Episco-pitch: The Short Version

A number of people have been posting their elevator pitch for the Episcopal Church. A while back I did my elevator pitch for the faith in general which I still quite like. But here’s my take. It assumes a very short elevator ride:

Faith seeking Understanding,
Rapt in the beauty of holiness.
Treading the sacramental path into love.

Perhaps it even qualifies as an Episcopal haiku rather than elevator pitch…

Maundy Thursday Musings

Not being a priest, I have no authority to shape liturgical celebrations at the local level. In a certain sense, this gives me the freedom to play “what if” and think through various scenarios without having to commit to one to embody in the midst of community that has its own histories that may either support or resist what I dream up in my head!

Of the various liturgical possibilities and quandries within the span of high-church Anglicanism, I think that perhaps the most interesting with which to wrestle is the tone of Maundy Thursday.

As I interpret the various services I’ve seen and attended, there seem to be two main types. The first is to emphasize the establishment of the Eucharist. In this version, Maundy Thursday is radically different from the Lenten and Holy Week liturgies around it. The vestments are white, the Gloria in Excelsis—unheard since the Sunday of the Transfiguration (or perhaps the Annunciation)—peals out its joy, and the Eucharist is celebrated in its highest possible state.

The second is to emphasize its setting within Triduum and Holy Week. Here the vestments are either the crimson or ox-blood or Lenten purple of the season, the Gloria remains tucked away, and the emphasis rest less on the gift of the sacrament to the Church than a man’s prophetic—and proleptic—last meal with his friends.

Like most of the mysteries of the Church, there ought to be a sense of both/and rather than a strict either/or. However, when it comes to the textures of the service, the vestments, the music, the tone of the event, you really do have to choose one or the other. Vestments are either crimson or white. In Rite II, you either use the Gloria or the Kyrie (or the Trisagion). The Opening Acclamation is either penitential or not.

The prayer book to which we look for guidance, gives us very little to go on. Indeed, it begins with the singularly unhelpful rubric, “The Eucharist begins in the usual manner, using the following Collect, Psalm, and Lessons.” Really? “Usual”? What’s that supposed to mean—usual Lent, usual Holy Week, or usual Feast of Our Lord/Institution of the Eucharist? The collect emphasizes the institution of the Eucharist as its central point, yet does not omit a reference to the night before Christ’s suffering.

As a liturgist who is also a biblical scholar whose work focuses on the gospels, I find this one of our toughest nuts to crack.

That is, if we celebrate Maundy Thursday as a Eucharistic festival, do we overshadow, obscure, or distract from our experience of Triduum and the gospels’ emphasize on the events around Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection? Recall the, I think accurate, summation of Mark’s Gospel as a Passion Narrative with an extended introduction. Recall that the evening of Maundy Thursday begins at John 13; almost a third of the John’s Gospel, from chapter 13 to the middle of chapter 20, occurs within the three-day span.

In one sense, this quandry can be constructed along classical lines of Christian argument as the age-old fight of sacrament vs. Scripture. But I think it’s deeper than that. Really wrestling with it engages some of the deep questions about the inter-relationship between the meal of Jesus in the upper room and the sacrament of the Church society, between our Lord’s command to repeat what he did in his memory and the forms in which we share this ceremony now. Rather complex questions of sign, intention, metaphor, and continuity vie with one another here.

My own preference is to let Maundy Thursday be the Triduum’s inauguration, where Jesus gathers with those whom he trusts and to whom he teaches his last lesson of love in two ways, both firmly rooted in ritual action. Then we watch a third way unfold as trust unravels, and he is betrayed into the hands of those who seek his life. I’m all for a blow-out celebration of the sacrament—and that’s why we have Corpus Christi, a day to revel in the gift of grace given to the Church. But to make Maundy Thursday that day, it seems to me, obscures a bit the uncomfortable yet necessary truth that the betrayer of trust is a disciple who loves Jesus. As we do…

The best of the celebration-style gatherings that I have seen use the contrast between the service’s glorious start and its stark ending in stripped sanctuary as a pivot. The contrast is an integral part of the liturgy’s experience. And I think that it can serve as an effective entry into the Three Great Days. But, on the whole, my preference is to experience it the other way.

