to feel something different—to experience a whole range of emotions despite an affectional intention of the season as a whole when we understand it as such. Neither our emotions nor the affections should be restricted by the seasons.  Rather, we focus upon particular affections as we move through particular seasons in order that these patterns may become more naturally a feature of our long-term way of being in the presence of God.

The seasons cultivate particular affections in a variety of ways; several factors all converge to create the emotional tenor of a season. The liturgical color often provides an initial first clue as to the season’s character. The bright colors of Christmas and Easter give visual cues as do the darker, more somber hues of Advent and Lent. The use of unflowered greens in Advent and an absence of floral decoration in Lent provide further visual indications of the Church’s mood as you glance around the sanctuary. Music, too, can sometimes change. In the great cathedrals where multiple services were occurring at a time and where the chancel organ played a supplemental role (rather than a dominant role as now) its tones were often suppressed during Advent and Lent. More telling is the use of certain musical elements. The Gloria in exclesis is one of the Church’s great songs of rejoicing and its absence is one of the ways that the Church communicates the time’s tone. It is used at any occasion in Christmas and Easter; not at all in Advent and Lent. The traditional rule that it is only used on Sundays in green seasons elevates Sundays within these seasons of patient endurance. The canticles at Morning Prayer also help shape the season’s mood with some being more appropriate at some times rather than others (we’ll look at this more closely when we go through the Office). One of the more subtle means for creating a season’s mood is in the selection of the biblical readings in both the Office and the Eucharist. For instance, Isaiah’s prophecies of the coming Messiah have been a feature of Advent since its creation while Lamentation is a consistent feature of Holy Week.

All of these elements combine to focus us on certain ideas, certain doctrines, and certain feelings that feed into the composite character of an affection. And the affections together with their sometimes complementary, sometimes sequential, movements between love and holy fear, penitence and joy, form the basic grammar of the Christian way of being.

 

“Cathedral” Conundrums

My writing has hit a snag…

I was on a pretty good roll, then page proofs for the St Augustine’s Prayer Book took me away, then focus on some web projects, and with both school and ballet starting up again for the girls the household’s been crazy, and now I’m trying to get my head back into it.

The real problem, though, is that I’m trying to make sense of the distinction between “cathedral” and “monastic” prayer in the Daily Office in a way that’s clear, accessible, and transparent. At the end of the day, the spirituality of the Daily Office goes in one of two major directions based on whether you take a “cathedral” or a “monastic” approach to it. I think I’ll be doing the Office a disservice if I don’t tease that out. On the other hand, so much of the scholarly literature that attempts to define these terms and isolate their characteristics is not terrible clear especially since—at the end of the day—“cathedral” and “monastic” are extracted ideals that don’t actually fit terribly well onto the historical practice. To complicate matters, there is considerable prejudice for the “cathedral” style and against the “monastic” style in the writings of the Liturgical Renewal Movement. To try and put the problem in a nutshell, it’s this: they see “cathedral” prayer as the communal prayer of the whole church and “monastic” prayer as the individualistic prayer of a spiritual elite. In keeping with the LRM’s central focus on worship as the activity of the whole people of God, you can see why they privilege the first over the second!

In line with LRM norms, the framers of the ’79 BCP tried to introduce quite a bit more “cathedral” elements into what they saw as Cranmer’s “monastic” re-write of the Offices.  It’s not until I started digging into this particular angle of this aspect of the problem that I realized exactly what had been done to the Office in the ’79 book. The pieces are falling into place. The Anglican Office really is “monastic” at heart. But the current prayer book attempts to fundamentally imbue it with a “cathedral” character, and understanding how, why, and what that means and communicating it in a coherent and non-technical way is not easy…

This project as a whole is making me realize two big things. First, I’m coming to consciously see myself as participating in the first generation of a post-LRM critique. As I’ve said before, the LRM did many wonderful things, the Church is richer for its work—but it operated out of a number of fundamental assumptions that have to be re-explored. Second, there’s something about being a layman with an interest in lay devotion that gives me a different angle on a field that’s been principally written about and dominated by priests. I’m questioning some of the standard sine qua nons of liturgical scholarship as reflecting a clerical bias… More on this later—time to get the girls up and get the day rolling!

Liturgical Chickens Coming Home to Roost

This is more a passing thought than a well-developed argument so take it with a grain of salt…

The Liturgical Renewal Movement is the fundamental context for understanding the current shape of the ’79 Book of Common Prayer. In many ways, the ’79 BCP represents a substantial break from previous Anglican prayer books.  The Eucharist was reordered. Additional options were made available. The Office was shifted a bit. Far more options were introduced into it. Classical patterns were shaken up. New Offices were added. The Calendar was greatly expanded to include heroes of the faith from the post-apostolic age.

