Category Archives: Spirituality

Spirituality Rant

The place I attend has an interest in talking about “spirituality”. It’s got an outdoor labyrinth and time set aside for an indoor one and hosts a Taize service once a month (that is hosted in other local places in other weeks).

I like Taize stuff and it formed an important part of assuring that I remained engaged and interested in Christianity when I was in college because I found through it a contemplative side of Christian worship I hadn’t experienced before. (I’ve since found it in many other kinds of Christian worship, both personal and public.)

Even labyrinths aren’t bad things when properly understood. When we understand that it grows out of the pilgrimage concept and recognize it as an imageless form of the stations of the cross/journey to the cradle/etc., then it plays a useful if occasional role in cultivating Christian spirituality. Too often to my mind, however, it becomes overly focused on the “personal journey” and the place of God as both companion and telos is lost, robbing it of its potential for specifically Christian formation.

I’m no opposed to these kinds of things–but neither should we mistake them for the heart of Christian spirituality!! From where I sit, I often see churches promoting spiritual practices of this order (throw in “Celtic” spirituality et al.) it seems to me we’re majoring in the minors and leaving the center by the wayside.

What is the center of Christian Spirituality? I’d argue it’s exactly the same as a correct definition of liturgy: the ordered and bounded encounter with the entirety of Scripture and the God described therein.

As such, the central practice of Christian spirituality is grounded in the public liturgies of the Church: the Mass and Office. They serve as an inexhaustable sources of spiritual richness because of their interpretive methods and mechanisms. That is, the liturgy functions through the simple principle of juxtapostion; the liturgical cycles put different texts together, then the liturgical compositions for the day/season use a decidedly underdetermined approach to relate them. That is, the colleects, hymns, propers, never come right out and explain the connections, rather they simply hint at them or draw attention to one aspect of them. The power of the liturgy lies in this underdetermined interpretation–the liturgy never tries to fully explain itself or its ways, leaving us always capable of finding new and more connections between and throughout the texts brought together.

This is what we need to teach. This is what we need to promote.

Sure, the other stuff is good too—in its place. And its place is the recognition that even all the ancillary forms of Christian spirituality can not and should not be seen apart from the center. To tease this out a bit, embracing—say, medieval spiritualities like the Rhinelanders or the anchorites—is all well and good, but we misinterpret it if we don’t see it arising from the established public forms of spirituality.

The center is the key. The ordered and bounded encounter with Scripture and the God who animates, breathes, and speaks through it is what we fundamentally need to be about.

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Lenten Preparation from M

I thought I’d posted this before but couldn’t find it—here’s a bit from one of M’s sermons that I think captures the proper perspective on Lent:

The season of Lent is often associated with deprivation or giving something up. Our Prayer Book reminds us that Lent in the Early Church was about fasting and penitence and invites us today into a period of prayer, fasting, repentance, and self-denial. But Lent can also be a time to add things to our lives, especially holy habits. The Prayer Book also invites us into a period of self-examination, reading and meditating on God’s Word. If you’re like me, though, the idea of
adding just one more thing to your life is almost unbearable. I mean—life is hard enough as it is with juggling children, jobs, and relationships. How can you hope to fit in more spiritual things?

The word Lent comes from an old word meaning springtime. One way to think about Lent without stressing yourself out is to think about it like an early springtime garden. In the early spring last year’s beautiful garden can look like quite a mess. Heaps of leaves from the fall lay around, dead plants from the previous year poke up, and maybe some industrious weeds have already gotten a head start on you. If you want a beautiful garden again this year, then it’s time to begin again. You have to start by getting rid of the stuff that’s there—maybe even stuff that once was living, vibrant, and beautiful but isn’t anymore. So you start raking…what activities in your life seem to just exist to fill space—and don’t really add anything to your life? And you start pulling up last year’s dead plants…what are those intentions that you always wanted to do but never got around to and
now feel guilty about? Or those things that you use to do because they gave you joy and peace, but now don’t? Finally you go after those little weeds…what new little things are poking up in your life that you’re not terribly proud of?

Once all of the clutter has been cleared away, it’s time to put in some new plants. Now some people may just put in fully-grown plants right away but most start with new plants, with young plants that require care and nurturing or else they will die right a way. They have to be tended for a while until they can live on their own without constant watering and care. This is the helpful way to think about adding things to your life—not piling yet another thing onto an already full schedule. If you’re going to give something up, give away something that sucks up your time and energy, and plant something beautiful and life-giving in its place. Like taking a few minutes to read the Bible with your morning cup of coffee or reading one or more of the daily devotions in the Prayer Book with your kids, spouse, or a friend.