For my part, of course, it’s not in my hands. I actually don’t know how my parish will celebrate it this year; I’ll find out next week. And I’ll be fine with whichever way we do it. However, I still see this day with its complex confluence of themes worth wrestling with…

 

Logos Anglican Base Package

The good folks at Logos Bible Software have sent me a review copy of their latest work, the Anglican Base Packages. I’m going to be writing a formal review for this software for The Living Church, but as a means to prepare for that, I’ll be putting it through its paces and posting informal reviews here as I work through various sections of it.

A little back story… I first used Logos Bible Software when the religion department at St. Olaf got a computer lab and installed it there 20 years ago (!). I liked it enough that I bought a copy for myself that I used through the latter half of college and my first few years in seminary. Looking through the old files on my hard drive, I found a review of it I wrote 10 years ago while assisting in the revision of the third edition of Biblical Exegesis. I liked it then too, but thought its search capabilities at that time came in second to the other big dog on the block, BibleWorks (then version 5). Since then, I haven’t done a lot with Bible software. I’m curious to see how far progress has come in the last ten years!

When I first got involved with Logos, it tended towards two main markets, Bible-studying evangelicals and academics. They were one of the first early systems to have good original language support, but a lot of their English-language library add-ons tended towards conservative evangelical devotional materials—mostly things that had gone out of print. In the days before Google Books, this was a good thing if you wanted such material. These days, post-Google Books, you have to step up your game significantly!

And they have…

In recent years, they have produced a product line specifically geared towards Roman Catholics called Verbum. In addition to biblical materials, they included good resources across the span of church history—from the Fathers through the medieval period up to the modern day.

Now—it’s our turn. Just looking at the number and span of resources in the Anglican Base Packages, I’m blown away. The people who put the list of resources together really knew what they were doing. It has many of the patristic and medieval resources that were in the Catholic set, and includes a wide array of Anglican authors through the centuries and across party divisions. Naturally, it has a strong prayer book section. The biblical material looks great too. I plan to look at all of these areas in detail in further posts, so I won’t dig into them here. Overall, my first impression of the package has been fantastic!

Here’s the official press release on it:

Bellingham, Wash., March 27, 2014 — Logos Bible Software has announced a new line of scholarly libraries tailored to Anglicans/Episcopalians. The new “base package” libraries offer all the features of Logos’ nondenominational base packages, with a resource lineup that meets the specific needs of Anglican scholars and pastors.

Conventionally, in-depth study requires access to a large physical library and large blocks of time for study and reflection. Logos’ Anglican base packages aim to overcome these barriers — they include hundreds of titles from the Anglican tradition, accessible on a computer or mobile device. All the resources are linked using Logos’ proprietary code, enabling users to jump between Scripture and Tradition with a click. This means Anglican scholars can spend less time on busywork and more time learning and reflecting.

“The Logos Anglican program is one of the best tools for personal spirituality and ministry that I have come across,” said Rev. C. K. Robertson, PhD, canon to the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. “Actually, it is more of a toolbox than just a tool, as there are so many wonderful aspects of it that I am only beginning to discover! Not only are the biblical materials incredibly helpful, but the pieces devoted to the Book of Common Prayer and the other Episcopal resources make this absolutely invaluable. I heartily commend this work to all members of the Episcopal Church.”

Logos has been creating world-class Bible software for more than 20 years. It has almost 2 million users in more than 210 countries, and partners with more than 200 publishers to provide the best content from the scholarly world. Logos’ in-house biblical-language and theological scholars do original research and consult on software development.

Last year, Logos hired an Anglican expert, Ben Amundgaard, to design a product line that would meet the needs of Anglican and Episcopalians. Amundgaard consulted other Anglican scholars and emphasized the classic Anglican integration of Scripture, Reason and Tradition; the result is a biblical and theological library customized to the needs of Anglican scholarship.

“I have happily used Logos software for Bible reference and study since 1995,” said Rt. Rev. George Wayne Smith, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri. “Every day I open the software to pray Morning and Evening Prayer from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer 1979, using the Logos resource for the Daily Lectionary. I also have at hand works by foundational writers in the Anglican tradition — theologians like Thomas Cranmer, Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes. I am thrilled to learn that Logos is releasing even more packages from this tradition that I love and call home.”

Little Hours and Lay Devotion

A few random thoughts coming together here…

Books of Hours and prymers were the pre-eminent expressions of lay devotion in the pre- and early Reformation period. As I’ve written before, these books had quite a variety of things in them but the key elements tended to be Little Offices—most invariably the Little Hours of the BVM and the Hours of the Dead, frequently one or more of the Little Hours of the Cross, Passion, Holy Spirit, All Saints or Trinity—psalms, litanies, and invocations of the saints.