The main reason for the radical change was because the aims and ideals of the Liturgical Renewal Movement had been internalized by our top liturgists. At mid-century and in the second half of the Twentieth Century, the LRM was the best game in town liturgically. It championed a return to the sources, a privileging of a Fourth Century model of Christian liturgy and community, and was profoundly ecumenical. It offered an opportunity for ecumenical fellowship through joint recovery and adoption of a more free, less strict way of conceiving of liturgy, church, and sacraments. Clericalism was targeting as a major problem liturgically and theologically as well as eccelesiastically and liturgy was re-branded as “the work of the people.”

Much good was accomplished here.

Of the classical church “parties” two were happiest with the ’79 BCP: the catholic wing and the broad church wing, particularly among the elites for whom the LRM represented an ecumenical consensus open to a liberality of spirit in contrast to liturgical and ecclesial conservatism; the “Spirit of Vatican II” and the “Spirit of ’79” made common cause with one another.

The Catholic wing thought they had made major strides because many of their longstanding issues with the Cranmerian reform had finally been undone. The liturgy had moved back towards a classic Western (Roman) model. The Calendar was once again filling with the heroes of the Great Church and of Western Catholicism in addition to a variety of Anglican worthies. Antiphons and propers were licit again. The Eucharist was the primary service on Sundays.

While these things were accomplished, it had more to do with their consonance with the aims of LRM than a tide of catholicity sweeping through the Episcopal Church.

Due to the influence of the LRM and its influence in the upper reaches of liturgical thought in the Episcopal Church, the ’79 BCP ended up having a more catholic appearance due to 1) the recovery of historical ideals that also guided the reform of the Roman liturgy post Vatican-II and 2) ecumenical rapprochement with Roman Catholics. Furthermore the performance of the liturgy likewise took on a more catholic appearance with a proliferation of chasubles in places where they would have been anathema as ‘too popish’ just a generation before.

But now we’re nearing the point of a generational shift. My liturgy teachers were young academics and graduate students at the time of Vatican II; they were the ones responsible for the modification of Protestant liturgies in the the post-Vatican II era. I sat at the feet of Saliers; I read White, Lathrop and Weil, and learned from them when we met. But now my generation is coming of age and are reaping the consequences of the choices of the LRM.

My crystal ball is telling me that Holy Women, Holy Men and the furor around it is emblematic of the liturgical issues that we will be dealing with in the next few decades. We are at the point where we must come to terms with the fact that we have inherited a prayer book with a greater catholic appearance but without catholic substance behind it. To put a finer point on it, we have a catholic-looking calendar of “saints” yet no shared theology of sainthood or sanctity. While a general consensus reigned that the appearance was sufficient, the lack of a coherent shared theology was not an issue. When we press upon it too hard—as occurred and is occurring in the transition from Lesser Feasts & Fasts into Holy Women, Holy Men into whatever will come next—we reap the fruits of a sort of potemkin ecumenism that collapses without common shared theology behind it.

Is there a catholic theology of sanctity in the Episcopal Church? Yes, in some places. Is there an inherently Episcopal theology of sanctity that proceeds naturally from the ’79 BCP that is in line with a classic Christian understanding? Without question! But is it known? No. Is there any common Episcopal understanding of sanctity? The arguments around the church especially as embodied in the discussions within the SCLM lead me to answer,  no—I don’t think so.

The struggle of this current generation will be to wrestle with a liturgy that portrays a catholic appearance but lack a catholic substance behind it. It’s not that the substance can’t be there—it’s that it’s not.

Basic Disciplines for Liturgical Worship, Part III

Ok, back from vacation, on with the project…
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Attentiveness

If intentionality is about keeping ourselves focused on the big picture, then attentiveness is the related-but-different discipline of keeping our eye on the little picture. It’s the discipline of remaining in the present and being attentive to what we’re doing, the words we’re hearing, the words we’re saying, the rite which we’re experiencing. Remaining in the moment.

Most of us like to think we’re pretty good at this already. Alas, it only takes a brief experiment to show us how wrong we are… Go ahead—try to make the exercise of remaining in the present as simple as you can. Cut out all distractions and attempt to sit in silence for as little as five minutes; remain attentive and present by counting your breaths up to ten and starting over again. If you’re anything like me, it won’t take too long before your mind is flitting all over the place, you realize that you stopped counting a while back—or you discover that while you finished planning your grocery list you’ve counted up to 25! This phenomenon is aptly described by Zen teachers as “monkey mind.” You discover that however disciplined you thought your thoughts were, they dash around like a hyper little primate at the drop of a hat.

