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.
.
pilgrimvicar 