I want to spend a little bit of time on the Little Hours.

Medieval devotion went in a variety of directions, but there was always at least one strain that looked to monastic models. The first liturgical books in the hands of the laity were psalters. Psalters deserve a number of posts dedicated to them, but for the moment, I’ll go with a quick and dirty overview. A liturgical psalter contained more than psalms. Containing the variable material outside the ordinary of the Daily Office, it contained the psalms, a number of canticles, sometimes hymns, and the additional devotions of the monks used before, after, or between the main offices. This is where we see the Little Offices appearing.

In the early medieval period—so, we’re talking AD 700-900—devotions to particular persons and doctrines began to appear in the continental monasteries. Their form varied, but generally, they were modeled on the regular choir Offices (Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, etc.)  except that they tended to be shorter, use fewer psalms, and have fewer variable elements. These were recited in addition to the regular choir Offfices. As the Benedictine rule became normative throughout the lands under Carolingian sway as interpreted by Benedictine of Aniane and his comrades, and as the Cluniac ideal of the choir-based monk spread concurrently, these offices popped up all over the place. It was through their incorporation into the psalters, that they spread into lay hands and became features of lay devotion.

Completely skipping over lay use of psalters and the transition into books of hours, as we enter the hey-day of books of hours in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we notice some patterns. Out of the many versions of the Little Offices of various sorts, there has been a certain amount of consolidation and simplification. That is, the Little Office of the BVM and the Office for the Dead have moved to a central position, others have receded a bit.

Take the Hours of the Holy Spirit as an example… There are 11th and 12 century Hours of the Little Spirit that are full-fledged offices in their own right.  Thus, the offices outside Matins have an opening, a verse from the Veni Creator Spiritus, a variable psalm with antiphon (reversed at Lauds and Vespers—the psalm coming first), a chapter with a response, and a concluding collect. (Matins is more involved, has 3 readings and responsaries in proper Matins fashion…)

By the 15th century, the variable psalm has dropped and the chapter and response have shortened into something more like a basic verse and response. Thus, the later hours are chiefly, opening, hymn verse, verse/response, and collect. Instead of standing on their own, they were joined to the end of the Hours of the BVM. This becomes a standard pattern. The hymn verses and collects change each hour, but there is no variation from day to day and season to season. As a result, these become eminently memorizable. As books of hours spread and become status objects even among those classes with questionable literacy, the static form makes these offices easier to read (fewer changes).

By the time of the first English language prymers, the Hours of the BVM had quite a number of these “memorial” forms consisting on an anthem/antiphon, a verse/response, and a collect appended after Lauds and Vespers. With the coming of the Books of Common Prayer and the suppression of antiphons and v/r patterns, most of these disappeared, but some of their collects linger. In fact, you ought to be familiar with one of them—the collects “for Peace” in the section after the Collect of the Day at morning and Evening Prayer are remnants of the Memorial for Peace.  Too, the collect used at the Little Hours of the Passion is tucked at the end of the Good Friday liturgy on page 282:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death. Give mercy and grace to the living; pardon and rest to the dead; to your holy Church peace and concord; and to us sinners everlasting life and glory; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Ok—so that’s a real quick fly-by of the history of the Little Hours. In fact, I’ll make it even shorter:

  • They started out as focused versions of choir Offices
  • Over time, most were reduced to invariable forms through the day consisting of a verse-length hymn, a versicle/response, and a collect
  • By the time of englishing the liturgy, they entered as collects alone.

The trend for these ancillary devotions is a move to become shorter and less variable. Ergo, they were easier to memorize and to use throughout the day.

What are the implications for lay devotions in our own day?

Do we want to create things that are as variable as possible with as many moving parts as we can find—or does it make more sense to follow the fundamental channels that lay devotion seems to have followed in previous ages?

It seems to me that if I wanted to create intermediary offices as a supplement to the BCP’s Morning and Evening Prayers, I would go with the base pattern: hymn verse, versicle/response drawn from the psalms, collect. Some of the Little Hours, like those of the Holy Spirit and of the Passion, explicitly referred to the time of day and connected the devotion to biblical events that happened at that same time of day. Perhaps that strategy might still retain some utility today.

I wonder if the average hymn verse and/or collect has more or less than 140 characters…?

On Spiritual Honesty

I’ve been neglecting the blog somewhat severely of late… It’s not for lack of ideas. I have several posts bouncing around in my head; it’s purely a lack of time to translate them from brainwaves into electrons.

