I wanted to know more about the author of the prayer in the last post — R. Crompton Jones — there’s very little about him online, but he seems to have been in poor health towards the end of his life, around 1885. One of the few references I found was a post I wrote eleven years ago about a service book for Unitarian “lay centers”. The collection of prayers mentioned there must be Jones’s Book of Prayer. W. Copeland Bowie, compiler of Seven Services for Public Worship (London, 1900) points out the three prayers in service 28 as being his, and worth including in that work. Tender and contemplative, they remain worthy representatives of a Unitarian public piety now all but forgotten.
An old prayer for the moment
I saw this prayer many years ago and it’s been rolling in my mind the last couple of days.
O Lord, the eternal Life-giver, who liftest out of death and shame all faithful sufferers for the truth, setting their humanity on high, and making it glorious in the might of thy Spirit; give us grace always to contend for the right, and, if need be, to suffer for it; and give us not over to the death of the soul, but raise us up into newness of life, that we may abide in thy love forever. Amen.
From A Book of Prayer (Robert Crompton Jones), later used in Orders of Worship (Lindsay Press) and in the service for Easter in Services of Religion, prepended to the Hymns of the Spirit (Beacon Press /Murray Press)
What makes a pastoral prayer?
The “low Protestant” end of churches offer a lot of freedom in the conduct of worship but frustratingly little published advice for ministers, at least apart from conducting weddings and funerals. So I was happy to find something to share.
Continue reading “What makes a pastoral prayer?”Adapting prayers you find
I’m writing this after three and a half hours in a dentist’s chair; it will not be exhaustive.
As I’ve written before, I often use published prayers, particularly older ones and mostly the form known as the collect (accent on the first syllable). But I rarely use them untouched.
Here are three ways to modify a prayer you might find.
First, give in an introduction. If it’s not clear why you are using a topical prayer, introduce it and bid the congregation to pray. Second, to make the prayer more fitting to the occasion, insert petitions. Third, if the prayer has phrasing that broadly impedes prayer, modify it, but try to keep the rhythm intact. This one is, I think, abused as license to do what you want, no matter how it flows thereafter. I’ll retain some male language for God, but will smooth out excesses; I’ll also remove generic male language where men means human beings. More about inclusion in prayer some time when my mouth doesn’t throb so much.
Here’s a worked example, from the section “Prayers for Family; Parents and Children; Children’s Sunday” in Additional Prayers and Collects from Hymns of the Spirit.
Here is how it originally appears:
Almighty Father of all, who dost set the children of men in families, enable us, we pray thee, so to guide the children committed to our care that they may love the ways of truth and of righteousness, of peace and of goodwill. Fulfill in them our divinest dreams, and through them carry forward the coming of thy kingdom upon earth. Amen.
Here is how I might change it.
Let us pray for children in the church :
Our One Parent, universal and gracious, who dost set children in families, enable us, we pray thee, so to guide those children committed to our care, especially Andrea, Bartholomew and Chiana, that they may love the ways of truth and of righteousness, of peace and of goodwill. Fulfill in them our divinest dreams, and through them carry forward the coming of thy kingdom upon earth. Amen.
These are all straight-forward, common-sense changes… unless you’ve never done it. Using prayer resources is more than pulling them out of the book.
Sources of prayers: Theistic Prayer Book
A single prayer in the services before Hymns of the Spirit beginning “Almighty God grant that the words” comes from a book identified in the index as the Theistic Prayer Book. What is this and where did it come from?
It comes from the Theistic Church in London, that lasts from 1870 or 1871 until shortly after the 1912 death of its founder and minister, Charles Vorsey, who was driven out of the Church of England. (He’s the father of the famous architech of the same name, if your mind goes to the Arts and Crafts.) At the church, the book was known as The Revised Prayer Book, and ran through three (1871, 1875, 1892) editions.
In both Hymns of the Spirit (p. 146) and The Revised Prayer Book, the prayer appears in a section for additional prayers (in the third edition); it appears, slightly re-arranged as prayer for the “close of worship” in Hymns of the Spirit.
Cross-posted at Hymns of the Spirit.
"A Fruitful Life"
It’s been a hard day, and seeking solace, turned to prayer. I pulled this book off my shelf because the title — Light and Peace — spoke to me. It’s a collection of prayers by Charles Hall Leonard, published by the Murray Press, a Universalist publisher, in 1915.
Leonard (1822-1918) was an outsized figure in Universalist history, was a professor and later dean of the theological school at Tufts, and remembered today I’d guess for creating Children’s Sunday, though readers of this blog may be more interested to know that he was the unacknowledged author of A Book of Prayer for the Church and the Home, or what I call usually “the Universalist prayerbook.”
Prayers for deceased ministers have a special place in my heart, and particularly as Terry Burke, the long-time and much-loved minister of First Parish in Jamaica Plain was laid to rest today, and with whom some day we shall each share glory.
