When reading works suggesting liturgical directions — “the ceremony” — you’ll quickly come across compass directions: north, south, east and west.
These don’t mean the same things in churches as they might if you were hiking. Traditionally, altars in Christian churches — in the West anyway — faced east towards Jerusalem. So anytime you face […]
I was a little surprised to see Percy Dearmer — known for his landmark work in The English Hymnal — suggest in The Parson’s Handbook that parish choirs be smaller than the custom then and now, and that they might well be put in a west gallery if the church has one. The chancel — […]
I’m thinking, the UK Unitarian and Free Christian hymnal Hymns for Living (the green one) is now twenty-two years old. That’s pretty old for a hymnal. I like the unofficial competition, Hymns of Faith and Freedom, more but isn’t much younger and suffers for being words-only. (An aside to American Unitarian Universalists: the much smaller […]
I’ve made it to page 43 — but still in the Introduction — in The Parson’s Handbook, with much of the intervening text more concerning with period controversy about the licit use of ancient ceremonial which, however interesting and useful it might be to Anglican liturgists, is of limited utility here.
Then Dearmer writes about how […]
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Dearmer, in his introduction, reviews the poor esteem his Church then held for the arts: how commercial purchase has replaced patronage for its decorations and furnishings. Little wonder — it follows — how little concern artists have for the Church. In case the Unitarian Universalists out there have glazed-over eyes, I should point out it […]
Later. This was post #2000.
From the fourth edition of The Parson’s Handbook, pages iii and iv:
It is indeed essential to remember that, important though the artistic side of public worship must be, the ceremonial question is primarily a moral one. We have to be honest and straightforward in obeying the rules we are pledged to […]
For a Broad Churchman (with more than a passing antipathy for the Anglican Communion), I have a remarkable admiration for Percy Dearmer and his magnum opus, The Parson’s Handbook. (Wikipedia)
I can think of no work that has been more influential in shaping Anglican worship, taking the High Church standards and making them the norm. In […]
Hafidha Sofia (Never Say Never To Your Traveling Self) wrote today about a simplified approach to worship; doing so, she jogged loose something specific that’s been rolling around my head for a couple of weeks and appealing to some convictions I’ve had for years: we put too much into Sunday worship.
I forgot which blogger had […]
I was watching Nova scienceNow on PBS tonight and they had a segment on “emergence” — that is, leaderless organization towards greater complexity.
I love this stuff: makes me go all geeky-gooey, thinking about synchronicity and ending up with a copy of the Whole Earth Catalog. (From which I also got my childhood geodesic dome, at-home […]
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