However, one of the items on my plate did get checked off today. Fr. Allen and the good folks at St. Mary’s, Abingdon invited me speak at their Lenten Luncheon. I had a great time, and had some delicious clam chowder in the bargain!

Here’s what I said…


 

Today, I’d like us to spend a little bit of time fussing around with one of the hardest of the Lenten disciplines. Honesty. I know—fasting, almsgiving, and prayer always get top billing and that’s fine, but what our Mother Church calls us to when we receive the exhortation to a holy Lent is so hard precisely because it’s so simple: The call to a Holy Lent is a call to spiritual honesty.

Ash Wednesday confronts us with two uncomfortable realities. First, that we are mortal. You and I are going to die. And we have all Lent to consider what that means as we watch Jesus’ own movement towards the cross and his death. First, we are mortal. Second, we are sinners. And this is where I want to focus today—I want to think about what this means, and how our prayer book helps us wrestle with this.

For me, there’s one Bible passage that is inextricably bound up with the act of Confession and that’s the fault of the Lutheran Book of Worship. I grew up Lutheran and the Lutheran book steals the Penitential order at the start of the service directly out of our Book of Common Prayer and the Scripture sentence that it always uses before confession is this one from First John: “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

They say that the first step in wrestling with an addiction is recognizing that you need help. And that’s one of the models that we can use to think about our complicated relationship with sin—that it’s an addiction that compels us into certain patterns and behaviors. St. John is gently calling us back to reality. If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves. We are not being honest about ourselves and about our condition.

And there’s a lot fighting against this; one thing we can certainly say about humans is this: we are masters of the fine art of self-deception. We have crafted all kinds of ways to deceive ourselves about all kinds of things! Me, I’m a master Procrastinator. I like to convince myself that if I just forget about something or avoid it long enough and it’ll just go away. That’s one strategy… Then there’s Justification, “Well, that’s not really a sin, I mean it could be for some people, but this is what I just have to do and I have a very good reason for doing it…” Or, another good one is Comparison: “Well, maybe I shouldn’t do that—but it’s not like I’m an axe murderer! Those people are way worse than me!”

And yet—to all of these excuses St. John has one very simple response: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” We don’t fool God. We don’t fool those people against whom we are sinning. And, let’s face it, some of the time we can’t even fool ourselves. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.”

The first step, then, to getting honest about ourselves and about our sin is to begin with the simple fact of acknowledgement. Simply the act of confessing sin names it. It gets it out there. It puts a stick in the spokes of our great engine of self-deception. It doesn’t solve the problem, of course, but it does make us sit up and take notice.

Now, when it comes to prayers of confession, our prayer book gives us several options. The classic is, of course, the one that we inherited from our earlier prayer books at the Eucharist where “we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously have committed.” It’s a great prayer and I love it—but I’m not going to talk about it today. Instead, since we’re talking about honesty, I want to focus on another prayer of confession—the one that we find before the Daily Offices. Here is the prayer of confession at the start of the Rite I, traditional language Morning and Evening Prayer:

Almighty and most merciful Father,
we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep,
we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts,
we have offended against thy holy laws,
we have left undone those things which we ought to have done,
and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us,
spare thou those who confess their faults,
restore thou those who are penitent, according to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord;
and grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

Honesty. That’s where we start out. This prayer names for us five examples by which our sinfulness expresses itself.

  1. we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep,
  2. we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts,
  3. we have offended against thy holy laws,
  4. we have left undone those things which we ought to have done,
  5. and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.

I really like this list. The reason why I like it, is because it focuses less on thou-shalt-nots and from talking about sin in the form of specific discrete bad actions and speaks more of sin as a fundamental misorientation of life. For me it’s that metaphor of the straying sheep that really hits home. We are wandering in the wilderness, following our own inclinations, heedless of the well-marked path of the Shepherd. The opening psalms of Morning Prayer, Psalms 95 and 100 riff on this image of the Shepherd and the sheep. I’d love to go into this more—there’s this really neat interplay between the language in the confession and the language of sheep and Shepherd in the psalms, but we don’t have time to get into it all now—just notice that it’s there for now and ponder it at your leisure.

Another piece of wisdom in this list is the ordering of the last two items. “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” The point the prayer book is making here is that we sin far more by omission than by commission. We sin more in what we don’t do, what we leave off, what we pass by, than what we do do.

