On Thursday I went to a fantastic Corpus Christi service in a neighbouring parish. I don’t think I’ve been to one since my Little St Mary’s days in Cambridge.
I was brought up in a very non sacramental tradition, non-conformist, and somehow I knew something to be missing for me but had never had the experiences or the teaching to put a label to it. When I went to college I started doing the church trail in Cambridge and explored the length of the candle in the C of E, discovering why I liked what I did and how God was speaking to me. I loved heartfelt liturgical worship, and more and more the Eucharist became more important to me. I didn’t and still don’t have a physical Real Presence theology, but the words of the hymn sum it up ” Thou art here, we ask not how”.
I am immensely grateful for the chances I’ve had to explore all this. I feel really privileged to be equally comfortable in a New Wine marquee with charismatic evangelicals as in an incense filled church with my Anglo Catholic friends. The Spirit is still the same Spirit 
I joke sometimes that an ideal service is one where you can cross yourself and raise your hands in worship in the same meeting! Perhaps it’s not so much of a joke, and perhaps it’s not such a leap between the two either. The last weekend that I was in college I had several conversations about how both Anglo Catholic worship and Charismatic worship are experiential, they are rooted, both in the interface between something spiritual happening and something physical happening, whether that’s a sacrament or a physical expression of worship – and if a sacrament is as the old definition goes, and outward sign of invisible grace, then there is something sacramental too about physicality in worship, whatever your churchmanship. Perhaps?
I’m reading
at the moment ( click for detail) and finding it absolutely fascinating. I’ve been trying to tell people round me that modern and relevant doesn’t have to mean ditching the old, and this book is confirming that.
anyway – back to the Corpus Christi service! I’d had a tough week, essay writing and dealing with ” stuff” and God met me in that service in an amazing way – a way that yes I’d still probably associate more with New Wine or a big evangelical church, not clouds of incense and beautiful liturgy, but I’m still learning you see…
Corpus Christi and other thoughts
June 13, 2009 at 9:27 pm (Church, college, faith, journal)
processing
May 31, 2009 at 11:04 pm (blogging, journal)
I do some of my processing and journalling on paper, and some of it here, but probably most of it is in my head, composing blog posts that never make it, composing journal entries that I never really have time to write – but I think that’s still ok – the very existence of a journal and a blog is making me reflect and process and sift thoughts, ideas & feelings, even if they never make it to type or ink.
The last few weeks have been very much like that – there’s been so much going on, not just in my life, but in the lives of those around me. Hospitals, death, anniversaries, growing up, remembering, parenting,wondering,friendship, struggling, hoping – it’s all been in there. None of it would make much sense if I detailed it now, sometimes weeks or days or even years after the events. Lots of it I can’t blog about because it involves too much of other people. Some of that will make it to my paper journal. This post isn’t really about the “stuff” it’s about the process of processing. It’s quite a hard process sometimes, even when it’s only in my head I feel vulnerable and exposed. Current events can cause past events to freshen, old scabs to fall off – it’s a painful process too but a necessary one. Blog, or book or brain – it’s all good.
new year…new?
January 2, 2009 at 10:54 pm (faith, family life, friends, journal)
January 1st is such an arbitrary date to start again or feel like things must cange from here on in – because our calendar changes then suddenly we’re all propelled into this idea that everything is going to be different, or we can start again. In truth we can do that any day of the year we like – One of the opening prayers in Morning Prayer says;
The night has passed and the day lies open before us; let us pray with one heart and one mind
and we are reminded in Lamentations 3:22-23;
The faithful love of the Lord never ends!
His mercies never cease.
Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning.
I always feel that September is more of a new year than January, it’s years and years of academic conditioning that’s done that, but also there is something about taking up the threads of life again after the summer months that resonates with people even if they are not tied to school terms either as a pupil, student, teacher or parent.
Often I find the days between Christmas & New Year really hard work, and this extends into New Year’s Eve & Day too, there is a peculiar kind of melancholy that can creep over one, I know it;s not just me because I’ve talked about it with friends too. This year it was wonderfully conspicuous by its absence, the whole holiday has been, though busy, also peaceful and restful. I wonder how much of it has to do with expectations? We had family here for Christmas, and had planned nothing for the days after and for New Year, we both felt that after this year we didn’t need to be planning a big dinner or a party or even leaving the house, it wasn’t going to matter if it was just us & Jools Holland on the 31st!
As it happened John & May called and said they were travelling back north then and could they come & stay over New Year, and it was lovely, the children got on well as ever, we ate well but not stressfully, we talked, we went for a walk yesterday. It was almost unplanned, and maybe all the better for it.
This doesn’t still explain the relaxed & peaceful approach to NY this year – I think that has more to do with being at peace with where I am and what I’m doing in life – sure it’s stressy ( essay deadlines….!) but it’s right where I’m supposed to be.
2008 has been a rough year in many ways, and also an amazingly brilliant one. It’s tempting to say; I hope 2009 is “more ordinary” or “better” or ” happier” but just because the numbers have clicked round once isn’t going to change anything, I can’t label a year. I just have to live each day whether it’s 31st December or January 1st, by His grace, and for His glory. That’s my challenge:-)
1 Timothy 6
October 13, 2008 at 11:12 am (faith, journal)
from Morning Prayer this morning
there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.
“interest”ing thoughts
October 12, 2008 at 10:23 pm (college, journal, study)
I read this yesterday. I applaud the boldness and the willingness to speak out against the greed that to my mind is so much part & parcel of this current crisis, greed of the banks for profit, greed of the consumer to have and have more, and spend what they do not have yet. I am not an economist, my grasp of the principles is basic, but it seems that building an ecomony on credit and “castles in the air” must lead to the collapse, it’s what a friend of mine described as a candy floss economy. A house of cards built on sand. I don’t know enough about economic mechanics to know how you claw that back and whether a non interest system would work today, but I know we are all culpable in some way, it isn’t ” them ” & “us”.
I spent yesterday on a study day on Issues in Contemporary Ministry; there was much food for thought on these issues as you might expect, and the sense of a definite need for repentence of our part, wittingly or unwittingly in this mess we all face at the moment.
