changing times
In her ancient age when she no longer could drive to church on Sundays, my mother used to tune in on television and watch Mass at one of the Roman Catholic parishes here in town. I don't remember which one, either St Dominic's or St John's. She especially liked when a young Irish priest, whom she could understand and enjoyed his brogue, was in charge. With CoVid-19 limiting folks' movements and gatherings, we also have come to such Sundays. Maybe we will learn something, about ourselves, and our norms. Maybe when it's all over, and we are different, we will also be wiser.
Maybe we will even be nicer, kinder, more gentle, thoughtful, considerate, generous, which is αγάπη. Love. As in thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
We may even realize that sin is making sure we have more than plenty even if another family has to do without because the shelves were empty. After all, we are still in Lent.
With the good weather, we've been eating out here on 7H porch. Supper while the sun sets and the sky darkens, and we watch the one shrimp boat that we're seeing nights, newly since the hurricane. Thursday evening we had 72°F and clear, humidity 87%, but I'm watching the osprey cam in Longmont, Colorado where Thursday evening was 32° and snowing, and the promise for today is 30°F.
Just as well an osprey hasn't arrived. Last fall when they started leaving on migration, I read that it takes them several weeks to reach their wintering grounds in South or Central America. The cam is live, and I can watch cars going to work in the predawn darkness, cars and trucks on the highway throughout the day, folks heading home evenings. I wonder it they also are sheltering in place? Imagine: cold and snowing outside and there you are inside, in front of the fire, snuggled up under a blanket, very close to someone you have been in love with for a very long time. But aren't you glad you don't live in Longmont?! Or maybe you sometimes wish you did. Life is love, isn't it.
Life is also things. I'm happy here on 7H porch looking through the glass slider into the living room, where sits furniture we have loved, some of it for nearly seventy years, making our place Home wherever we've lived. Things and people, eh? Some new things. Last week we researched and bought an air fryer. In it so far, we've cooked chicken breasts and fish fillets, salmon and flounder. Yesterday I air fried four enormous west coast oysters: quite good, though I got some ideas about how to do better next time, cook longer and hotter.
Remember, this may be linked on our church website now that we're going E-Church, but it's still my blog and it's still my personal therapy even though I'm thinking to do a bit more Bible exploration here, and also, as we've suspended meetings for the duration, I may see what I can do for posting Adult Sunday School on here. The thing is, our SS class is mostly discussion, and some surprises, and lots of laughter, and I'm unsure how to bring that to the silent screen. It'll have to be words to read, because I'm not about to live stream me sitting here alone droning into a camera.
"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" Matthew 18:20. My theology professor at seminary liked to point out that there's no promise from God about being there when we're alone. We don't like that theology though, so we don't buy it, although in the Episcopal Church a priest cannot celebrate Holy Communion alone, s/he must have company, consenting company. Did you know that? IDK, it may go back to the 16th century Reformation and selling Indulgences to have Masses said by the priest, but that's our rule.
Sunday worship opens, after the entry rite and rite of cleansing, with the Collect for the Day. It's meant to collect everyone's thoughts and attention to the business of worship, and it often casts a theme for the morning's worship. Here's our Collect for the upcoming Fourth Sunday in Lent:
Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
lex orandi lex credendi, the law of praying is the law of believing, our theology, what we believe about God, is experienced in what we do and say and sing and pray when we gather for worship, and this collect is theologically loaded. The address to God asserts that God is gracious, full of grace; and, in no uncertain terms, that Jesus is God's Son, that he came down from heaven, and that his purpose in coming was to be the bread that gives life to the world, to us the Jesus people. That's basically our Eucharistic theology, Jesus, host and meal, offered and consumed as The Body of Christ, ingesting the bread of life. If I were planning our worship, we'd surely sing #335, "I am the bread of life", our powerful hymn by Suzanne Toolan that came into the church during the liturgical reform and charismatic renewal movement of the late 20th century and was set to music by Betty Pulkingham, who, with her husband the Rev Graham Pulkingham, was part of the center of that movement in the Episcopal Church, at Redeemer, Houston, Texas.
https://hymnary.org/person/Pulkingham_Betty?tab=tunes
Days, years of magical wonder. Linda and Tass and I were at Redeemer, Houston one Sunday in 1985, worship to overwhelm the soul. But sadly, Days of Fire and Glory: the Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Community.
https://www.amazon.com/Days-Fire-Glory-Charismatic-Community/dp/0979027977
I was there spiritually and worshipfully in that time frame, and part of it for a while, and as Ronnie Milsap once sang about loving a girl, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
But the Collect: its petition is for the bread of the Eucharist, the Body of Christ, that Jesus may live in us and we in him. Again, central to our Eucharistic theology. Ironic to pray this Collect on our first CoVid-19 Sunday of sheltering in place and not Taking and Blessing and Breaking and Giving the Bread, with the crowd, but streaming from afar. If I were preaching this Sunday (I'm not), I might struggle with the question of how we can get the Bread of Life anyway without being there with the crowd.
Thirty or so years ago, I read of an English vicar, a priest of the Church of England, who proposed that people at home could tune in to their parish church on Sunday morning, with bread and wine sitting on a table in front of their TV screen. And the priest behind the Altar would, in the Eucharistic Prayer and his actions, consecrate the sacrament for them at home. At the time, it seemed ludicrous, beyond the pale. But times change and suddenly it doesn't seem so outrageous.