Classically, this whole list of five things was gathered together in a summary statement: “and there is no health in us.” This is a good and important summary provided that we understand it correctly. Remember—the translators and editors of the 1552 prayer book where this first appears still had the Latin ringing in their ears; salus can be rendered either as “health” or “salvation.” I read this less as a statement of Calvinistic depravity and more akin to a Lutheran sentiment that we are unable to save ourselves through our own efforts. It’s just like the opening of our collect for this week: “Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves…”

Ok—so, we begin by acknowledging our situation honestly. Yes, we sin. Yes, our lives—like sheep—have wandered off the path of virtue that God has laid down for us. And, as we said, owning this is our first step. Furthermore, we can’t fix this on our own. And so we acknowledge our need for God’s help. “Spare thou those…Restore thou those…and grant that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous and sober life to the glory of the holy Name. If the confession opened with the metaphor of the lost sheep and with the image of misorientation, the end of the confession is about reorientation.

Note how it happens, though. The sheep doesn’t get unlost through its own effort. Just so, we can’t work our way out of this no matter how good our intentions. Remember? There is no health in us; we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. To my mind this is where it gets serious again. I at least want to have the illusion of control here! I at least want to think that there’s something I can do to fix this problem! But no—hear again where the prayer goes:

But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us,
spare thou those who confess their faults,
restore thou those who are penitent, according to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord;
and grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

It’s all God. It’s all grace. We can’t fix ourselves, but instead have to turn ourselves over to the God who promised to spare us, to restore us, and to guide us in right paths for his name’s sake. Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we are not the ones in control of our direction and our destiny. We follow the Shepherd who leads us. And there’s the why of it as well. Why do we seek to live this way? Why do we seek this reorientation? For God’s glory—not ours. “That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of thy holy Name.”

This is the honesty we drive towards in Lent: a realistic assessment of our situation, a realistic assessment from where our help comes, and a clear direction of how—and why—to reorder our steps.

If you pray the one or both of the Offices this Lent, I’d encourage you to be attentive to the words of this daily confession. Ponder it. As its words slip through your mouth, capture them in your heart and consider the discipline of honesty. Consider the reality of your situation, your state. And open your heart to the converting, reforming, refreshing grace of God. Even as we confess, even as we ask for this healing grace, may expect it, and look for signs of its flourishing in our lives.

Let us pray:

Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou
hast made and dost forgive the sins of all those who are
penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that
we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our
wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our
Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Questions from G: Jacob

Now that the girls are getting older (10 and 8 respectively), we’ve been working this Lent on praying Morning and Evening Prayer from the prayer book (well—from the breviary, technically) as we’re able. M and I do the offices as regularly as possible, but it’s usually at a time when the girls are not around. By making a point of doing them as a family we’re modelling it and reinforcing the importance of the Office.

I typically ask at the end if there are any questions. Lil’ G (who’s 10), looked at me the other day and said, “Yeah—why do the psalms talk so much about Jacob?” I thought this was a great question and explained it for her. And, if she’s asking it, other people may be asking it too…

This was a couple of days ago when we were reading through the historical psalms in the 70’s—in particular the stretch from 75-80. Here are some examples take from Ps 75:

  He gave his decrees to Jacob and established a law for Israel, *
which he commanded them to teach their children;

21   When the LORD heard this, he was full of wrath; *
a fire was kindled against Jacob, and his anger mounted against Israel;

71   He brought him from following the ewes, *
to be a shepherd over Jacob his people and over Israel his inheritance.

So, Jacob is one of the great patriarchs of Genesis. When we speak about God and God’s relationship with his people in the early days, we speak of “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” and one of the identifying names for God we find in Exodus is “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (see throughout Exodus 3-6). The story of Jacob is found in Genesis 25 to 36. As you’ll recall, Jacob was the one with all the kids who would turn out to become the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel. And that’s a key point… Not once but twice, Jacob is given a new name from God himself; in both Gen 32:28  (after wrestling with God by night) and in Gen 35:10 (where God is confirming the blessings on Jacob) he is called “Israel.”

As a result, when see the phrase, “the sons/children of Israel,” it’s functionally interchangeable with “sons/children of Jacob” and thus refers to all the people of the 12 tribes of (from) Israel/Jacob.

If you glance back up at the psalm snippets, you’ll see this pretty clearly; one of the most common features of Hebrew poetry—psalms included—is parallelism, saying the same kind of thing in slightly different words. As you see, Jacob and Israel are used in parallel, one balancing the other.

