Change for Good or Ill or Both

Those who know me are probably aware that I don’t necessarily embrace the new with open arms.  Being an Anglican at heart, if not by birth, I appreciate the value of the tradition that has enriched our lives.  The three pillars of Anglicanism are scripture, tradition, and reason. 

There is the joke about change and Anglicans: how many Anglicans does it take to change a lightbulb?  We don’t change, we’re Anglicans.  That joke, perhaps unintentionally, illuminates (pun intended) the problem with this approach.  Perhaps it would be better to say challenge rather than problem.  Sometimes change can be a good thing and sometimes it is even necessary.  If we didn’t have the development of the COVID-19 vaccine we would be in deep do-do to use a technical term. 

 

Change for change sake, on the other hand, can turn its back on much that is valuable.  This is as true in religious matters as it is in secular matters.  Being at our cottage in Prince Edward Island, our religious life is emersed in the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) as opposed to the updated service book, the Book of Alternative Services (BAS) which is not that new now being introduced to the Canadian Anglican Church in 1985.  I presided at a service on Sunday using the BCP liturgy and was reminded about the strengths and weaknesses of the that liturgy.  As is often the case when the pendulum of change swings, it goes perhaps too far along the arc.  It will be interesting to see where it lands when a new prayer book is brought to life in the future.  In any case, it is the tension that perhaps is inevitable when change rears it (I won’t say ugly) head.  However, sometimes it can be divinely intended tension to borrow a phrase. 

 

I was reminded last week that sometimes change can produce wonderful results.  One of the Daily Meditations of Richard Rohr which arrive in my inbox daily focused on the adaptation or rewriting of the Lord’s Prayer by the New Zealand Anglican Church.  I was introduced to this more than 10 years ago at a Summer Dream Conference of the Haden Institute held in North Carolina.  I was deeply moved when I heard it and have appreciated beauty and spirit filed language ever since then.  Some traditionalists might object with changing the words of a prayer of Jesus but it is good to remember that Jesus did not speak English - the Queen’s or otherwise – and translations always change the original meaning to a greater or lesser extent.  There are also two versions of the Prayer on the bible – one in Matthew and one in Luke - so even the Gospel writers couldn’t get a definitive version. 

 

Rohr’s Daily Meditation noted that the New Zealand version honours and reflects the Maori culture which makes it very appropriate in this time of Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.  Below is the excerpt from Daily Meditation which included the version of the Lord’s Prayer: 

 

We invite you to pray this modern version of the prayer of Jesus from the Anglican Church of New Zealand, which both honors and reflects indigenous Maori culture.

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples
        of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
        sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
       now and for ever. Amen.

 

May you be blessed with the Divinely Intended Tension of change on your journey.

Experiencing the Divine

One of the deep questions which, I believe, is lurking behind or beneath life to day is, do people have an experience of God, however you want to name that experience of the divine, the ineffable other in your life?   Perhaps some people do not even have an awareness of that presence in their lives.  Perhaps they are not paying attention to that being too busy with the day-to-day routine or work and busy schedules which life seems to be organized around these days. 

In our culture for many people that experience used to be found in worship on Sunday morning or whenever the designated time was for their religion to come together and worship their God.  For those of us who attend church services today, how many of us have an experience of the presence of God/the divine in that time and place?  Organized religion, for many people, is no longer the designated institution in which people turn to for that experience.  Of course, worship is more than that – than an experience of the divine.  We come together to give thanks and praise to the source of life, to acknowledge our separation from that source, God i.e. our sinful estate, to ask for and receive forgiveness for the things we have not done that we ought to have done and the things we ought to have done and have not done.  Hopefully, we receive inspiration from hearing God’s word in scripture and being preached.  We physically receive the presence of Jesus Christ if the worship is a Eucharist. 