So instead of thinking just about giving things up or piling things on, think of Lent as your early springtime garden that needs cleaning up the old overgrowth and putting in some new things. These are the holy habits. Holy habits are the things that we are called to nurture and, like young plants, habits really do have to be nurtured before they become natural. These are the holy habits that discipleship demands and that today’s Gospel tells us to take up during
Lent.

Discipleship, taking up our cross, is a life-long process, not just something we do during Lent. It is a daily task that requires discipline, strength, prayer, and assistance from God. We as Christians are called to be disciples each day whether things in our lives are going well or not. Discipleship is not something to be taken lightly, done only when we feel like it, when it’s popular, or when it’s convenient. It is living out holy habits, something we do each day of our lives until we die. The hymn we just sang illustrates this well
when it says in verse 5: “Take up your cross, then follow Christ, nor think till death to lay it down; for only those who bear the cross may hope to wear the glorious crown.”

Lent can be a great time to begin this process, to begin growing the holy habits that will last a lifetime—and beyond. Jesus calls us to discipleship. Jesus calls us to take up our cross. Not to be popular or to follow an easy road but follow him wherever he leads.

New Stuff at the OJN Liturgy Page

I have been alerted through a broken link notice (thanks, bls!) that there is new material that the Order of Julian of Norwich’s Liturgical Publications page. There are three new items: a new set of collects, a 2008 kalendar, and—perhaps most exciting—the order’s hymnal from Advent through Lent. I’d posted Advent bits but did not have the time to get to the rest. Thankfully, they have…

Clint Eastwood as an Anglo-Catholic Liturgist

“I know what yer thinkin’, punk…

“The evening of the 20th by all rights oughtta be the First Vespers of St. Thomas the Apostle, a second class universal double feast. But yer thinkin’ maybe–just maybe–the Second Vespers of a second class feria in Sapentia-tide just might take it…and you can get away with usin’ the ‘O’ antiphon with the Magnificat instead of the one appointed for St. Thomas…

“Ya gotta ask yerself a question: do I feel lucky? Well, do ya–punk?”

(The answer, of course, is that the antiphon for the Magnificat is that appointed for St Thomas [Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; * blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed] However, the “O” antiphons appear on the 20th and 21st as commemorations—after the collect of the day, with their versicle & response [if you’re using them] and followed by the collect of the Third Sunday of Advent.)

Advent Goodness from the OJN

Two items for Advent:

  • I’ve scanned the hymns used by the Order of Julian of Norwich during the season of Advent and compiled them into a single document (Advent_Hymns). Father John-Julian appointed hymns for First and Second Vespers of the four Sundays of the season and in doing so incorporated the traditional Lauds and Matins hymns as well. For the sake of completness, I also added the Marian Antiphon for Advent (Alma Redemptoris) at the end of the file. The translations are not under copyright (but see the fair use terms on the side-bar) since they were prepared specifically for the Order into contemporary (Rite II) English. The sole exception is the final hymn; it was composed by Fr. John-Julian himself. The hymns contained here in order of appearance by original language incipit are:
    • Vos ante Christi tempora (Paris Breviary, XVIII cent.)
    • Conditor alme siderum [aka Creator alme siderum] (Ascr. St. Ambrose, VII cent.)
    • Verbum supernum prodiens (Unknown, V cent.)
    • In noctis umbra desides (C. Coffin, Paris Breviary, XVIII cent.)
    • Vox clara ecce intonat [aka En clara vox] (Unknown, V cent.)
    • Instantis Adventum Dei (C. Coffin, Paris Breviary, XVIII cent.)
    • Jordanis oras praevia (C. Coffin, Hymni Sacri, XVIII cent.)
    • They knew you not (John-Julian, OJN, 1997)
  • Fr. John-Julian has also sent the kalendar and ordo for the 2007-2008 liturgical year (ordo-2007-8.pdf).

The traditional (i.e., Anglo-Saxon/Sarum/Tridentine) Office hymn distributions are:

Links go to the Latin and English parallel texts at the wondrous hymn page at Thesaurus Precum Latinarum.

Random Advent Thought

M mentioned something to me the other day and it’s quite stuck in my head now…

Why don’t we ever see pictures/icons/statues of the pregnant Mary? Seems like an ideal Advent image… Even the “pre-Christmas” pictures just tend to have her as a lump on a donkey and don’t really show her as what she was—a pregnant mother.

Pullman Loses

Much has been made of Philip Pullman’s antipathy to Christianity and the film The Golden Compass based on his novels has been refered to as “Narnia for atheists.”

After seeing an ad for the film featuring a regal woman assisting the protagonists, Lil’ G turned to me and asked, “Hey Daddy, is Mary in that movie?”