William Law once remarked, “For singing is as much the proper use of a Psalm as devout supplication is the proper use of a form of prayer. And a psalm only read is very much like a prayer that is only looked over.” Anyone who has had the privilege of worshiping in a community that chants…
The blade, the cuts, the sighs. Inner pith grown hotter. A vase of injured limbs. Do this to resurrect: Rinse and gash, repeat. Hammer till fibers split. Blossoms’ bee-swarm (hurt-flecked By memories of heat) All loveliness and grit… Life rises from mangle, From stems slashed at angle.
In my first article for The North American Anglican, I envisioned a renewed traditional, Prayer-Book Anglicanism which I called “Tracts for the Times 2.0.” In retrospect, I see I equivocated in my meaning of the phrase, using it both to mean an actual set of Tracts and also a renewed movement in the Church akin…
A bum—a holy fool all I knew. I’d just redeemed some cans, a case or two And grabbed a single by the checkout queue. Not my proudest move. Remember though, Throwing stones is often quid pro quo. His robe of castoff clothes, his beard askew. He grabbed a bottle, then he bade adieu, Handing over…
No Christian communion asks itself what it is more than my own Anglican one. Protestant or Catholic? Traditional or Evangelical? Calvinist or Zwinglian? The question of Anglican identity is too often treated as a matter of theology or liturgics. Overeager liturgists (of both the Anglo-Catholic or High Reformed varieties) accumulate lists of Anglican ritual “distinctives,”…
Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical Body of your Son: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus…
By Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by Susan McLean Versailles Like kings who ultimately merely pace, almost without a goal, unless to show themselves at times in robes of loneliness to those who bow to them on both sides, so, alone between the balustrades, which bowed already from the start, the stairs rise there, deliberately and by…
He’s watched his body age. Its taut topography — Never a greedy eater, always active — Loosens as its man-shaped coastline, worn By battering years, surrenders to the gravity That pulls the tides. If life means to dissolve — Is this the rule? And is the rule commutative: If birth is death, to die is…
The launch of the Oxford Movement is traditionally dated (following John Henry Newman’s reckoning) from John Keble’s Assize sermon on Bastille Day, July 14, 1833. But it wasn’t until the inauguration of The Tracts for the Times, also in 1833, that the Oxford Movement became a public movement for the renewal of the Church of…
Recently my friend John Wallace, an avid church-crawler, posted on Facebook a photograph he had taken of the old commandment boards from the original building (built 1752-3) of Trinity-on-the-Green, New Haven, CT. The commandment or decalogue boards originally hung behind the Communion table. Though not very familiar to most Anglicans today, they were a staple…