Galileo comes to mind.
I neglected to mention that this Collect asking for the Bread is appropriate for the 4th Sunday in Lent as Refreshment Sunday, or mid-Lent Sunday; in England, Mothering Sunday.
RSF&PTL
Tom+
Maybe we will even be nicer, kinder, more gentle, thoughtful, considerate, generous, which is αγάπη. Love. As in thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
We may even realize that sin is making sure we have more than plenty even if another family has to do without because the shelves were empty. After all, we are still in Lent.
With the good weather, we've been eating out here on 7H porch. Supper while the sun sets and the sky darkens, and we watch the one shrimp boat that we're seeing nights, newly since the hurricane. Thursday evening we had 72°F and clear, humidity 87%, but I'm watching the osprey cam in Longmont, Colorado where Thursday evening was 32° and snowing, and the promise for today is 30°F.
Just as well an osprey hasn't arrived. Last fall when they started leaving on migration, I read that it takes them several weeks to reach their wintering grounds in South or Central America. The cam is live, and I can watch cars going to work in the predawn darkness, cars and trucks on the highway throughout the day, folks heading home evenings. I wonder it they also are sheltering in place? Imagine: cold and snowing outside and there you are inside, in front of the fire, snuggled up under a blanket, very close to someone you have been in love with for a very long time. But aren't you glad you don't live in Longmont?! Or maybe you sometimes wish you did. Life is love, isn't it.
Life is also things. I'm happy here on 7H porch looking through the glass slider into the living room, where sits furniture we have loved, some of it for nearly seventy years, making our place Home wherever we've lived. Things and people, eh? Some new things. Last week we researched and bought an air fryer. In it so far, we've cooked chicken breasts and fish fillets, salmon and flounder. Yesterday I air fried four enormous west coast oysters: quite good, though I got some ideas about how to do better next time, cook longer and hotter.
Remember, this may be linked on our church website now that we're going E-Church, but it's still my blog and it's still my personal therapy even though I'm thinking to do a bit more Bible exploration here, and also, as we've suspended meetings for the duration, I may see what I can do for posting Adult Sunday School on here. The thing is, our SS class is mostly discussion, and some surprises, and lots of laughter, and I'm unsure how to bring that to the silent screen. It'll have to be words to read, because I'm not about to live stream me sitting here alone droning into a camera.
"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" Matthew 18:20. My theology professor at seminary liked to point out that there's no promise from God about being there when we're alone. We don't like that theology though, so we don't buy it, although in the Episcopal Church a priest cannot celebrate Holy Communion alone, s/he must have company, consenting company. Did you know that? IDK, it may go back to the 16th century Reformation and selling Indulgences to have Masses said by the priest, but that's our rule.
Sunday worship opens, after the entry rite and rite of cleansing, with the Collect for the Day. It's meant to collect everyone's thoughts and attention to the business of worship, and it often casts a theme for the morning's worship. Here's our Collect for the upcoming Fourth Sunday in Lent:
Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
lex orandi lex credendi, the law of praying is the law of believing, our theology, what we believe about God, is experienced in what we do and say and sing and pray when we gather for worship, and this collect is theologically loaded. The address to God asserts that God is gracious, full of grace; and, in no uncertain terms, that Jesus is God's Son, that he came down from heaven, and that his purpose in coming was to be the bread that gives life to the world, to us the Jesus people. That's basically our Eucharistic theology, Jesus, host and meal, offered and consumed as The Body of Christ, ingesting the bread of life. If I were planning our worship, we'd surely sing #335, "I am the bread of life", our powerful hymn by Suzanne Toolan that came into the church during the liturgical reform and charismatic renewal movement of the late 20th century and was set to music by Betty Pulkingham, who, with her husband the Rev Graham Pulkingham, was part of the center of that movement in the Episcopal Church, at Redeemer, Houston, Texas.
https://hymnary.org/person/Pulkingham_Betty?tab=tunes
Days, years of magical wonder. Linda and Tass and I were at Redeemer, Houston one Sunday in 1985, worship to overwhelm the soul. But sadly, Days of Fire and Glory: the Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Community.
https://www.amazon.com/Days-Fire-Glory-Charismatic-Community/dp/0979027977
I was there spiritually and worshipfully in that time frame, and part of it for a while, and as Ronnie Milsap once sang about loving a girl, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
But the Collect: its petition is for the bread of the Eucharist, the Body of Christ, that Jesus may live in us and we in him. Again, central to our Eucharistic theology. Ironic to pray this Collect on our first CoVid-19 Sunday of sheltering in place and not Taking and Blessing and Breaking and Giving the Bread, with the crowd, but streaming from afar. If I were preaching this Sunday (I'm not), I might struggle with the question of how we can get the Bread of Life anyway without being there with the crowd.
Thirty or so years ago, I read of an English vicar, a priest of the Church of England, who proposed that people at home could tune in to their parish church on Sunday morning, with bread and wine sitting on a table in front of their TV screen. And the priest behind the Altar would, in the Eucharistic Prayer and his actions, consecrate the sacrament for them at home. At the time, it seemed ludicrous, beyond the pale. But times change and suddenly it doesn't seem so outrageous.
Galileo comes to mind.
I neglected to mention that this Collect asking for the Bread is appropriate for the 4th Sunday in Lent as Refreshment Sunday, or mid-Lent Sunday; in England, Mothering Sunday.
RSF&PTL
Tom+