Music For Liturgy

Colour Me Excited!

You can now by Music for Liturgy, the music book from St Gregory of Nyssa Church, on Amazon!

The companion CD is available from CD Baby!
And, while we’re on the topic, the DVD is available from Film Baby! (There’s a preview of the movie on that page…)

Ah HA! It IS your first time!

(Reposted from the Old Blog. 2 of 2, I thought them worth the repost)

An Orthodox Church - especially of the Eastern Rite - can be an alien world to people - especially American People used to three hymns some Bible and a sermon.

We’ve had a visitor recently. He was the cause of the letter I wrote in the post, First Time?. His presence the last couple of weeks has keyed me into a number of things we generally don’t do for new comers. I say this based on a limited experience: one parish in California, three in North Carolina (including a monastery), the JP Monastery in Resaca, one parish in Columbus, GA, and one parish in NYC. All of these locations are Eastern Rite. Others will have a far wider experience of the Church, in this country and out. Others may have a more narrow experience of a greatly different sort. Sharing of both kinds are welcomed.

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First Time?

(Reposted from the Old Blog. 1 of 2, I thought them worth the repost)

Dear Visitor:

Welcome to All Saints of the Melting Pot Orthodox Church. We’re very glad you chose to visit us. Whatever has brought you here, from wherever you come, no matter on which path you walk, welcome.

Second only to God, you are the most important person here today. The scripture tells us that guests might often be angels, and our Tradition expands that by insisting that the guest (you) is Christ Himself. St Benedict even tells us to greet you with a prostration! We’re sure you have some questions - and perhaps even more after the service - and we want to offer answers to them. But we’ll do that in person. This note is just an attempt at making you feel comfortable during your first visit - a paper prostration, as it were. Here are some things we thought you might want to know:

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What really divdes Anglicans

Fr Hohn Heidt is from Ft Worth. His essay, entitled What really divdes us. is a wonderful explanation of the differences between the various parties within Anglicanism. It’s worth noting that, although various persons might say otherwise, both Anglican Shi’ites and Sunnis (let the reader understand) have these “high church” and “low church” parties.

Father’s essay has a very concise statement of Catholic sotierology:

Grace restores the divine image in man. Salvation comes through growth in grace, not through some kind of substitution deal between Jesus and His Father. Because grace saves us from the effects of our sins, we are no longer slaves but friends of God. Though our sins make us unworthy to come into His presence, by divine grace we are made worthy to stand before him.

The comments to the essay seem to play up the stark division in the camps. I remember, when I worked at 815, how odd it felt to hear that Jack Iker was standing arm-in-arm with women clergy. 10+ years ago, that was the first time I used the phrase, “There’s only one sin left.”

I giggle that Father is discussing an appearance of Bp Duncan at the Society of the Holy Cross: I know a goodly number of gay men who are members of that organisation.

Kill & Convert or Die.

Remember that horrid video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces? You know, where Righteous Born Again™ Christians™ in the Endtimes™ had to run around and try to make people convert or else kill them?

Well… all the unsold copies of it are about to be sent to our Troups in Iraq!

Over at the Nation, using their normal ranty-style, Max Blumenthal reports that a Evangelism organisation is sending “care packages” to U.S. soldiers which include the game.

We send care packages to soldiers on the front lines of the war in Iraq. We call them “Freedom Packets” because the truth will set you free. Included in each “Freedom Packet” is:

• Greeting card
• 75 Minute Phone Card
• White Socks
• Baby Wipes (suggested by Col Oliver North)
• Gideon’s pocket size New Testament
• Extreme Sports “Livin It” Witnessing DVD
• “More than a Carpenter” book by Josh McDowell” Double printed in the Arabic language
• PC Game – Left Behind Game by Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins
• and an assortment of snacks.

We ship them to Iraq free of charge to soldiers. The approximate cost per package is $50. Two items – phone cards and shipping cost – account for approximately half that total amount. Most of the items were donated at no cost to support our troops. Your donation helps us send a clear message that God cares, including their mind, body and soul.

Source: Operation Straighten Up (GAG on that name!)

That Arabic book disturbs me: inviting the military to become evangelists… That material makes the US Military out to be *exactly* what Muslims say they are - a Christian Crusade. It makes our soldiers into defacto Christian Evangelists. If that material is found on them by their equivalent numbers from the Muslim world, they will be killed.

