DISCLAIMER These are my very personal ramblings...I need to think aloud to have any sense of what I actually feel so may not be totally coherent, am almost certainly NOT totally rational and would in no way set up my opinions, when I reach them, as in any way the last word....
So - having written in my last post about how it felt to discover I'd made a "church" in my dining room, and how that space is now sacred in a completely new and unexpected way, towards the end of last week the official C of E guidance changed, such that clergy could, if it felt appropriate, return to live streaming from their church buildings. There has been so much vitriol expended on clergy twitter in particular around the varying understandings of ministry of those who felt hugely disabled in losing access to their buildings (to the extent of defying episcopal instructions to vacate them) and those who embraced the new world of domestic liturgy, inviting anyone who happened upon their streaming into house and home...and I didn't think I had strong feelings either way.
When our buildings closed as lockdown began I understood and shared the grief articulated by my historian son about the loss of the unbroken thread of prayer that had wound through our ancient buildings for centuries. I had loved that final week of opening the building for private prayer and standing in the midst each hour to offer prayer for the diocese and beyond as we headed into the crisis, not knowing who or how we might emerge...but already even before the Prime Minister announced lockdown that Monday night it seemed clear that something had changed, that what I had felt privileged to offer the week before was no longer appropriate. There are seasons in this time of trauma, whose nature we may not even grasp til they are behind us...but for me the role of the cathedral as an icon of faith, a focus of vicarious prayer in the best sense of the word, had shifted. Before the announcement came, I was already clear that I didn't want to continue with that model.
Then we found ourselves in lockdown, praying from home as the only option available - and after the gentle amusement of the early days, the moments when FB filters threatened to leave us all presiding in gangster hats and dark glasses or when dogs expressed their loud enthusiasm for the unexpected presence of their humans in the middle of the day, we settled into a new routine. We knew our spaces and inhabited them prayerfully and learned to cherish God's presence there in our little worlds...to understand the fragility of the incarnation in a new way...to stretch out a hand in the night and expect to find it held. Because we were live streaming worship, it often went comically wrong..sometimes the techi failures felt as if they were interrupting God but more often, for me at least, they underlined the utter impossibility of offering anything but the overwhelming evidence of those cracks in everything through which the light gets in...and it was all unquestionably REAL. This was God's people doing their utmost to learn to sing the Lord's song in a strange land, and for all the clunky changes of key and periodic husky voices, the music was alive and flowed through my soul.
However, after a particularly disastrous session last Sunday we had already begun to discuss recording worship. The initial thought had been that we would at least do that together...we would record ourselves worshipping in our different places at the same time...but because we were doing this in advance there was the opportunity to address those techi woes that seemed bound to beset us. I could imagine that working....but before we could follow through on our plans, the bishops spoke...and our bishop in particular was very keen to see the cathedral used once more. We entered a new era - in which I found myself delivering a sermon to the long-suffering Precentor alone, as he recorded my offering on zoom...this was DREADFUL. I felt deeply embarrassed by the whole process. Though I prayed as I always do before I started, it felt completely different, alien, uncomforable.
...We weren't exploring and listening for the Spirit together. Somehow the fact that it was being recorded seemed to bring with it a spurious claim to authority which I could not espouse...I spoke fast and the whole thing felt wretched (though I didn't and don't hate the content)
Then this morning I joined with the online congregation to view the recorded service - and have rarely felt more isolated or cut off. For me,the return of the Dean and his wife to the building, for all the beauty of their liturgical offering, prayed with grace and integrity, completely failed to engage me. I love our building dearly but it is a space designed to bring people together and today the fact that they were there alone (and rightly so - God forbid that in returning to our sacred spaces we should endanger others) simply emphasised a sense of priestly exclusion. The empty choir stalls behind them positively shouted that nothing, NOTHING about this was as it should be. Cathedrals are strange beasts - even for those of us who love them and have been called to serve God and God's people there - but to see the two of them alone in that building designed for thousands felt more like a historical re-enactment of the kind you meet in "living history" museums. It emphasised the dispersal of God's people as nothing had done before and seemed to emphasise the huge gulf between where we have been before and where most people are now. Cathedral worship needs music and crowds and splendour ....Sitting at my lap-top at the kitchen table I needed intimacy and consolation.
