Service notes: The Cathedral, Barchester -- Liturgy of the Table

Either Blogger or a bad connection ate my long and, of course, brilliant posting on the rest of the liturgical atrocities at Barchester Cathedral, and I don't have the slightest desire to write it all over again. So let me instead hit the highlights:

• Cheesy music: At the offertory the Gospeler led us in a Philip Bailey song. (Not, alas, "She's an Easy Lover," which I suppose might have been appropriate if the lectionary had been different.) She was shaking a maraca.
• Tag-team concelebration: The Dean said the Words of Institution for the bread. The Assistant did them for the wine. The Dean made the oblatio gesture when saying "we offer you these gifts," but the Assistant made the sign of the cross over the gifts while saying "Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit." It looked ridiculous. I had never seen tag-team concelebration before; now I understand why all the liturgical manuals forbid it.
• Constant interpolation of verbal directions: Apparently "Therefore we proclaim the mystery of faith" isn't clear enough. It has to be "Therefore we proclaim the mystery of faith, saying together." Umm, 'saying' just repeats 'proclaim' and 'together' just repeats 'us'. Why not go all the way and say "Let us together proclaim and say the words of the memorial acclamation, namely, the following, which we will say together and speak in unison"? TRUST THE BOOK.
• Calling people by name while administering Communion: I hate that. Visitors either get asked at the altar rail what their name is, which is tacky, or they just don't get addressed by name, which excludes them. TRUST THE BOOK.
• Randomly doing the Rite One words of administration as "traveling words" while moving from the end of the communion rail back to the beginning: What is that all about?
• More cheesy music: If I had wanted to sing Gaither music during the Lord's Supper, I'd still be a Baptist.

Service notes: The Cathedral, Barchester -- Liturgy of the Word

Last Sunday I attended the principal service at the Cathedral in Barchester. Every pet peeve of mine was in evidence, plus some new horrors that had never entered even my lively imagination.

Having looked over the propers in advance, I suspected that we would be singing "The Church's One Foundation," to the tune Aurelia, to which I have taken an unreasonable dislike. I generally have a high tolerance for Victorian(ish) schlock, but Aurelia is the sort of tune meant to be sung by elderly rectors' wives with huge vibratos and a tendency to scoop. Naturally, then, the prelude was a voluntary on Aurelia that took the tune's natural lugubriousness to new depths.

Then, from the back of the nave, the Dean proclaimed the good news of the opening hymn: "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The opening hymn is number 460, 'Alleluia, sing to Jesus'. Number 460. Please stand and sing our opening hymn." Of course I hate the giving of directions during a service -- we'll come back to that in a moment. The congregation sang rather well, actually, though they were seriously handicapped by the abundant carpet, which muffled the sound, and the organist, who dominated rather than supported. (From Aidan Kavanagh: "Churches are not carpeted.") I'm pretty sure I saw the Dean making a "move-it-along" gesture during the hymn; certainly the organist's tendency to get slower and slower was trying.

Then the opening affirmation: "Good morning." I don't have my Kavanagh handy to quote his especially bitter denunciation of the use of secular greetings in the liturgy. But what is it that prompts celebrants to bring worship to a lurching halt just as it's beginning? We get a little patter about how grateful he is that we all found our way into the Cathedral in spite of the road construction. He has wandered from the chair during this business, so he returns for "Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." The Dean is the sort of celebrant who projects great enthusiasm and energy. I find his manner overdone, myself, but that's a matter of taste.

The lessons are read properly and well, although I personally could have done with a better tune for the metrical psalm, which was set to Gardiner. (Some hymnals call it "Germany." Notice its Aurelia-like qualities.) Then the Dean announced the Gradual Hymn (by which he meant the Sequence Hymn), the dreaded "Church's One Foundation." The Deacon read well. I do have a question about vestments, though. There were two Deacons. One was the Gospeler and led the Prayers of the People; the other was Deacon of the Table, I suppose we could say. (I wonder if there's a proper term for that.) The Gospeler wore alb and stole. The Deacon of the Table wore a stole over what I suppose we have to call a dalmatic because "hunter-green polyester poncho" isn't a technical term in liturgics. Was that proper?

Anyway, the Dean preached an evangelical sort of sermon that was actually pretty decent. The service went along by the book until the Peace, when of course complete chaos broke loose and absolutely everyone had to shake hands with absolutely everyone else. I have just about given up on finding a church where the exchange of the Peace is understood as a liturgical gesture rather than social hour.

