Just Because…

Here’s the front image for the Hours of the Holy Trinity in the Taymouth Book of Hours according to the Sarum Use (f. 32v). The whole thing can be found here at the British Library: (http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Yates_Thompson_MS_13&index=2) Why? Because it’s awesome!

Sarum_Trinity_Taymouth

Future of the Electronic Anglican Breviary

The attempt to fund an electronic version of the Anglican Breviary did not succeed. I do think that the Kickstarter model is a good one, and I can definitely see doing some projects through it. However, This one didn’t quite work out. I’ll have to ponder what didn’t work and what might work…

Actually—one thought I have already had is that this might be the right way to fund much smaller scoped projects like the preparation of e-book editions of classic Anglican texts. I’m thinking here of things like Proctor and Frere’s commentary on the (English 1662) BCP or Dearmer’s Parson’s Handbook. (And when I say e-book, I mean more than just a scan dumped into a .pdf file; I mean fully searchable, proper formatting, hyperlinked indeces, cross-references, and all.)

In any case, the ending of this funding attempt does not mean the end of an Anglican Breviary project. I do think that it is an important resource that needs to go online in an easily accessible form. I will continue to work to that end. However, it will have to move towards a back burner while I work on projects that I have already committed to and that do bring in income.

I’m thinking that the best way forward will be to reduce the scope and to work on those sections that will be of most use to most people. Thus, I anticipate starting on the Matins readings of the temporal cycle. Once these are in electronic form, I will be able to incorporate them as a further patristic option within the St. Bede’s Breviary, leveraging them either as additions to the Noon office or as options for a third reading at Morning Prayer or a second/third reading at Evening Prayer.

Several people have contacted me with offers to help with transcription work—I hope to be able to send a note to you all within the next few weeks and identify some specific material with which to begin.

So—this particular effort has ended, but the project will move on nevertheless.

Totally Random Thought on Processions

Processions as a liturgical movement within the church are not a common feature of current church life and worship. They were a much bigger deal in the medieval period and, when considering the liturgical life of a typical medieval cathedral or abbey, a specialized book called a processionale is an important resource. Naturally, there is a Sarum processional and there were some in the late 19th/early 2oth Sarum Revival who were interested in bringing back the custom of processions, noticably Percy Dearmer.

I want to make on quick, rather random note on processions and their use in the modern church… I’ll do so by introducing this image that I just ran across and that reminded me of what I wanted to say on this topic. From the British Library, here’s a miniature of a bishop preaching from Harley MS 4425, f. 167v:

Note where he’s preaching from: a platform set on barrels… 

What does this have to do with processions? Furniture. More specifically the kind of furniture that did and didn’t exist in major medieval worship spaces vs. the furniture that exists in American churches.

A cathedral is quite different in size than a modern American church. Too, the furniture did not have the same relationship to the space that ours does now. Namely—pews, pulpits, and other kinds of fixed furniture. Processions as envisioned in medieval sources work a heck of a lot better in a big space without fixed pews! Many of the modern processions I’ve seen or participated in end up with a long trail of people squeezed between a wall and long lines of set pews with very few being able to effectively “group” at a station. So—if we’re going to do this, how do we do it better?

Benedictional of St Aethelwold up!

A couple of posts in the pipeline dealing with church politics stuff are sidelined for a most important announcement: the British Library has put on line the splendid Benedictional of St. Æthelwold!

Æthelwold was the teacher of Aelfric, the chief guy my dissertation was about, so this is a big deal for me. The manuscript illustrations are simply beautiful—they’re definitely worth the time to look through.

Calendar Subcommittee Recommendations Up for Comment

The Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music (SCLM) is now making public an interim update on the Calendar. The proposal is located here. It recommends splitting the current material into two parts (whether physically located in two volumes or not—that’s still under discussion): “A Great Cloud of Witnesses” which is cast as a “family history” rather than a sanctoral calendar and “Weekday Eucharist Book” (which needs a better name) for collecting the material for weekday Eucharistic celebrations into meaningful groups.

This is the result of much consultation, much thought, and several contentious meetings. It’s not perfect, it still has some unknowns, and it has some weaknesses, but overall I think it’s a stronger way forward than Holy Women, Holy Men.  At this point, we’re essentially putting it up for public vote. While adding nuance might be nice, chances are this is going to be a up or down decision—HWHM or GCW—based on the feedback left on the blog.

