Category: Daily prayer

Every once in a while, you get a Unitarian Universalist who says — in so many words — we’re not Christian and never were, so why do we insist on doing X like the Christians. (The letters to the UUWorld sometimes go there.) But what we were (and some still are) conditions the process (if not the content) of what we have today. OK, nothing new said there. Which is my point . . . .
It may be unfashionable to say so — Americans would usually like to make something new than recover the old — but a Unitarian Universalist seriously considering the offices of daily prayer, including morning prayer, has to look both to how Unitarians and Universalists approached the matter, and how the people they drew on approached it.

At this point, I supposed to say how we have Puritan roots and there’s something distinctly New England about how we do our worship and so forth. But a lot of what got filtered through the more refined churches of the late nineteenth century was a better sense of the aesthetic, with briefer sermons, choral music, and pre-composed prayers. Colonial Meetinghouse fell to Gothic Revival, or met halfway, at least. A lot of denominations went through this, and the Episcopalians (among a small set of others) were cast in an admirable light. Which is one reason I refer to them a lot. But this is somewhat obscured because Episcopalians on the whole don’t worship they way they once did. Good ol’ low church Episcopalianism — with Morning Prayer as the default service and ministers dressed more or less like I am in my blog photo — is almost dead. The parish Eucharist and vestments from antiquity have become so common that we’d hardly know there is an alternative. But Morning Prayer was once popular in part because it was easy to learn and participate in, and worked with people of differing theological commitments. It was praise and hearing and prayer, and most commonly learning through a nourishing address tacked to the end, incircled in its own sequence of singing and blessing. The framework is familiar, and is seen — however modified — in many Unitarian Universalist churches today. It is a robust frame; to my mind, a good service of morning prayer should likewise accordion down to a person’s private if complex prayer, or up to the main service of a Sunday congregation of thousands. So a respectible order for morning prayer can be cast as a series of elements as headings. Just a thought.

After saying all that, and following up on what I wrote last time, someone composing a liturgy for both local and “elsewhere” use needs to think about its customs. Who stands where, who walks where, how are candles lit and not lit — which options for the physical “performance” are use and which aren’t. That says a lot about what’s accepted or rejected; perhaps more than the theological content. Take notes at a service you like and “works” and you’ll know instinctively that the customary is important and what it can involve.

Now, a word on what is ordinary and what is proper.

Ordinary elements — in rite (words) or custom (actions and physical resource choices) — occur at every service or nearly so. Standing at the hymns, the unison recitation of a particularly-worded covenant, the closely-enunciated exhortation-as-greeting when the chalice is lighted (in its own particular way), the bright singing of “Go now in peace” when the church scholars leave, the unpretensious reception of the offering with two church members with wicker baskets — these are ordinary to several real-live Unitarian Universalist congregations I’ve seen. They get inside of you and allow you to participate in all the weather of the human condition, and you change them at someone’s peril.

Proper elements change from service to service, often keyed to an occasion or schedule like a lectionary. They provide variety, interest, color, and focus. Hymns and readings are proper. The choice of prayers is proper. Some liturgies are themselves proper to an occasion, like the customary Ash Wednesday and Good Friday liturgies.

OK, this posting is a mess but I’d better publish it or I’ll never stop. Have at it.

Chutney need not have worried that I was going to judge his morning prayer proposal on theological grounds: I’ve read his blog long enough to know where he’s coming from and I’d fain worry if he did propose a Christian liturgy.

And little wonder, too, since cyclic personal and corporate prayer is the property of no single religion. The sun rises and falls on us all.

I am, however, worried about the construction of his rite, and I’ll spell this out in some detail in the next few posts. Composing liturgy is a tricky thing because each rite — new and old — has a subtext that can only be spelled out in part, even with the most comprehensive of rubrics (directions). So much the better, too, since the inherent variety reflects the custom of a people, the physical makup of a space and other considerations. The Christian Scientists suffer in their shockingly directive form of worship and is so now mummified. More about the custom of worship later.

I also have some deep concerns about the intellectual property Chutney uses in his rite. The 1894 Universalist rite is obviously in the public domain, but (less obviously) was derived from the 1892 Episcopalian rite, which was contemporaneously released in the public domain. (All United States Episcopal Church English prayer books — but not all service books — were and are. I wrote about this before.) Chutney’s rite, on the other hand, is a festival of copyright, and I dare not ask if he got clearances before publishing his trial run. Apart from the moral, legal and logistical problems of copyright clearances, there is the pastoral problem of someone owning the foundational language of the church. I’ve written about this before, too. A hymn here or there won’t matter much, since these are meant to be rotated in and out. Denominational sources have the good sense (usually) to keep copyrighted liturgies open in some kind of congregational use license, which mitigates some of my concerns. Sermons, I think but am willing to be challenged on, are a different beast since they are the words of one speaking to the church rather than being the public voice from the church.

That’ll do for now. Next come my ordinary and proper concerns.