All right now! I DID manage to put myself to bed last night without the usual coma-in-front-of-the-TV; I was asleep by eleven; and at three-fifteen this morning, wide awake like Hooty the Owl. So I lay there and re-composed the sermon, to and fro, to and fro.
The regular routine prevailed at the early service (it's only twenty below and the new snow isn't all THAT deep); and then at 10:30 we had Morning Prayer and Litany, old style. The big trap in that liturgy is that the sermon comes just before the closing prayers, separated from the Gospel by the length--and it is length--of the Great Litany.
So I am in my usual liturgical fugue at the end of the Gospel; muscle memory is a wonderful thing; I approach chancel steps and automatically wheel smartly to the left and into the pulpit. Fortunately My Daughter the Alto was right on my heels to pluck me out of there and re-insert me in my prayer desk. ON with the Great Litany...round and round the church in a series of right-hand turns. And we managed not to turn the whole thing into a goat-sacrifice. No thanks to the Rector...
And we bade farewell to our young doctor who is away to Kandahar next weekend with the Canadian Army, part of the deployment from this garrison. Please keep him...and his lovely wife (she truly is) and their two great lanky beautiful teen-aged sons...in your prayers.
I need to find some lunch -- back mid-afternoon for a real tonsil-rattling Hymn Festival, here, with the local Lutheran college (Missouri Synod) and friends'n'relations.
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Ah yes, the routine of the routine...we switch things up a bit in Lent too...from Rite 2 to Rite 1...bit more penitential, and some of our folks love the language a whole lot. I have to confess my geeek self doesn't really mind it for a season, but I do have to stay awake for the turns in the phrases!
This "First Sunday of Lent" is always a shocker...so much changes in our liturgy in Lent, plus we add the Litany of Penitance for even greater confusion, ah, I mean greater emphasis on Lent...I too was turning in circles...hee hee
I will have to get out my BCP to understand all this. I'm impressed that you are having a hymn festival with Missouri Synod Lutherans -- or that they are willing to have one with you -- must be because you are kinder, gentler Canadians! I hope it warmed things up.
Well, Auntie, I think it is that their music people and our music people are close happy mutually respectful confederates in off-campus musical endeavours...we did hear and sing some gorgeous stuff, Thaxted and Slane etc. but I don't think we heard the Lutheran heartbeat that I was hoping for...Ein' feste burg, or Fairest Lord Jesus, or much in the way of Bach; the Passion Chorale appeared briefly as an organ solo...dilution makes me sad.
Umm. You mean a series of *left* hand turns for the litany don't you? It being a penitential procession and therefore going counter-clockwise or widdershins?
Jim
the picky, picayune and pedantic reader
Dear picky etc., NO, we went clockwise. BECAUSE WE ALWAYS HAVE. And being told to turn left, at this point, would make everybody all squirrely. Although next year we think may make two complete rounds of the premises -- there's a lotta litany to soak up, there.
The Litanist, upon whom be peace, was told over coffee that the Litany should have been parcelled out among a number of singers because otherwise the effect was too elitist. Yeah. FLOREAT MEDIOCRITAS, is our cry.
Ah, yes! The liturgy according to Father Always!
And as one litanist to another, . . . the phrase "Get thee behind me, Satan!" is appropriate, has biblical precedent and is generally preferred to [smack!]
There is also rather a lot of Litanists when they're all spread out around the church.
Another couple of voices and they'd be biting their own tail... and they would be lost
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