My sojourn in the Diocese of Barchester

One reason I'm writing anonymously is that I want to be able to speak freely about both my own life and the foibles (and worse) of my fellow-pilgrims. Last Sunday after church I sat down to write about the liturgy I had just witnessed, and I realized that I would almost certainly blow my cover if I identified the parish. Since there's a better-than-even chance that I'll be assigned to that parish for my field education, and since I wasn't exactly going to heap praises on the celebrant's head, I decided not to write.

Yet even though no one is reading this blog, I do want to keep it up for my own sake. So my solution is to fictionalize a bit. Be it known, therefore, that I am spending this year doing research at my alma mater, the University of Barsetshire, located within the Diocese of Barchester. Names of clergy, parishes, and perhaps some lay people will be drawn from the Chronicles of Barsetshire.

My last Sunday at Saint Swithin's

Yesterday was my last regular Sunday at Saint Swithin's. I've played for the contemporary service for three or four years now, and it was through that experience, as much as anything else, that I again heard the stirrings of a call to priesthood. So it was very meaningful to me to be sent off with gifts and prayers and the laying on of hands. One thing you can definitely say for Saint Swithin's: we know how to welcome people, and we know how to send people off.

After the celebration that followed the service, I headed out to be Lay Eucharistic Visitor. That's another thing I'll miss, although perhaps I'll get to do it in conjunction with my field education.

On Thursday I'll move five hours away to the university where I'm doing my sabbatical research. Since my partner will still be here in College Town, I'll be back and forth a fair bit. So it's not as if I'll never be back at Saint Swithin's. And anyway, I'll keep my membership there until I'm ordained, so that I can keep my connection with this diocese and thus with my present Bishop. But of course I won't be around regularly any more.

I'm not quite sure what's in store for me in my new location. My Bishop will be talking with their Bishop and perhaps arranging for me to do field education at their Cathedral. He also wants to approach a retired seminary professor and priest about being my mentor. The professor lives in the city where I'll be doing my research and where the Cathedral is located, so if that works out, I'll be set up very well indeed. He is a liturgist, so we should have a lot in common.

A calm after various storms

It's been ages since I posted anything, but I've been quite busy, and blogging isn't exactly my first priority. I finished my week at Nashotah House very happily, although my initial optimism about the "enormous amount of good will" was seriously challenged in light of later discussions. I kept quiet about Topic H (you know things are askew when I represent the extreme left wing in any group), but it was evident that some positions are pretty hardened. It's helpful to remember that that's just as true on the liberal side.

I got back home on Saturday, only to find out that one of my first cousins had been killed in a car accident, leaving behind her husband and two children. Her poor mother, my aunt, lost her son two years ago to another accident and her husband eight years ago to a heart attack. So I was only home for a few days before I left town on Wednesday for the funeral. In the midst of death we are in life, and it was a joy to spend some more time with my nieces, but of course it was heart-wrenching to think about how devastated my aunt must feel, with her husband and both her children gone.

On Friday morning, as I was getting ready to return home, I became very anxious about my flights. I've always had a bit of anxiety whenever I've experienced any turbulence beyond the most minor bumps and jiggles, but this was the first time I had actually felt anxious before a flight. Fortunately both flights were smooth, and on the second flight I even enjoyed a pleasant conversation with a personable and handsome young man. Come to think of it, I generally find conversations with cute guys even more alarming than turbulence, so I should be particularly happy that we hit it off so well. In any event, my flight anxiety has become noticeably more worrisome lately, and I'm going to talk with my doctor about taking something for it. A psychiatrist friend at church says I don't really fly enough to make talk therapy worthwhile, but she does think anti-anxiety medication would be in order.

I do feel very strongly that as a Christian, I should have enough faith not to be disturbed by a little bumpy air. For that matter, as a philosopher, I should be rational enough not to indulge what I know to be unfounded fears. And naturally yesterday's gospel was about Peter's abortive walking-on-water expedition, the relevance of which is too obvious to merit comment.

I was supposed to be on a plane again today, this time to visit my new employer (yesterday was officially my first day, I just realized) to attend a benefits orientation. But partly in order to avoid another flight and partly to save some money, I called the benefits people this morning to see if it was possible to enroll without attending orientation in person. The person I talked with said that it was -- "You miss a lot," she said ominously, but she couldn't really tell me what that "a lot" amounted to -- so I canceled my plane ticket, hotel reservations, and airport shuttle. I can actually stay at home for an entire week, uninterrupted!