However, my question remains; do we experience the presence of God in our worship?  Liturgical renewal is an attempt to make worship more relevant to those participating in it.  It put worship in language which is supposed to make it easier for people to understand using the language of the day – language which is clear and easy to understand.  However, the divine and my experience of it is not clear and easy to understand and is primarily a mystery and is at its core mysterious.  Our culture does not encourage experiences which are mysterious.  Can you worship God with a Tweet or in clear simple language?  Or perhaps my question should be, can we experience God in a Tweet et al at all? 

In the work that I do with dreams we identify dreams as God’s Forgotten Language.  To understand our dreams, we need to learn the language that God speaks in dreams.  In the same way in our culture, we need to relearn the language of the experience of God.  Perhaps God can speak to people in clear, simple language.  However, that is generally not my experience with some notable exceptions such as the New Zealand Lord’s Prayer which I wrote about last week.  The genius of that prayer is its clear language which is also poetry.  It speaks to the soul and resonates at a deep level.  That is what is needed in our worship. 

Blessings on your journey. 

The Word Made Fresh and Refreshed

I have been, and continue to be, ambivalent about use of colloquial language in worship.  There is much value in the traditional but there is also much value in speaking the language of the people today.  I dislike it when traditional language is changed to make it more palatable to current sensibilities.  For example, to change the soul-wrenching confessional, “to save a wretch like me” in Amazing Grace to, “save a soul like me” defeats the powerful message in that wonderful hymn of redemption.  We are, after all, sinful people who continue to need God’s forgiveness. 

On the other hand, some people need to be reminded that Jesus did not speak in the language of the King James Version of the bible.  Language has been continually updated and the battle of the bible over the use of the language of the people has been fought many times and many people have lost their lives in those battles.

I love the poetic language of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer compared to the pedestrian prose of the Book of Alternative Services which, if effect, did replace it despite the waffling of the church officials who gave it the title of “Alternative” while intending it as a replacement for the BCP.  There are, of course, theological issues which needed to be addressed with the Book of Common Prayer which was composed by Thomas Cranmer who produced a masterpiece of liturgical prose.  It is unfortunate that those who developed the Book of Alternative Services did not have anything approaching the genius of Cranmer but I am sure they did the best they could.

That being said, it is a spiritually satisfying experience to discover a updating of liturgical prose that does justice to not only the intent of a familiar piece but also is inspirational in making the message come alive in the language of today.  One of the best examples of this is the update of Lord’s Prayer developed by the Anglican Church in New Zealand in its Prayer Book.  One source, https://livinghour.org/lords-prayer/new-zealand-maori/,   described this effort, “This prayer book was celebrated by clergy and lay people alike for the way it combined the traditional Anglican prayers and forms of worship with the rich earth-based spirituality of the Maori and other Pacific Island cultures. It is eloquent in its wonderful simplicity and diversity, and is worthy addition to anyone’s book of prayers.”   Apparently, it is possible to update a prayer book and maintain  language that is moving. 

Here is the Lord’s Prayer from the New Zealand Prayer Book:

  THE LORD’S PRAYER: MAORI & POLYNESIA

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe;
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world;
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings;
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trial too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
now and forever. Amen.

I thank God for the person who composed this wonderful addition to the prayer life of the people of God.  Blessings of your journey

Teach Me To Pray

As an Anglican, I have the consolation of many prayers which are prescribed in our prayer books and elsewhere.  I find this comforting as it is a challenge for me to pray extemporaneously.  However, it is also restrictive as I am often not challenged to explore the possibilities of prayer that come from within as well as other places.  In this, I can relate to the disciples who asked, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”  This raises an interesting question about how John taught his disciples as was raised recently, however, that is a question for another time.  

The question I want to explore is how we pray?  Jesus provided us the well-known answer in what is known as the Lord’s prayer which is undoubtedly the best-known prayer―at least in the Christian world.  Even this is presented to us in different forms and languages which we can draw on and learn from.  I recently drew on the form from the New Zealand church which I find resonates with me.  That gives some hints at how we can learn to pray.  What speaks to you and gives you words that resonate with you at a deep level.  It also tells us that we need to have experience of prayer in many different forms to receive more possibilities of how we can pray. 