Here’s the thing—this isn’t a function of trying to sit in silence and count breaths: this is what it does all the time! The counting of breaths just helps us to notice it more clearly. Hence the need for attentiveness. And, as much as I’d like to be able to blame it on mobile devices, or the internet, or cable TV, Christian spiritual writers have been wrestling with it since at least the 4th century and likely earlier. So, how do we cage the little monkey for as long as we need to pray, to sing, to join in the worship of God?

This one requires a multi-pronged approach. The first and most basic is to recognize that the situation exists in the first place. When you’re in a service and the realization hits you that your mind has wandered, gently but firmly direct it back. Don’t beat yourself up about it—as your mind will only use that an excuse to go wandering off again about what a failure you are! As frequently as you find yourself wandering, just direct yourself back.

One of the few bodily gestures inserted into English canon law also provides an opportunity for attentiveness. In 1604, canon 18 enjoined that everyone present should make “due and lowly reverence” at the name of Jesus—that is, bow the head. At the parish where I learned this custom, it was explained as an honoring of the Incarnation. As a result, the head was bowed whenever the name “Jesus,” “Mary,” or the saint of the day were named as each reminded us of God’s incarnational presence in the world. I find that this sort of brief physical response helps me to pay better attention—to listen harder and can help me stay focused more clearly on the task at hand.

When praying alone from a book or saying the Daily Office by yourself, another tactic for retaining attentiveness is to engage as many senses as possible. Reading silently gives your mind ample opportunities for wandering. The act of reading aloud greatly improves the experience: you get the lips moving, and you hear the sound of your own words in additional to the passing of the mind over the letters. Adding in further physical gestures—like bowing or crossing yourself or kneeling—may help.

A 14th century devotional for English nuns recommends that attentiveness is much improved when you remember yourself to be in the presence of Jesus and picture him close by you. If you hold in mind the sense that you are speaking your words of praise directly to him, the feeling of being in conversation can help keep you more attentive.

The same devotional also makes a broad statement, noting that inattention in saying the Office is related to inattentive habits outside of the Office as well. I think I’d rather say it the other way: habits of discipline outside of worship help us be more disciplined with in it. As far as habits of discipline go, there’s none better than a daily bout of breath meditation as mentioned above. Simply sitting in silence for ten to twenty minutes, counting your breaths to ten, then starting over again, is a very useful tool for learning your mind more deeply, getting a handle on your inner life, and gradually soothing the hyper little primate that seems to live there.

I have heard some people express concerns over such a practice because it is “Buddhist” rather than being properly “Christian.” To my mind that’s as silly as a wrestler saying that he couldn’t do push-ups because they’re a “football” exercise. Just as push-ups are a universal fitness exercise found all over, breath meditation in various forms, under various names, and taught in various ways is a virtually universal tool for spiritual fitness. While it may be best known in modern America as a Zen practice, it’s been part of Christian spiritual practice at least since the time of the 4th century Desert Fathers and Mothers—if not before. (We’ll talk more about this when we discuss the Office and, in particular, our practices of praying the psalms.) Breath meditation is also an excellent foundational discipline if you choose to explore the tradition of contemplative prayer.

At the end of the day, attentiveness touches deep chords around the practices of an intentional, incarnational life. The principal of incarnation takes seriously the reality of God, the ongoing presence of Christ, the movement of the Holy Spirit bound up within our normal, daily, earthly life—the “full homely divinity” rightly celebrated in our Anglican tradition. If we’re not able to be fully present in the present of each moment, then these daily incarnations, these moments of God’s self-revelation, will slip past us, unnoticed as our minds flit from past to present to imaginary worlds of our own making.

Memorization

While I’m tempted to file this discipline as a subset of “attentiveness,” it’s important enough to earn its own section. We’re more attentive in corporate worship when we can follow along, and—while we are a people of the book—that doesn’t always mean we have to be stuck in the book! One of the glories of worship conducted in the tradition of the prayer book is that so much of it repeats, both daily and weekly. As a result, over time, it will become ingrained in your memory whether you want it to or not.

When my elder daughter was quite small—maybe 4 or so—I was concerned about her lack of attention during church; she would frequently be coloring when I wanted her to be paying attention (but, since she was at least being quiet I didn’t make a fuss…). Then, one day, I noticed a strange sight: of her own volition she went into our parlor, lined up her stuffed animals in front of a small organ bench topped with a cross she’d swiped from somewhere, and began “doing church” complete with most of Eucharistic Prayer A! I learned two very important things from this—first, that attentiveness may come in a variety of forms (especially from the young); second, that memorization occurs naturally with the prayer book rite.