However, you’ll also note that the psalms doesn’t seem to really be referring to the patriarch—and that’s also true. Both “Jacob” and “Israel” came to function as territorial designations. As you’ll recall, the 12 tribes were all allotted specific parcels of land in the gripping chapters of Joshua 14-21. “Israel” was shorthand for the territory. When the kingdom split after the death of Solomon, Israel became the designation for the Northern Kingdom while Judah was the name of the Southern Kingdom. As a result, in the psalms, Jacob/Israel/Samaria (the capital city of Israel) are frequently used to refer to the northern political entity—the part that didn’t have the Temple, that flirted more with apostacy due in part to close connections with the Phoenicians (think Jezebel, wife of the northern King Ahab), and which was crushed by the Assyrians in 722 BC.

Because the Temple was in Jerusalem, the capital of Judah, the Southern Kingdom, and many of the psalms reflect a Jerusalem setting, we occasionally have a bit of trash-talking at the North’s expense. Indeed, Ps 75 provides a perfect example of this: it has a long narrative section that describes God’s rocky relationship with Jacob/Israel. Then, right near the end, we have a brief section about how much more God loves Judah than Israel. It should come as no surprise that many scholars see this as a latter section added on in the South to a pre-existing northern composition!

TRECing from the Pew (Part 1)

I’ve tried really hard to get into the TREC stuff—honestly, I have. For those unfamiliar, TREC is the taskforce that’s trying to come up with a concept for restructuring the Episcopal Church. They’ve put out two documents, one on networks and recently one on administration. People who can and do get into this kind of thing have done a very good job talking about them. In my opinion, Crusty Old Dean, Scott Gunn, and Susan Snook have presented the most cogent readings of them. If you’re only going to take the trouble to read one of these, read Susan’s; since so much of this is ostensibly about budget, she sheds a clear and penetrating light on the huge gaps in the analyses to date.

My overwhelming sense is that I’m having a hard time making sense out of it. Fundamentally, I’m coming from a different place than the taskforce seems to be. I’m active on the churchwide level because of my work with the Standing Commission on Liturgy & Music, but I still a newbie to churchwide-level politics. Rather, I’m a vestryman at a small congregation facing the struggles that a hundred other small parishes are. I don;t feel like I have the data or the vision to do a system-wide picture; I’ve got to start where I am.

So—I’m a guy in a pew. I recognize that I come with a particular perspective. I’m trying to become a mature Christian. Thus, I realize that my faith does and should effect many different aspects of my life in terms of evangelism, outreach, works of charity and mercy and justice, and so forth. However, my chief charisms are around teaching the faith and its spiritual practices, so that’s where my perspective will tend to skew.

What do I need from the church? What do I need a church structure to do and be and provide?

As a liturgical, sacramental Christian, my main need from the Episcopal Church is a functional worshiping community. Thus, I primarily need:

  • A healthy clergy person educated in the teachings of the faith and in the proper conduct of its liturgies
  • A sound liturgy with roots in the apostolic and catholic and Anglican tradition shared in common with other worshiping communities

Ok—let’s stop there.

For me, a “healthy clergy person” implies the need for a bishop who is an overseer—a provider of episcope (see the root there?). As the leader of a diocese, I would expect a bishop to function kind of like my (secular) boss: we talk regularly, she knows how I’m doing, she knows what tasks she needs me to do, she makes sure I have the tools to get them done, and she calls me on the carpet when they don’t get done or don’t get done according to the requirements. Shouldn’t this sort of communication be the primary job of a bishop? I don’t always get the sense that it is, though.

Second, “healthy” implies the need for standards. We have to have clear expectations about what’s healthy and what’s not and these should be clear and consistent across the church. Ok—so we need church-wide rules and therefore a group that creates these and checks them over to make sure they work: a Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons.

My other requirement for a clergy person besides “healthy” is “educated.” There needs to be mastery of a certain body of knowledge and a certain set of skills that include doctrine, the Scriptures, the respectful and informed conduct of worship, pastoral care, and basic parish administration. (Ideally these are all products of a certain kind of spiritual formation—the knowledge and the skills proceed directly from the spiritual formation rather than being add-ons or there being a separation between them.) Yes, we have seminaries but their viability is coming into question, and there are a variety of other options out there from non-Episcopal seminaries to various mutual ministry schemes. Again, I would think that the sets of knowledge and skills should be common across the church. The GOEs (General Ordination Exams) head in this direction, but their interpretation and application varies widely from diocese to diocese.