I recently listened to the program On Being on National Public Radio which had an interview with Elie Wiesel https://onbeing.org/programs/evil-forgiveness-prayer-elie-wiesel-2/#transcript.  This was a rebroadcast from  a program on the occasion of Wiesel’s death in 2016.  Wiesel was a holocaust survivor and renowned author.  In the interview, he prayed a prayer that was from his book One Generation After:

I no longer ask You for either happiness or paradise; all I ask of You is to listen and let me be aware and worthy of Your listening. I no longer ask You to resolve my questions, only to receive them and make them part of You. I no longer ask You for either rest or wisdom, I only ask You not to close me to gratitude, be it of the most trivial kind, or to surprise and friendship. Love? Love is not Yours to give.

As for my enemies, I do not ask You to punish them or even to enlighten them; I only ask You not to lend them Your mask and Your powers. If You must relinquish one or the other, give them Your powers, but not Your countenance.

They are modest, my prayers, and humble. I ask You what I might ask a stranger met by chance at twilight in a barren land. I ask You, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to enable me to pronounce these words without betraying the child that transmitted them to me. God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, enable me to forgive You and enable the child I once was to forgive me too. I no longer ask You for the life of that child, nor even for his faith. I only implore You to listen to him and act in such a way that You and I can listen to him together.

There is so much of Elie Wiesel and of God packed into that prayer that you could spend many days or weeks or a life time exploring.  That is truly what prayer is about―to explore your relationship with God and with life and with yourself.

Blessings on you journey.

Sometimes Having it Darker Brings Light

The Gospel passage for this coming Sunday has a phrase which is well known by anyone who has a Christian background as well as many who don’t; ‘Physician heal thyself’.  This is the phrase in the King James Version (KJV) of the bible.  Unfortunately, the version of the bible which is used in my corner of Christianity, as well as many others, The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), has translated it ‘doctor cure yourself’.  Now, I was taught when studying theology that the NRSV is a ‘better’ translation of the original Hebrew and Greek than the KJV and perhaps it is a more accurate rendering of the original languages in English.  However, that does not mean it is ‘better’ in every sense.

To my ear and eye, ‘doctor cure yourself’ just doesn’t have the same resonance as ‘physician heal thyself’ (or even yourself).  Both physician and doctor have essentially the same meaning in the context of the passage.  We can argue about the difference between cure and heal but the overall effect of the KJV is one that resonates with people and is very clear in its meaning.

Another example which comes to mind is the beautiful phrase, ‘through a glass darkly’.  The whole phrase in context is, "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (I Corinthians 13:12).  Regrettably, it is translated in the NRSV, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly.”  Again, it is, I am sure, a more accurate translation but it loses so of the beauty and impact, the poetry of the passage.  Indeed, seeing through a glass darkly ironically shines a light on the phrase. 

My complaint is not that language changes and is made perhaps easier in some ways to comprehend.  Rather, my complaint is that it is in danger of being left without life and is no longer life giving.  An example of a modern retelling of the Lord’s Prayer is an example of how modern language can keep the impact and perhaps even enhance the effect of what is being said.  This is the new version of the Lord’s Prayer which from the Anglican Church of New Zealand prayer Book:

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and testing, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
now and for ever. Amen.

There is poetry and consequently impact in this language.  Admittedly this can lead to some confusion until the new language becomes more familiar.  While I was studying theology, our class attended a conference.  One of my classmates was helping to lead worship during the conference and was supposed to lead the assembly in the Lord’s Prayer.  The New Zealand version was printed in the service bulletin and she led the assembly in that prayer but did not realize it was the Lord’s Prayer and so, being dutiful, she led us in the more traditional version in our prayer book.  I am sure she did not make that misstep again and the new version became indelibly etched in her memory, as it has been in mine as a result of that occasion and other tomes when it has been sued in worship quite effectively.

I will close with a quote from Richard Rohr, “Metaphors give us access to the transformative power of God (Bruggeman).  Metaphor/poetry opens us to more possibilities of God and God’s action”.  This is needed now more than ever.

Blessings on your journey.