It’s easier to be attentive to words that are already a part of us. It’s easier to stay focused on prayers we already know when praying alone. It’s easier to stay focused on the words the priest is praying if we’re praying them silently along with her. Memorization can happen by osmosis—indeed, it’s easiest if it happens that way—but the passive acquisition of the liturgy is only enhanced when we set out to actively acquire it as well.
As in acting, make sure you know your own lines first… Memorize the congregational parts of the Eucharist. Make sure you know the fundamentals: the basic responses, the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Creed, the Confession, the Post-Communion prayers. Then, the central canticles of the Office: the Song of Zechariah, the Song of Mary, the Song of Simeon. Other pieces will suggest themselves to you from there.

We’ll talk about this later, but the collects of the prayer book represent a great distillation of our tradition. And when I say tradition, I mean that our prayer book includes collects from the time of the Fathers down to the present with many of the Sunday collects have their origins in the 6th or 7th centuries. Taking the time each week to commit the collect to memory will place you in living conversation with these spiritual and theological gems.

I’ve found that the more I memorize (or the more that memorization happens to me) the more I understand the inter-relation of our liturgical language. For instance, I remember the first time I realized that the words “…walking in holiness and righteousness…”in the General Thanksgiving at Morning and Evening Prayer come from the Song of Zechariah (“…holy and righteous in his sight…”). Then, a while later, reading an alternate history book set in post-Civil War America by a favorite (Jewish) sci-fi author, I was astounded to see a speech put in the mouth of a character that concluded with a rhetorical flourish including the words “holiness and righteousness” and an image of “the dawn from on high breaking upon us…to lead our feet in the ways of peace.” The Author’s Note confirmed that the speech had been adapted from an actual address of the period, and—without having to look it up—I recognized from the rhythms and the rhetoric a 19th century prayer book Episcopalian connecting with his audience through words familiar to them all.

Indeed, this is how the real fruits of memorization occur. Little bits of the liturgies will float up unannounced. Maybe it’ll be sparked by a couple of words put in combination by a colleague or a snatch of song—they’ll strike a chord with something buried in your memory. Often, my most fruitful theological thoughts and connections will occur in this way as my subconscious mulls over something I’ve memorized without being quite aware of it. It’s moments like these that move us closer to the habitual recollection of God, that end to which liturgical spirituality directs.

Diligence

This one’s pretty obvious but it still needs to be said. We’re talking about habits, about formation, about the process of constructing an abiding Christian character through the discipline of regular worship leading towards the habitual recollection of God. It can’t happen without diligence. Acts don’t become habits if they’re not practiced on a regular, repeating basis. Will Durant’s summary of Aristotle’s ethics hits it right on the nose: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” The same is true of spirituality. It’s not an act (or, alternatively, if we don’t want it to be an act…), it must be a habit.

A devotion like the Daily Office does its work in a period measured by decades, not moments or occasions. We can’t pray it occasionally and expect it to bear the fruit that it’s able to. Likewise, treating the corporate worship of the church as a once a month, drop-in-if-the-mood-strikes affair fails to train us in the paths of holiness in the ways that weekly attendance does.

This is not to try and set up a New Legalism. There was a letter that started floating around Europe and the Middle East at some point in the sixth century, originally composed in Latin and eventually translated into virtually every medieval local language of which we have record. It was allegedly written by Christ himself in heaven and dropped through the clouds into Jerusalem, and it is filled with dire warnings against anyone who didn’t go to church on Sundays and who did any sort of “secular” work. In countries where people did work, it threatened plagues, and famines, and widespread disasters. I’m happy to say that several councils and church leaders did denounce this crude attempt at social control—including St. Boniface, the 8th century English-born Apostle to the Germans who had stern words for those who circulated it—yet the mentality that it evoked and effects it wrought in law codes across Europe persist to the modern day. We don’t go to church on Sunday lest God blast us; rather it is both our duty and delight to worship together the God who formed us, who loves us, and who was willing to become incarnate and suffer bodily for our redemption and reconciliation.

At its most basic, the discipline of diligence is about priorities. To what degree are we willing to spend our most precious coin, that which we can neither earn nor hoard: our time? The way we choose our activities reveals our priorities above all else. Any relationship worth having must be nurtured with this precious commodity, and our relationship with God is no different.

As the father of two active children, I know how difficult it can be to carve out time. In our time-strapped pluralistic age, schedulers of sporting events and dance rehearsals think nothing of seizing the Sunday morning time slot. While creative use of the available options (like Saturday or Sunday evening services—right, clergy friends?) can help negotiate this treacherous turf, sometimes decisions have to be made. And on those mornings with no good alternatives when ballet wins (I’m looking at you, mandatory Nutcracker dress-rehearsal), do we have the persistence to substitute a family act of worship in lieu of the full-on corporate experience?