Can I stress, this was not about the fact that I wasn't actively involved as President or Deacon, nor about the way that J & R worshipped. They lead worship really beautifully together and have often brought me to a place of deep engagement with God.
Equally, I have watched my colleagues preside daily from their homes and felt connected with them and with God in the moment - have found it easy and natural to make an act of "spiritual Communion" - and rejoiced that the Eucharist is in no way dependent on being together in one place.
I understand that I may be in a minority of one, but it seems to me that there is something different going on here - something that smacks of clericalism (we are allowed in while you are not)...of anxiety that if people get too used to finding God at home they may never go back to church buildings, specially if those buildings no longer offer some of the experiences of music and ritual that we have valued in the past....and perhaps there's something about perfectionism too. It's much easier to aspire to that if you are offering a recording...it becomes a performance to be practised until it is as you feel it ought to be.
A long time ago, a Bishop's Selector pushed me about a perfectionist streak she had thought I might be in thrall to. I was so much younger - and had an elevated idea of what I might offer, what the Church could offer...and talked passionately about the fact that if God had given us a garden full of roses, it was plain rude to simply offer a fistful of dandelions and wilting daisies - but that if those were all we had, then of course God would be delighted. I think right now the Church is in a place where fistfuls of daisies and cowparsley are a more honest expression of our common life and identity...and I shall go out and gather some to place in a jam-jar on the dining room table.
So - having written in my last post about how it felt to discover I'd made a "church" in my dining room, and how that space is now sacred in a completely new and unexpected way, towards the end of last week the official C of E guidance changed, such that clergy could, if it felt appropriate, return to live streaming from their church buildings. There has been so much vitriol expended on clergy twitter in particular around the varying understandings of ministry of those who felt hugely disabled in losing access to their buildings (to the extent of defying episcopal instructions to vacate them) and those who embraced the new world of domestic liturgy, inviting anyone who happened upon their streaming into house and home...and I didn't think I had strong feelings either way.
When our buildings closed as lockdown began I understood and shared the grief articulated by my historian son about the loss of the unbroken thread of prayer that had wound through our ancient buildings for centuries. I had loved that final week of opening the building for private prayer and standing in the midst each hour to offer prayer for the diocese and beyond as we headed into the crisis, not knowing who or how we might emerge...but already even before the Prime Minister announced lockdown that Monday night it seemed clear that something had changed, that what I had felt privileged to offer the week before was no longer appropriate. There are seasons in this time of trauma, whose nature we may not even grasp til they are behind us...but for me the role of the cathedral as an icon of faith, a focus of vicarious prayer in the best sense of the word, had shifted. Before the announcement came, I was already clear that I didn't want to continue with that model.
Then we found ourselves in lockdown, praying from home as the only option available - and after the gentle amusement of the early days, the moments when FB filters threatened to leave us all presiding in gangster hats and dark glasses or when dogs expressed their loud enthusiasm for the unexpected presence of their humans in the middle of the day, we settled into a new routine. We knew our spaces and inhabited them prayerfully and learned to cherish God's presence there in our little worlds...to understand the fragility of the incarnation in a new way...to stretch out a hand in the night and expect to find it held. Because we were live streaming worship, it often went comically wrong..sometimes the techi failures felt as if they were interrupting God but more often, for me at least, they underlined the utter impossibility of offering anything but the overwhelming evidence of those cracks in everything through which the light gets in...and it was all unquestionably REAL. This was God's people doing their utmost to learn to sing the Lord's song in a strange land, and for all the clunky changes of key and periodic husky voices, the music was alive and flowed through my soul.
However, after a particularly disastrous session last Sunday we had already begun to discuss recording worship. The initial thought had been that we would at least do that together...we would record ourselves worshipping in our different places at the same time...but because we were doing this in advance there was the opportunity to address those techi woes that seemed bound to beset us. I could imagine that working....but before we could follow through on our plans, the bishops spoke...and our bishop in particular was very keen to see the cathedral used once more. We entered a new era - in which I found myself delivering a sermon to the long-suffering Precentor alone, as he recorded my offering on zoom...this was DREADFUL. I felt deeply embarrassed by the whole process. Though I prayed as I always do before I started, it felt completely different, alien, uncomforable.