I’m working on a post to provide some of the context for some of the choices that might seem odd. I thought I’d have it up by now, but life has intervened. Hopefully later today!

The Beauty of Holiness

I was struck again this morning with the strong sense of the inter-relation between beauty, truth, and holiness. Beauty is a pathway into the soul. We need to be more attentive regarding the ways that we can work this truth into our daily practices of faith and life…

 

On the Choice of Offices

A correspondent sent me a note over the weekend, noting (correctly) that if one wishes to undertake the discipline of the Office, it’s good to pick one primary form and stick with it. His question, then, was which one:

  • The BCP Offices,
  • The Roman Liturgy of the Hours,
  • The Anglican Breviary,
  • The Monastic Diurnal + Matins

Others could be added to these…

It’s a good question and one that I spent some time wrestling with a few years ago. I can’t tell him, or you, or anybody else what to do, of course, but here’s the answer that I’ve come to and that works well for me.

I’m a Prayer Book Catholic within the Episcopal Church. Now—as we’ve noted before, the term “Prayer Book Catholic” isn’t exactly the same in England as it is in America due to the differing situations of our respective prayer books. However, I take it to mean that I am obliged to the prayer book and its system of devotion as understood and supplemented by the riches of the Western liturgical heritage.

Thus, for me, I am obligated to the Morning and Evening Prayer Offices of our authorized Book of Common Prayer—that’s part and parcel of what it means to be an Episcopalian.

Now, the Offices contain a number of permissions—like the liberty of antiphons and hymns—that open the door to the riches of our heritage found in books like the Anglican Breviary, the Monastic Diurnal, the English Office,  the Brevarium Romanum, A Monastic Breviary, and many others.  As a result, I have and use these other books to supplement my prayer book services both in terms of material and in terms of additional offices.

Indeed, this was part of the genesis of the St. Bede’s Breviary. I wanted to create something that was faithful to the rubrics of the prayer book, but that also could easily include the other items when I had the time and desire for them. As a result, I have my “House Use” that I use regularly and can choose from the other leaner versions as circumstances require. However, at the root is always the framework and content of the BCP Offices.

In Advent and Lent I like to add in the Little Hours and will often do so—or attempt to do so—from the Anglican Breviary or Monastic Diurnal or the Sarum Primer.  I say attempt because I don’t often succeed. My zeal for devotion frequently outstrips the time I have for it.

And that raises another important point. The BCP Offices are the least onerous of the list above. After all, it’s two Offices a day (only four if Noon and Compline are included). If I were to take the Anglican Breviary as a base office discipline,  I would be obligated to pray all of it. Even doing so in aggregation would be difficult, and at this season of my life I just can’t imagine being able to juggle it all consistently, day in and day out. I hope this will change some day—but can’t see it happening until the girls can drive themselves!

For me and the discipline I’ve chosen, the Anglican Breviary represents the best source for supplementary material. I want to be able to pull in its antiphons and hymns. More particularly, I’d love to be able to draw on its patristic readings to augment the Offices.

So, if some are you are wondering why I’m proposing the Anglican Breviary project while also talking about the importance of the prayer book, this is how it fits together. I know several people who faithfully pray the breviary and who have asked me to work with it; I’d also like to make it available to interweave with the prayer book itself.

At the end of the day, selecting an Office discipline is a balance of ecclesial identity, devotional continuity, and an honest appraisal of your own ability to stick with the choices you’ve made. The heart of the Office is the repetition of the Psalter. If you can’t consistently make it through the whole psalter in your chosen Office discipline, then you’ll want to reassess it and consider if you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, and what will work for you. It’s always easier to start with the shorter and more basic and graduate to more complex forms as you go.  But don’t be hasty about it either. Liturgical formation—like all other life-long habits—should be measured in months, seasons, and years rather than days and weeks.

Electronic Anglican Breviary Project on Kickstarter

Today I have officially launched a Kickstarter project to convert the Anglican Breviary to digital form and to make it available as a completely free web application.