To tell the truth, I’m also sometimes envious of my priestly wife and clergy friends for whom praying the Daily Office is (or could be or should be) part of their paid work. As a layman, I can only imagine my boss’s response to a request for paid prayer time! Instead the Offices have to be fit into carefully carved out niches of time that occur between child care and house work and relationship maintenance and regular employment. I’ll freely admit that sometimes those carefully carved niches collapse; sometimes the time I think I have disappears. There are days when the set prayer just doesn’t happen. On those days, I try to at least glance over the psalms for the day, and if that doesn’t happen at least hit the memorized high-points of the Office, and if that doesn’t happen at least a quick prayer of apology. In the grand scheme of things, at least feeling guilty about missing the Office is itself an act of diligence!

On a more serious note, though, while holding up the importance of diligence, we also have to approach the spiritual life as a marathon, not a sprint. This is a life-long path we tread. There will be seasons of our lives where time is easier to find or harder to find. There will be periods where the blocks of time come more freely to our hands, and those when it will not. This, too, is part of the ebb and flow of incarnate life. Our goal should be to be as diligent as possible given the conditions within which we find ourselves.

On Antiphons

A breviary user from a non-Episcopal background sent me a nice note the other day asking about  the antiphons from the Office. She was asking about these texts:

Well can this man say: I sat not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced; I sat alone because of thy hand, for thou hast filled me with indignation.

I have put off the clothing of peace, and put upon me the sackcloth of my prayer; I will cry unto the Everlasting in my days

These are antiphons from the feast of St Benedict; she was struck by them and was curious about what they meant and how they functioned within the liturgy. Let’s begin with the second question first.

Psalm Antiphons

Psalm antiphons have been a standard part of the Office from the early medieval period. Antiphons are small snippets of text, usually a verse or so in length, usually taken from Scripture that are repeated before and after the psalm. (The invitatory antiphon is repeated at several points within the invitatory psalm, but that’s a special case.)

The purpose of the antiphon is to contextualize our hearing/reading of the psalm. The way that we hear the psalm will shift subtly based on the content of the antiphon. It will help draw out certain aspects, and bring certain elements or ideas within the psalms to the fore as they relate to the antiphon.

Antiphons are interpretative devices; they assist in the meaning-making process. However, they are “”underdetermined”which means that they do not impose a meaning on the text but rather only suggest a potential meaning. The relationship between the psalm and the antiphon is not inherently clear. Thus, the interpreter has to do the work to figure out how the antiphon and the psalm relate to one another.

The effect is that the antiphon + psalm combination offers spiritual riches for anyone who has said the Office from one month to fifty years. By not imposing a meaning and by offering a suggestive juxtaposition, each hearer is able to find a spiritual meaning appropriate to their own level of understanding, one that will grow over the years.

For instance, consider Psalm 51, one of the penitential psalms and the single most commonly used psalm in the medieval repertoire. (That’s the one that starts “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness; * in your great compassion blot out my offenses.”) It will read one way if the antiphon is “For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.” It will read another if it is “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Both of these are taken from within the psalm itself. However, choosing one or the other will shift how we hear the text.

Classically, there were common antiphons and propers. For feasts, special antiphons relating to the feast would be appointed; for ordinary days antiphons from the psalm itself would be selected. With Cranmer’s decision to simplify the Office, the psalm antiphons were dropped from Anglican liturgies. The current American prayer book restores the option to use them:

Antiphons drawn from the Psalms themselves, or from the opening sentences given in the Offices, or from other passages of Scripture, may be used with the Psalms and biblical Canticles. The antiphons may be sung or said at the beginning and end of each Psalm or Canticle, or may be used as refrains after each verse or group of verses. (BCP, 935)

Since this legitimates the use of the traditional proper antiphons which were virtually all drawn directly from Scripture, I’ve put them back into the Office in the St Bede’s Breviary. (Because of the way psalms and antiphons were grouped in the traditional Roman Offices, there is not an antiphon for every psalm for the commons. As a result, I’ve made selections from the verses used by St Bede in his abbreviated psalter as a source for antiphons.)

Propers of Abbots

So–the material referenced above comes from the Proper of Abbots since St Benedict was, indeed, a monastic abbot and legislator.