A Fruitful Life
O God, our heavenly Father: To whom can we go, but to Thee, who art our strength in weakness, our light in darkness, and our comfort in sorrow? To-day, we know not how to speak to each other, nor how to interpret to ourselves. We turn to Thee, and, first of all, beseech Thee to awaken within us the memory of all that has been precious in the life of our great friend and leader: his wise devotion to the college into which he built his life; his intelligent administration of its affairs in a manifold range of usefulness bearing upon its progress and growing facilities, and in that loving care and interest which reached the endeavor and the struggle of the humblest student. Help us to recall the calmness of his thought, his unselfish regard for others, his generous approval of all that is right and good, and his Christ-like pity and forgiveness toward all the weak and sinful. We remember the words, spoken in private and in public, which move us to-day with new power, because of this mystic silence.
We desire also to remember all that he was and is, and will be to us, as a part of permanent influence in all the relations which distinguished his life: in the privacy of his home, in the maintenance of a loyal service to the church, in all his efforts as an educator, and in the ampler calls of citizenship.
Help us, O God, in our sense of gratitude for all that this full life has been to us now that we read it anew, know anew its noble witness to learning, to charity, to religion, and get its larger message as from open skies.
And now, what wait we for but for grace and power, both for mind and heart; new motive in view of a great example; new ability to take up the tasks which a great leader has laid down; and new light, also, for comfort to those whose sorrow to-day is deepest, that there may be to them one fixed and tranquil object of thought and affection; and help us all to see that it is no fractional life that we are called to contemplate, but a life, forecast and fashioned in accomplishment, opening more and more into its own power and beauty, and, at the last, opening forth towards the realities of a world from which all veils were taken away. O God, most merciful and gracious, open our eyes to that grateful vision, that so we may be enabled to go on, to bear up, and to find our highest joy and peace in the field of duty to which now Thou dost send us back, and in the entrusted daily care to which Thou hast appointed us. Grant that, from the trembling moments of our human life, and from the mourner’s watch, we may go forth with uplifted heart, and a diviner purpose, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
The Lord's Prayer in Esperanto
I’m at that point in my Esperanto education that I had better move the next level or accept being left as an eterna komencanto: an “eternal beginner.” That’s not bad (article in English) per se, but I would like to attend conferences — organized, if off-beat, travel (esperante) is one of Esperanto culture’s big pay offs — and I’m hardly going to do well, if I can’t make dinner plans effectively. Some of the conferences are for and by Christians, (esperante) and they’re appealing and (once you fly to Europe) cheap. So I figure I’d better memorize the Lord’s Prayer.
Jen…
Patro nia, kiu estas en la ĉielo,
sanktigata estu Via nomo.
Venu Via regno.
Fariĝu Via volo
kiel en la ĉielo, tiel ankaŭ sur la tero.Nian panon ĉiutagan donu al ni hodiaŭ.
Kaj pardonu al ni niajn ŝuldojn,
kiel ankaŭ ni pardonas al nian ŝuldantojn.
Kaj ne konduku nin en tenton,
sed liberigu nin de la malbono.Ĉar Via estas la regno
kaj la potenco
kaj la gloro eterne.Amen.
"This week we pray for…"
You may have noticed that there’s a widget on the right-hand column called “This week we pray for” that has a date, a list of nations and a picture. This links to a prayer resource from the World Council of Churches, focusing on a different region of the world each year.
Each resource page features a photo, thanksgiving and petitions, prayers, links to information about the churches in those countries, and sometimes other resources. The idea is to stimulate intentional prayer for the people of the world.
To get the code to share on your site, go to
http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/prayer-cycle/share.
Normal thanks
So, Daisy the Dog greeted me this evening with a tap-dance show, like normal.
I had to help her on to the bed, but then she enjoyed Hop on Pop and Pillow Burrowing, like normal.
And she whimpered for (and ate) her usual food, like normal.
For these normal things, Lord, I am truly thankful.
Micro-alterations in liturgy
One of the principles I brought into my morning and evening prayer practice is that I would read the prayers as printed until became accustomed to them. I would borrow their voice and let it become mine as I learned the internal logic of the services. I refused to be trapped by my own sensibility: a sensibility evoked with the joke about Unitarian Universalists reading ahead to see if they agree with the words of a hymn. Being a Unitarian Universalist is, too often, questing after fixing things whether they need fixing or not.
So I took time to listen. Now that I have a sense of this voice and rhythm, I’ve begun to make alterations. Very small one. (I’ll write about a replacement soon.) These are the micro-alterations that a person or congregation, familiar with a liturgical text, will make, possibly without planning and likely without notice. An appeal less to change, but a flexibility that keeps the prayer from drawing too much attention to itself.
- Small changes to gendered language. “All men” become “all.” Or “men” become “people.” Matriarchs join patriarchs. But I leave the “he” pronouns for God. Changing them would pull me too far out of prayer; instead, I pronounce these pronouns softly — more like”ee” — and keep going.
- Pacing some items — less timely, less resonant prayers, say — faster than others. You can always slow down when they’re needed.
- Inserting petitions into collects. That’s a blog post of its own.
- Stopping, and sometimes repeating, a prayer.