For those not familiar with it, the Anglican Breviary is one of the great liturgical works that has come out of the Catholic movement in Anglicanism. 30 years in the making, it was produced in the year 1955 by the Frank Gavin Liturgical Foundation. Like all breviaries, it contains the traditional hours of prayers of the Western Church: the long early morning Matins office with its readings from the Church Fathers interspersed with psalms; the main offices for the hinges of the day, Lauds and Vespers; the daytime offices of Prime, Terce, Sext, None; the bedtime office of Compline; and the brief Capitular office that includes the martyrology recounting the saints to be remembered. Built on the structure of the Roman Catholic Divine Office according to the usage established by Pius X, it utilizes the Scriptures of the King James Bible and the Coverdale Psalms of the Book of Common Prayer to place these prayer hours within an Anglican idiom.

For more information on the Anglican Breviary itself, visit its home site at www.anglicanbreviary.net, owned and operated by Mr. Daniel Lula, the man responsible for keeping it in print. We have corresponded regarding this initiative, and I have his blessing to proceed.

Transcribing and coding this roughly 2,000 page volume will take a lot of time and energy, so I have split it into three manageable parts.

  • The first will see the transcription of the Commons, and the bulk of the behind-the-scenes programming that makes everything work. Additionally, I will be creating a wiki where the transcriptions will be housed in a plain-text form.
  • The second portion will include all of the material in the Proper of Seasons.
  • The third portion will include all of the material in the Proper of Saints.

Completing this work will accomplish some goals very near and dear to my heart. Obviously, it will preserve the Anglican Breviary for future generations and will introduce it to a far wider audience than it has had in the past. Beyond this clear win, it will accomplish these additional goals:

  • The transcription will provide a web-based source of material from the Church Fathers relating to both seasons and saints that can be incorporated into a host of possible future platforms. I plan on pulling it into the St. Bede’s Breviary myself.
  • The transcription will give us the opportunity to study lectionary inter-relations in a way not possible before.
  • Should we seek to create an updated Anglican Breviary that meshes with the current liturgical calendar used by Anglican churches worldwide (as well as the Roman Catholic Church), a hefty chunk of the necessary material will already be available in a clean, machine-readable form.

My experience with the St. Bede’s Breviary (SBB) has shown me the downside of trying to accomplish such an effort on a voluntary basis; for the sake of my family, my efforts have to be focused on those projects that contribute to our income. As a result, the SBB has often received the last and least of my energy, stolen away in bits of time on weekend mornings before the girls get up. As a Kickstarter funded project, I would be able to engage the Anglican Breviary wholeheartedly, knowing that it was helping me provide for them in a much more direct fashion than the SBB!

I’m hoping to receive pledges to meet my goal by February 5th. That’s not a lot of time, but is—I think—sufficient time provided there is enough energy and will to get this carried out. Please check out the link and consider what you can do to support this project and ensure the future and flourishing of this gem of catholic Anglicanism!

Honestly Be Who You Are

Two things have caught my eye over the past couple of days that are well worth underlining.

The first was a bit from The Lead on the Church of England’s growth study. Of the 8 things ennumerated as things linked to growth, one was: “Being intentional in chosen style of worship”

I thought this was fascinating in light of the whole “worship wars” context. Had this been five or ten years ago, I would heartily have expected to see “use [XX instrument] in worship” where the XX was either guitar/drums or else organ.

This is so much better—it’s about being clear about who you are (actually making a choice), and choosing to stick with it.

The second bit is from Robert Hendrickson and his presentation on ministering to young adults. Here’s a fragment:

This is the trap of many churches – we have a great story – but we don’t live into it in such a way that our essential qualities are readily apparent and evident.  Gen Y, hyper-marketed to and attuned to falsity, can sense intuitively when they are being sold a false bill of goods.

So how do we make sure that our congregations are places of powerful honesty?  We have to live it out.

Honest to our self:  Who is your parish?  What is it facing now that it is challenging with radical honesty?  Whatever your parish’s core identity is, there is nothing so precious, in terms of communication and evangelism, than living into it with integrity.  If you are an evangelical parish then live into it.  If you are an Anglo-Catholic parish, then live into it.  If you are a parish focused on social justice, then live into it.  Lean into your strengths and allow them not simply to be a story that you tell but a way of being that defines those who are part of your parish.

It’s not hard to connect the dots…

Honesty, integrity, and intentionality. These are key ways to live and proclaim the Gospel.