The first antiphon, “Well can this man say: I sat not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced; I sat alone because of thy hand, for thou hast filled me with indignation,” is an adaptation of Jeremiah 15:17. In its original context, it refers to the prophet’s unhappiness with his nation and his rejection of their theological and political decisions in the face of the Babylonian crisis that would ultimately end in the double sack of Jerusalem and its destruction in 587 BC. Isolated as an antiphon and related to abbots, it speaks to the monastic’s choice to isolate himself from society and to choose a life oriented to something other than the idols of his contemporary society.

The second antiphon, “I have put off the clothing of peace, and put upon me the sackcloth of my prayer; I will cry unto the Everlasting in my days,” is a direct citation of Baruch 4:20. In this passage from the apocrypha—in a book attributed to Baruch, the scribe of Jeremiah—it describes an act of penance in reparation for the nation turning away from Torah. As a monastic antiphon, it foregrounds dedication to a life of prayer.

Then, as these two antiphons are brought together in juxtaposition and one seems to lead into another, it does indeed create a potential meaning of a life that rejects the injustice of the wider society and the dedication to a life of prayer as a remedy against it. And, indeed, when you take a look at the original contexts of these two biblical passages, this meaning seems entirely consonant with them. Furthermore, as the monthly psalms have fallen, the first antiphon draws out the contrast drawn between the wicked habits of the “children of men” and the righteousness of God described in Psalm 57; the second leads directly into the question: “ARE your minds set upon righteousness, O ye congregation? * and do ye judge the thing that is right, O ye sons of men?” that kicks off Psalm 58.

So—quick recap—the antiphons are Scripture snippets that provide an interpretive context for the psalms that help us discover new or deeper meanings within them by highlighting certain themes.

On Liturgical History, Meaning, and Function

Again—just a quick thought, but one that I’ve been rolling around for a while in relation to my Prayer Book Spirituality project.

Liturgists, clergy, and those who teach the faith need to be careful when they make claims about the meaning and function of parts of our liturgy based on history.

The reason why things were put in long ago are not necessarily the reasons why they are useful and valuable now. The function that a certain liturgical element had may no longer be the same based on what else has shifted around it.

Liturgies are not just texts—they are always and should be approached fundamentally as enacted practices. However, we do encounter them (particularly historical liturgies) preeminently as texts and we apply principles of textual interpretation to them as we read them and make sense of them.

I’m going to caricature a little bit now… I see some people using historical criticism as a base reading paradigm. As in biblical  scholarship, this perspective believes that identifying when an element came in, where it came from, and why it was added is determinative for what that element means. I wouldn’t agree. I think the history is important to know, but that it operates on the role of being a supplementary fact that may or may not have any real impact on the use and function of an element now.

I prefer to take a reader-response approach as a primary tool among others in my interpretive toolkit. The question I ask, then, is “How have and how do people encounter what’s there largely apart from the original intentions of the authors, editors, and compilers?” This is one of the reasons that I love looking at the late medieval devotional guides for the Mass: they show the wide diversity of actual concrete readings of the liturgy operating from a radical ignorance of liturgical history and development. These texts discover, locate, and/or impose meaning on the liturgy in a variety of ways. Each of these teach us about how meaning can be found in the liturgy. Each of these gives us options to weigh when we start considering how meaning should be found in the liturgy. Some provide very interesting insights worth being recovered. Others—really deserve to be forgotten. But in the act of discovering and winnowing, I think we learn a lot about the process as a whole.

Behind Liturgical Spirituality

So—continuing the pieces that are contributing to a new work on prayer book spirituality… This piece is logically prior to the last one. I felt the need to remind people about what the heart of this whole exercise is about that then I could reference in later sections.

Two things about this piece… First, it flowed while I was writing it, but I think there are some logic jumps between certain paragraphs/topics where the dots need to be filled in for people who don’t live inside my head. Second, I feel like I’m getting one angle on the topic here but that there are other valuable angles that need to be added but I’m not sure if they belong here or elsewhere. Ah well—here goes:

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Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

My wife is, among other things, a coach with our local running club. She’ll have runners come to her and complain that they don’t feel like they’re making much progress. Her first question is “what’s your goal?” Whether it’s maintaining a certain pace for a certain number of miles, setting a new personal record for a given race, or losing a few pounds, there’s got to be a goal. Otherwise the idea of “progress” is a futile one!  Whether they have one or not, her response is inevitably “show me your running log.”  Well—they haven’t filled it out. Or, they have and it shows sporadic workouts scattered across a couple of weeks. Or it may show consistency but no differentiation between types of workouts. With the log in hand, she can ask how their training will help them get to their goal. Once she’s established in their minds a connection between their daily and weekly training and the accomplishment of their longer term goal, she can suggest how consistency and balancing the right kinds of workouts will help them achieve it. The training has to be tailored to the goal.