Moving to my second bullet, a sound and common liturgy also needs to proceed from a church-wide level. So, yes, I see a need for a Standing Commission on Liturgy & Music to keep an eye on our essential worshiping needs: the Book of Common Prayer and appropriate music in harmony with the prayer book.

As a liturgical sacramental type, I believe that Christian worship should normatively be celebrated within a consecrated space.  Of course it can and does happen anywhere that two or three are gathered; I’m not attempting to deny that. My point is that our legacy, speaking spiritually, physically, and geographically, comes with church buildings. I don’t know about anybody else, but in my parish and in many parishes with which I’m familiar, the building is both a huge issue in terms of maintenance and is one of our largest costs alongside staff. We waste spend more time in vestry meetings talking about the building or about finding money to fix the building than anything else.

Now—I’m an IT guy. I don’t know crap about buildings except that rain isn’t suppose to come through the roof, wood isn’t suppose to have suspicious piles of dust by it, and water is supposed to stay in the pipes and come when someone turns the handle. If my vestry and I waste spend this much time talking about the building, I think it would be very helpful to have a set of directives and best-practices from people who know what they’re talking about regarding a host of building topics from emergency maintenance and regular maintenance to legal issues to resources for grants to energy efficiency recommendations. There’s no way a church-wide body could solve the problems we have at a local level. But I wonder if some big-picture clarity from folks who know what they’re talking about could free up vestries and clergies to talk about local ministry instead of flailing about with building talk? A Standing Commission on Property Concerns?

The other clear requirement that I need are resources to help my parish be a healthy community that nurtures itself towards the goal of Christian maturity. I see two pieces here: first, a better understanding of organizational dynamics (how various sized parishes act, what is healthy community behavior for a given size, what systems and behaviors are signs of typical problems), and second, resources to help direct parishioners in community and individually towards Christian maturity—deepening their faith and embracing a life of discipleship.

I’ve talked enough at this point—I’ll come back to these topics later…

Thinking about Lent and Books

Lent is officially here. At my house, among other things, we’re taking stock of the way that we do things and what stuff is lying around. It’s time to think again about if, when, and how our stuff is holding us back.

For me this is always challenging work. The bulk of my possessions is easily in one major area: books. I’ve been through lots of schools and accumulated books through my course of study. I’ve also had the opportunity to plunder two good clergy libraries (people who were retiring and gave me an opportunity to go through their shelves and grab what I liked…). I have more bookshelves than can easily be numbered let alone books. And yet—that’s an awful lot of stuff…

In our last cross-country move, I actually had to go back and do the trip again because we had too many things the first time around. And the bulk of it was books…

They say that in letting go of things, you have to remember that relationships are more important than stuff. Sometimes we hold on to clutter and crap because we received various things from various people; we hold onto the material as a way of holding onto the relationship or holding on to the memories. The great mental hurdle is the realization that the relationship doesn’t have to go just because the item does.

But a book is a relationship.

It’s an opportunity to connect with someone else and to see inside their mind.

To let go of the book is to let go of that opportunity.

At least, that’s the way I’ve always rationalized it to myself…

When M and I first discussed getting Kindles (several years ago now), one of the decisions to get them was because of the promise of the reduction of physical books. If you can just have it electronically, then you don’t need to have it physically. Yeah, well, the promise inherent there hasn’t quite materialized yet.

I am getting closer, though. Over the last few days I’ve started thinking more seriously about thinning out the book collection. I won’t say I’m quite ready yet, but forward progress is occurring.

Of course, one of the things making this easier is the growing availability of electronic materials. Amazon has been doing a great job of convincing/coercing publishers into publishing electronically. There are a number of hopeful movements out there. You’ll note that Forward Movement is doing a great job of putting out things electronically (like Fr. John-Julian’s Stars in a Dark World). The St. Augustine’s Prayer Book will be available there soon (I just got word today that it’s finally being sent off to the printer on Wednesday!)

I was going to link to an example of a scholarly book where the hardback was selling for over a hundred dollars and the Kindle version was available for under ten—which is definitely movement in the right direction!—but upon checking I now see that the Kindle version is back above a hundred bucks. Ok—things are still shaking out there.

Additionally, a little competition is never a bad thing… I’ve been a huge fan of Paulist Press’s Classics of Western Spirituality series ever since encountering the mystics through it in college. It’s bugged me for a while that none of these books aren’t available for the Kindle. However, I recently got word that Logos is preparing to put out the series for their reference system. Right now they’re offering it in very large chunks: the whole set; or the set in three sections: Pre-Reformation Christianity, Post-Reformation Christianity, and Judaism, Islam, and Native American Religions. They’re in a pre-order state right now; I can only assume that individual volumes will also be available for sale once the set is completed.

