My brain is full; it is my soul that needs fed.
BHT patron and Twitter friend John H posted earlier today about the “Flash evensong” he participated in last night in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Since St. Paul’s has been closed due to the Occupy London protests happening nearby, there was a “flash” decision to hold a standard Anglican evening prayer service in public outside of the cathedral. (John can be seen in this video, in the back row, wearing a blue, open-collared shirt.)
John notes how relevant even this standard, everyday service was for the situation:
What really struck me about the service, though, was this: the service was nothing more than the Church of England’s standard evening prayer for tonight, with the psalms and lessons taken from the lectionary, and the hymns and anthem being pretty standard fodder as well. And yet large portions of what was said, sung and prayed seemed to speak very directly to the context in which the service took place.
And further down in the post:
I think it is that “crunchiness” [the against-the-mainstream aspects] of the word of God that turned an exercise that may have had an element of whimsy to it – or at least could have been seen as nothing more than a bunch of mostly white, mostly middle-class, mostly Anglican people being “well-meaning” – into something transcendent.
A few thoughts prompted by, if not directly related to, John’s post:
First, this not-quite-comfortable evangelical would’ve loved to be a part of that service. I was greatly moved just watching the short video.
Second, I, too, have been struck by how often the “everyday” readings seem to speak with the subversiveness of God’s kingdom directly to the events of the day. The past few months I have tried, on a maddeningly infrequent basis, to start and end my day with the Book of Common Prayer morning and evening prayers. Even practiced as just a personal reading and prayer, the Scripture and prayer elements of the service have spoken directly to my heart with surprising regularity with regard to the events of my day, both personal and public.
Finally, there is a part of my soul that yearns for a daily corporate practice like this. I would dearly love it if there were some local early-morning gathering around which I could schedule my day. What I really don’t want is the (for me) awkward, informal Bible study and prayer groups that seem to abound in my evangelical church culture. Sitting around in a circle waiting for someone to come up with some thought on the day’s passage and then sharing shallow prayer requests doesn’t feed me in the near the way that the morning prayer liturgy could. I need that daily practice of praise, confession, Scripture and prayer, and the opportunity to do it corporately rather than off by myself.
My brain is full; it is my soul that needs fed.