Altar and Offering
i. Through November’s arterial horizon traffic flickers. Mountain bare but for a bent cloud clipping the ridge. What would it mean to see clearly— to know nothing’s there other than what is. ii. A clearing between scrub and birches peeling (white sheets flagging) where sunset sparks. And those hollow tones: geese gathered at the river’s…
A Call to Fast in Advent
The Prayer Book tradition prescribes no particular Advent fast — that is, there is no prescription for Anglicans to engage in an extended period of fasting during the season of Advent. In this way, Advent is distinct from Lent — the 1662 and 1928 give the ‘Forty Days of Lent’ (in the 2019 Book of…
Hymns ‘of’ Thanksgiving and ‘for’ Thanksgiving
As we near the end of a surreal year of turmoil and disruption, it may be a little harder for Americans to give thanks this year (other than for a temporary cessation of political advertising). But of course God’s people have been commanded to give thanks for thousands of years, whether Noah’s family after the…
An Homily of the Worthy Receiving of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ Part II
THE SECOND PART OF THE HOMILY OF THE WORTHY RECEIVING AND REVERENT ESTEEMING OF THE SACRAMENT OF THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. In the Homily of late rehearsed unto you ye have heard, good people, why it pleased our Saviour Christ to institute that heavenly memory of his death and passion, and that every…
Epistle and Gospel Variations in the Classic Prayer Books
The liturgical year of the church is about to begin. That means, for Anglicans, that the cycle of proper readings is also about to begin. But to say “the cycle” would overstate the uniformity in what is sometimes called the “eucharistic lectionary.”[1] Some Anglicans use a three-year cycle, adapted from the Revised Common Lectionary. In…
An Homily of the Worthy Receiving of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ Part I
An Homily of the Worthy Receiving and Reverent Esteeming of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ THE great love of our Saviour Christ towards mankind, good Christian people, doth not only appear in that dear bought benefit of our redemption and salvation by his death and passion, but also in that he…
The Relative Positions of the Presider, Table, and Assembly at Communion Part II
Find part 1 here. Facing East Praying ad orientem, facing the east, is a wide-spread, ancient, pre-Christian custom: because the east is the direction of the rising sun, it naturally inspires and expresses hope for the future.[1] For ancient Christians, orientation (in the original sense, “towards the Orient”) also expressed expectation for the second advent…
There Should Never Have Been Three Streams
It has become commonplace among many North American Anglicans to classify themselves as for or against the language of “Three Streams, One River.” Not long ago in this very journal we read, from Dr. Gillis Harp, a very good critique of the increasingly popular notion that within the Anglican renewal three valid “streams” of Christian…
October Falling
–for Jacqueline Cooley, 1944-2018 Last night the trees changed color while I slept. One moment at my window: a new world. Love, do you continue transmuting where you are? Pandemonium of the color wheel. That raucousness. Noise the sky can hear I call October falling. Now, outside, calling you to join me, Love, I kick…
Joy of Every Longing Heart: an Advent Meditation
When Constantine entered Rome on October 29, 312 after the battle of Melvian Bridge, after what was essentially his conversion to Christianity following a vision of the cross, he staged a grand arrival ceremony in the city called an adventus, whereat the conquering king was met with popular jubilation. The party lasted for weeks. Finally,…