Now—once I get a hold of an electronic copy of Meister Eckhart or Johannes Tauler or Jeremy Taylor, does that mean I’ll be willing to part with my paper copy?

Hmm. I’ll have to keep pondering that…

Lenten Reflection

I haven’t put up many pieces on the Episcopal Cafe recently. That’s not a function of anything other than being overly busy, and not having anything compelling bubbling up to the top. However, I do have a new piece up as a kick-off to Lent.

Lent can be a mixed bag around the Church. Some see it as a time to curb minor food cravings without reference to its deeper intentions; others see it as a time for renewed advocacy of a particular cause. Too, I think some people in some years need more or less Lent than others. For me, I’m feeling a need for more and for a turn back to the personal side of Lent. I need to honestly take stock of where I am, and there’s no way I can do that without taking sin seriously.

In that light, my post invites us to a Lenten reflection about the dark places within ourselves, and the Gospel call to let in the light of Christ.

Decision on Calendar Issues

The Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music met yesterday afternoon. One of the top topics was the future of commemorations and the state of the Episcopal sanctoral calendar. I had pulled together the work of the subcommittee into a document which was further modified by committee and which was subsequently posted to the SCLM blog where we asked for feedback. Based on the feedback and discussion in the SCLM, we will be moving forward with a reconfiguration of HWHM tentatively retitled “A Great Cloud of Witness” (likely with a clear and descriptive functional title appended to the Scriptural phrase…).

Here are the key features of the recommendations:

  • We clarify that the sanctoral calendar of the Episcopal Church consists of those days celebrated by all—the Principal Feasts and Holy Days of the Book of Common Prayer—and that the calendar in the prayer book reflect this.
  • We clarify that all other days are—as they have always been—optional. They can be celebrated or not at the discretion of the presider or parish.
  • We move away from a canonization model. Instead, the resource follows a “family history” model and identifies people who have been significant and important for the church being the church in the 21st century.
  • The recognition of sanctity of any of the people either on or off the list is a local decision.
  • The central ecclesial act of recognizing a saint is eucharistic celebration. In order to clarify that the list of names and the resource is not a sanctoral calendar, entries will contain a collect for devotional purposes but not full eucharistic propers. However, suggestions for appropriate propers will be provided should a local community choose to honor a given person or group as a saint or saints.
  • Speaking of collects, the prayers currently contained in HWHM will be overhauled. We agreed that the goal is for each commemoration to have an actual collect that is appropriate for worship (not a supplementary mini-bio as one person said in the meeting…). However, given the scope of work, some entries may share appropriate Common collects if unique rewrites cannot be completed for all.
  • The bios will also be redone to remove errors and to highlight Christian discipleship.
  • Because this is not a sanctoral calendar there will be a clause in the criteria allowing for extremely occasional inclusion of non-Christian people with the clear understanding that the bio needs to be upfront about the fact that this is an exception and be equally clear on how the person’s life, witness, work, whatever directly connects to the church’s understanding of Christian discipleship. For example, all of the Dorchester Chaplains will be included—even Rabbi Goode—because the a significant part of the witness of this group is their ecumenical nature. To leave out Rabbi Goode would undercut an important aspect of the commemoration. Is anyone suggesting that Rabbi Goode is a Christian, “anonymous” or otherwise? No. Is his inclusion here indicating that the Episcopal Church now thinks of him as a saint? No. Instead, it recognizes that he was an integral part of a heroic gesture of compassion and ecumenical cooperation that local congregations are free to observe or not at their discretion.
  • The Weekday Temporal material and the Commons for Various Occasions will be collected together and will receive greater emphasis as equally valid alternatives on non-festal days.

There are other things that haven’t been fully decided that still remain to be hashed out. Too, none of this is official until General Convention renders a decision on it. GC may decide to scrap the whole thing and go back to HWHM. However, this represents what we’re working to pull together and put before convention.

As regular readers know, I don’t consider this a perfect solution. There are a number of things I would do differently if it were up to me, but it’s not—this is part of a church-wide process that must satisfy a wide range of theological and political positions. However, it is a workable solution, and addresses many of the flaws identified in HWHM. Whether we’ve just created new flaws, only time will tell…