The practice and metaphor of physical training has been connected with the process of spiritual development since the ancient world. It takes the same kind of discipline and consistency to progress in the spiritual life as it does in physical fitness. Indeed, the technical term for the theory and practice of spiritual development is “ascetical theology” taken from the Greek word askesis that simply means “training.”  Paul taps into the language of physical training (and running specifically!) in 1 Corinthians when he speaks to the Corinthians of his own self-disciplines: “Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified” (1 Cor 9:24-7).  Paul reminds us that we have to have a goal. Not only that, we have to keep a sense that our training is directly contributing to our attainment of that goal.

There is a disconnect between the way that most people approach spirituality and how they approach a concrete project like building a doghouse or a dollhouse. When you’re working on a project like that, there are concrete tasks that you’re trying to accomplish; there’s a goal to work towards and your success can be measured by progress against that goal. We don’t tend to think of prayer and meditation in that same way; you can’t see it taking shape—the framing coming together, milestones being accomplished like getting the roof on. And yet, just because it cannot be easily measured does not mean that there aren’t steps towards progress. Martin Thornton, the Anglican spiritual writer, reminds us that there is one true test of an effective spirituality practice: does it make me a more loving person?

At the end of the day, this is what we are about. We have been created in the image and likeness of God. At the beginning of our making, before even the first cells of our bones were constructed, God framed us in his own image. A God-shaped pattern lies at the heart of our being. As Scripture and tradition have revealed again and again, God’s own character is rooted in love, justice, mercy, and fidelity. The psalms struggle to use the immensity of creation to describe the character of God: “Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, and your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the strong mountains, your justice like the great deep; you save both man and beast, O Lord” (Ps 36:5-6). These same attributes were woven into our being before the cords of our sinews were knit. Where are they now? As beings created to love and serve God and one another, how in touch are we with this fundamental pattern?

Truthfully, we fall far short of the promise of our pattern. We don’t consistently manifest the characteristics that have been built into us. This is the result of sin. Through our own choices, through the choices of others, through the choices that society makes and heaps upon us, we lose sight of who and what we are. We invest ourselves in stories at odds with God’s story, stories about riches and success and fame where what matters is getting ahead—or perhaps stories about needs and hungers and addictions where what matters is quieting the cravings…until they kick up again.  We invest ourselves in patterns of life that are skewed from the pattern that God has laid down for us, patterns grounded in something other than love and faithfulness.

The point of Christian spirituality, then, is to recall us to ourselves. It is to reconcile us to the God who loves us, who created us in his own image, and who cared enough for our redemption to take frail flesh and demonstrate the patterns of love, mercy and justice in the person of Jesus Christ—patterns that led him through the cross to resurrection. In Jesus, in God’s ultimate act of self-revelation and of self-emptying for our sake, we have been called back; we can get in touch with the “us” that God originally created us to be. Therefore, the true test of a Christian spirituality is whether it helps us accomplish this goal: are we freed to love and to most fully be who God created us to be?

But we can’t stop there, either, I’m afraid… The Christian enterprise isn’t just about us—individually. While God cares deeply about the redemption of each one of us, there’s a much bigger scope in view here. God wills the redemption of all humanity, of all creation. Our spiritual work isn’t just about being the best we can be—it’s about participating in God’s monumental effort to reconcile all creation back to the patterns of love, justice, mercy, and fidelity, back to the goodness that it had once and can have again.

To put it another way, Paul reminds again and again in his letters that we have been baptized into the Body of Christ. He means this in a mystical sense—that we are connected into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—but he means it socially as well—that we are connected into the community of all the others who have been connected into Jesus as well, the Church. But being incorporated into the Body is the beginning of the process, not its end. It’s not enough to be grafted into the Body of Christ if we don’t likewise share in the Mind of Christ which is so famously laid out in the Christ-hymn of Philippians: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross…” (Phil 2:5-8). Ephesians reminds us that this is the point of the whole exercise; Christian spirituality isn’t just about you—your spiritual success is tied to everyone else around you and, indeed, that’s the point of the institutional church: “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. . . . But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love” (Eph 4:12-13; 15-16, emphasis added). We’re not on this journey alone; our own spiritual maturity is tied up with how we model and encourage that maturity in others. Any spirituality or spiritual exercise that cuts us off or makes us feel superior to those around us is not being rightly used.

Thus, the goal of Christian spirituality is to bring to whole Body to Christian maturity. We do this by cultivating that maturity in ourselves and modeling it for others and encouraging them in their own path based on the gifts for building up the Body that we’ve been given. Alright—if that’s the goal, then how do we measure our progress towards it? Well, this is a little more subjective. It’s not like running; I can’t see how I’m doing in the same way that I glance down at a running watch to check my pace.