...We weren't exploring and listening for the Spirit together. Somehow the fact that it was being recorded seemed to bring with it a spurious claim to authority which I could not espouse...I spoke fast and the whole thing felt wretched (though I didn't and don't hate the content)
Then this morning I joined with the online congregation to view the recorded service - and have rarely felt more isolated or cut off. For me,the return of the Dean and his wife to the building, for all the beauty of their liturgical offering, prayed with grace and integrity, completely failed to engage me. I love our building dearly but it is a space designed to bring people together and today the fact that they were there alone (and rightly so - God forbid that in returning to our sacred spaces we should endanger others) simply emphasised a sense of priestly exclusion. The empty choir stalls behind them positively shouted that nothing, NOTHING about this was as it should be. Cathedrals are strange beasts - even for those of us who love them and have been called to serve God and God's people there - but to see the two of them alone in that building designed for thousands felt more like a historical re-enactment of the kind you meet in "living history" museums. It emphasised the dispersal of God's people as nothing had done before and seemed to emphasise the huge gulf between where we have been before and where most people are now. Cathedral worship needs music and crowds and splendour ....Sitting at my lap-top at the kitchen table I needed intimacy and consolation.
Can I stress, this was not about the fact that I wasn't actively involved as President or Deacon, nor about the way that J & R worshipped. They lead worship really beautifully together and have often brought me to a place of deep engagement with God.
Equally, I have watched my colleagues preside daily from their homes and felt connected with them and with God in the moment - have found it easy and natural to make an act of "spiritual Communion" - and rejoiced that the Eucharist is in no way dependent on being together in one place.
I understand that I may be in a minority of one, but it seems to me that there is something different going on here - something that smacks of clericalism (we are allowed in while you are not)...of anxiety that if people get too used to finding God at home they may never go back to church buildings, specially if those buildings no longer offer some of the experiences of music and ritual that we have valued in the past....and perhaps there's something about perfectionism too. It's much easier to aspire to that if you are offering a recording...it becomes a performance to be practised until it is as you feel it ought to be.
A long time ago, a Bishop's Selector pushed me about a perfectionist streak she had thought I might be in thrall to. I was so much younger - and had an elevated idea of what I might offer, what the Church could offer...and talked passionately about the fact that if God had given us a garden full of roses, it was plain rude to simply offer a fistful of dandelions and wilting daisies - but that if those were all we had, then of course God would be delighted. I think right now the Church is in a place where fistfuls of daisies and cowparsley are a more honest expression of our common life and identity...and I shall go out and gather some to place in a jam-jar on the dining room table.
3 comments:
I hadnt initially realised the service was recorded but that would explain why there was a certain feeling of deadness. I loved seeing the various images of the Cathedral but actually I prefer seeing you all at home, as we are. Of course last Sunday was IMMENSELY frustrating and not to be repeated. ( think we had the confession 3 times and no epistle or gospel!} - but I agree with you it must’nt be a performance. Loved the out-take at the end! Growing up RC in a small parish church there was something I liked about the lack of professionalism there. Though I loved Anglican evensong, which I had to attend to go to a C of E youth club, and grand processional hymns, I always felt there was something slightly inhuman about the polished perfection in the Anglican Church.
I definitely don’t agree God is more to be found in a church building than in our homes. Certainly Cathedral's show us the majesty and greatness of God, but Jesus is Immanuel God with us in our daily lives. We are people of faith not ritual. I hope we don’t cut short what we were all beginning to discover about God with us at home and in our day to day relationships.
How do your vergers feel about the clergy letting themselves into the building?
I still haven't managed to sit down and write my thoughts partly because I still tend to burst into tears when I rehearse what I might say in my head.
Carys - I've not had the opportunity to talk to the Head Verger, who is the only member of the team not currently furloughed, but I suspect that he will be relieved that worship is happening there. The alarm system is such that we can't let ourselves in - so he'll be needing to open up enough for us to be able to access the building and I understand that he set up the tech for the Dean last week - and will presumably do the same for each of us going forward.I'll see him at Ops tomorrow so might get teh chance to ask then...
Post a Comment