Found Liturgy

A couple of years ago I came across a book about prayer. Only it wasn’t. It was better than that. It wasn’t about prayer as such. The closest I can put this into words is saying the book was prayer. It didn’t simply help me pray. Instead it opened up prayer in me. Giddy, disorientating, centring prayer. Walls coming down deep inside me, water flowing, cascading, eyes opening: soul filling, deep laughter. That kind of prayer.

The Book? Approaches to Prayer  (SPCK 1991 ISBN 978-0-281-06091-7) edited by Henry Morgan, Spiritual Director. Morgan has shaped a collection of prayer exercises from many sources – things people have used and found helpful. There are about 43 contributors. The book reads like a rhyme bag for the soul: place your hand inside, rootle about, and take a treasure out to explore. 

One looked promising. A pattern of music framed by silence. A good five minutes worth after each piece. I thought, here is something I can share. Then I looked at his choice of music. It felt older than me. Each piece looked suspiciously religious too. Was there another way to approach this?

In my ministry I teach how Jesus changes our conversation about God. He told stories of God in terms of what his neighbours are up to, the difficulties they lived with, the world they lived in. Encouraging a sense of God in the here and now and a glimpse the holy in the everyday. So why not blend the sacred and profane in worship in such a way that it opens us to what Jesus keeps on asking of us in the gospels?

The result was a ‘Found Liturgy.’ A Meditation through Music and Silence, like Henry Morgan suggests. Only sacred music sits alongside contemporary and not necessarily ‘Religious’ music. It’s interspersed by long, still silences, about five minutes each. When we have done this at All Saints Keighley, the silence hasn’t been particularly quiet, but it is very still. Sounds drift in off the street outside into our prayer. Neighbours call to each other. A car revs up at the junction, music set to Bangla (default loud), then quickly gone. And quiet. In the distance church bells ring, faintly heard.

Last time, for the beginning of Lent,  I used the following pattern: 

• Gathering reflection, The Feeling begins  from Peter Gabriel’s film score for  The Last Temptation of Christ

• Confession: Sam Smith’s marvellous and challenging Pray.

• Forgiveness: Duruffle’s Ubi Caritas, just pouring our grace and divine compassion.  

• Prayer: Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble’s extraordinary setting of O Salutaris Hostia, with the saxophone soaring above and through the warm harmonies of the choir. 

• Adoration: Miley Cyrus’ Malibu – imagine she’s addressing God… 

• …and for the Sending Out?  Dilly Parton’s Shine

We were going to do something similar to mark Palm Sunday. I’ve also used JS Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor Second Movement, Largo. (Rachel Podger, Brecon Baroque and Bojin Cicic ) as a gathering, centring piece of music. Its a wonderful piece of music, which I’ve also taken into Primary schools and used for a meditative Assembly. But the days have gone strange, the church building shut, and church a dispersed expression of the Body of Christ. Maybe you can find a use for this service at home?

One day we will gather again. I look forward to those days in hope.

 

 

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Coronavirus shutdown

The church as building is now closed. A notice pinned to one of the dark stone pillars that flanks the main entrance reads: Public worship is suspended in loving response to our neighbours because of the Coronavirus Outbreak.’ Not even open for private prayer. A shut up empty space left for God alone.

The church as community is somewhere else. Dispersed not gathered. Each in our private space – you in your small corner and me in mine. Just like everybody else. Occasionally, some of us venture out to buy food. Our local supermarket is less busy by the time I get there, mid afternoon. Not busy at all, in fact. The car park less than half-full.  A few souls brave the aisles, giving each other the necessary space to hurry by, two metres please – and do try not to breathe on me. I talk with the staff – I generally do. Ask how they are. Last week they were pretty stressed. Most people were fine, they said. But some were rude and aggressive. It was clearly taking its toll on them.

I had never seen so many empty shelves in Sainsbury’s. The local Asda was the same. I don’t understand the urge to hoard toilet rolls. Most of the tinned goods had gone too (more understandable). And eggs. All that was left of the hand gel section was something masquerading as hand gel. It was fooling nobody.

The challenge to the church is same challenge we all share. How do we respond well? I was at a meeting last week organised by Bradford District Council, chaired by one of the local District Councillors. It was all about responding well to the emerging crisis. What will each of us (and the different organisations we represent) offer?  I find it very encouraging.  

The challenge for my church community is the shift in imagination the Coronavirus Outbreak calls for. We are used to Church being something that gathers. The liturgy draws us closer to one another and to God. The Body of Christ made present to the congregation in blessing the bread and the wine – and the congregation made present as the Body of Christ through sharing. The Coronavirus Outbreak blows this away. Where is the body? It is dispersed – but not scattered.

We have been here before as church. My brother Simon – who is also a priest – was talking to me earlier today about saying Morning Prayer in the porch of his ancient church. Puzzling over the relationship of the Bible Readings set for the day to our current crisis – but intensely aware of the priests who had walked through that porch and into that church through famine, plagues and wars since Saxon times. We are part of a deeper story and an older confidence.

We organise our pastoral care, take the opportunity to make it better than before. We keep talking with people – in the church and beyond it –  with the sense of love and faith that has caught hold of us and shapes us.

There are other possibilities. We have started using Zoom for our staff team meetings. I am wondering about shaping worship through a zoom conference call. It would be more interactive than live-streaming. Someone giving the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures in Low Utley, another from the New Testament in Shann Park, intercessions from Braithwaite, and a talk from the Vicarage. A Lent group could work the same way. Worth exploring.

But the main thing I am doing is getting in touch with people. Phoning. Occasionally Facetiming. Conference calls. Praying.