As Thornton suggests, the most reliable guide is an honest appraisal of how we treat those around us. Are we treating the inevitable provocations of daily life with anger and resentment or with patience and compassion? (Well—at least increasing degrees of patience…) When I sit and ponder how my spiritual life is going, one of the best measures I know is to consider how my wife and kids might rate me; am I being a more thoughtful and patient husband? Am I responding to their demands on my time in appropriate ways? And not just them—how would my co-workers answer the same question?

The habits of devotion foster in us the habits of virtue. We are transformed—slowly and with a certain amount of inevitable back-sliding—gradually towards the mind of Christ. As disconnected as devotion and virtue might appear from one another, both the wisdom of the church and our own experience will confirm it. I remember once being angry at my wife over some petty household argument—which I can’t even remember now—and thinking that I couldn’t bear to pray Evening Prayer then because once I had done so, I’d have better perspective, be more centered, and that I would have to acknowledge that she was right!

I also want to offer a word of caution concerning another kind of test. Sometimes we get the sense that the point of spiritual devotions (or even church services and sacraments) is to feel uplifted or inspired. That the correct judge if it “worked” is whether we felt the Spirit moving or if we felt a spiritual high. Now, I’m a firm believer in the presence and the movement of the Spirit. I’ve discerned it in liturgical worship, in free-church worship, in the sacraments, and outside of them as well. And yet I’ve also felt emotional states that seem much like it that passed quickly or were the result of some kind of emotional manipulation. You can’t manipulate the Spirit and you can’t manipulate long-term formation. The point of a solid devotional practice is not momentary surges of emotion; long-term formation and transformation is measured in years and decades. Sometimes good and worthwhile devotional practices will inspire us—and sometimes they may feel like work for long stretches of time.

As we continue to think together about spirituality, I want you to keep this in back of your mind. We’re doing this for a reason. There’s a purpose to all of this. There is a goal. We want to connect back into the God who calls us each by name. We want to align our priorities with his priorities. We want to make our individual stories part of his greater, larger, deeper story. We want to be transformed as he is, so that we might love as he does so that, so graced, we might better understand and express his love for us and for his whole creation.

SCLM Meeting Update

I think that the meeting went quite well yesterday.

The main topic of conversation, of course, was how to get the work done with the amount of budget that we have. We did get a fair amount of funding—enough for two face-to-face meetings—but we’re a product-oriented group rather than just being policy-oriented. That is, we produce things (our liturgical stuff) rather than just making decisions that others will then implement. A lot of what we hoped to do with meetings and consultants will either have to be done by and in the Commission or not at all. Web meetings and conference calls will be our main methods of communicating together.

That all sounds fine to me—I’m used to working that way.

There was some vigorous discussion around my proposal for HWHM. Overall, most of the people who expressed an opinion about it were positive. There were some questions about its scope and whether it was doable. I expected that and feel that concern as well—it’s a lot of work, but I think is necessary work. The chief reservations around the idea focused on concern about a two-tiered system. That is, are we setting up the Calendar as an “upper” tier and the Almanac as a “lower” tier? This seems to be the main hurdle to overcome. Sandye and I have been directed to put together a structure for the work to present at our June meeting to give people a hands-on feel of what this would really look like.

On the Electronic Publication front, it appears that Church Publishing already maintains a database of liturgical material that it uses to produce the material that it prints. That database would not provide exactly what we’re talking about for a device/platform independent means of communicating the material. However, they already have a system of tagging in place that could be adopted in an XML format. I found that quite interesting on the technical level.

As you can imagine, the main debate here was around copyright and cost. The first discussion was around what exactly the General Convention resolutions were asking: does “freely available” mean that they should be” easily accessible” (for purchase) or does it mean that they should be provided electronically “without cost”? Several people who had been on the liturgical/prayer book committee at GC indicated that they had intended it to mean “without cost.” My sense is that this is the will of the Commission—to figure out a way to provide these materials for free on the internet. But what would that do to Church Publishing and the Church Pension Group? I noted that, particularly with prayer/spiritual materials, a digital and a physical copy are not mutually exclusive; people will often buy and use in hardback what they already have electronically. We shouldn’t paint it as a zero-sum game. Nancy from Church Publishing agreed and said that they did have some material showing that to be the case as well. The main deliverable here for our next meeting, then, is for the Church Publishing folks to take a look at what it would do to their costs and how feasible free electronic dissemination is based on their current business model.

So—I’d say that some progress is being made. However, nothing has been made official at this point; no final decisions have been made. It’s progress, but still tentative progress that may yet be overturned.