Sending the game, btw, is tasteless and tacky: men and women over in Iraq are living in a violent, military world. You don’t send them a violent, military game to help them relax! You might as well send them free copies of America’s Army.

(Props to FriendlyAtheist.)

Leaving Church

Interesting review of Leaving Church, by Barbara Brown Taylor. She describes her perfect church:

She said it would consist of 52 people, and it would be a community of pastors, in that all of the leadership would be shared. Hopefully they would be a community of social activists, a community of leaders, and they would never own a building - because she said as soon as you have a building, then the problems begin. Some interesting thoughts for would-be emerging church planters.

Whoa! Sounds like Praxis.

We need to get church on.

A quote from the book:

If being ordained meant being set apart from them, then I did not want to be ordained anymore. I wanted to be human. I wanted to spit food and let snot run down my chin. I wanted to confess being as lost and found as anyone else without caring that my underwear showed through my wet clothes. Bobbing in that healing pool with all those other flawed beings of light, I looked around and saw them as I had never seen them before, while some of them looked at me the same way. The long wait had come to an end. I was in the water at last.

Wow… the author was never Orthodox, huh?

I’ve been told that by canon law (even tho’ it gets broken a lot) a priest is not supposed to be in a place where alcohol is served - not even Denny’s with beers…
I’ve been told priest can’t talk about life before ordination…
I’ve been told that he can’t wear street clothes…

etc.

Some people get off on the spookiness. That’s why I note “I’ve been told…” instead of “it is true”. Some (like a lot of “ethnic” clergy) manage to break out of the mould, but just as that happens a lot of American Converts get in the act and call those others “modernists” and they start to feud.

(Yes, Fr Ernesto, I know: it’s not all one way or the other, but you were converted by ethnic sorts. Come up to “Orthodoxy in the Mountains” where it’s all-converts-all-the-time and make fun of the GOA at Typica. You’d have to time travel, but comments at St Raphael’s typika about how modernists did liturgy were plentiful, even from the clergy. And not just from St Raphael’s clergy either. And sometimes it’s not so generous even in the saner places outside of St Raphael’s.)

A Revolution of Hope

What does it mean, in today’s world, to be a follower of God in the way of Jesus?
What does it mean to be a faith community engaged in the holistic, integral mission of God in our world today?
How do we, as individuals and faith communities, respond faithfully to the crises facing our world?
What is our duty to God, ourselves, our families, our neighbors, our enemies, and our planet in light of Jesus’ radical message of the kingdom of God?
How can we engage in personal formation and theological reformulation for global transformation?

(Props to Emergent Village.)

A point of agreement…

Where do the folks who are splitting up agree the most? Where do you get “liberals” and “conservatives” (=) “traditionalists” and “progressives” (=) “reappraisers” and “reasserters” to sit down and say, “ok, we can agree to that”?

Dylan’s marshaling a list and invites participation:

“I’m going to start a list of points on which I think I and many ‘progressives’ agree with the vast majority of ‘reasserters.’ Progressives and reasserters, please use the comments either to add your own points on which you think we’d agree or to let me know if you don’t actually agree with one of the points posted up here, and I’ll periodically edit the list in light of the comments. I’m not using the most specific or detailed language I could use, as the goal is to come up with the greatest number and most specificity possible while still allowing broad agreement. “

It starts with “Jesus is Lord”.

I’m down with that. As someone who, increasingly, feels himself to be on the Progressive/Emergent side of things, it seems connexion is more important than agreement, per se. But I know that for a good portion of my readers, agreement is important.

For my Orthodox and RC readers, where could you sit down with “the others” and agree to not walk away? From an ecumenical standpoint, where do we agree? I don’t think that’s part of the scope of Dylan’s invite, but feel free to post that here.

Chicken : Egg :: Church : ?

Is Mission the Mother of Theology? and from both of them, *then* Ecclesiology? Cross on over to Radical Congruency for links and discussion.

Preaching Revolution — In These Times

Props to the folks over at Street Prophets for this story. Preaching Revolution. It’s an article that gives me a lot of hope for the Megachurch/Housechurch movement… just gimme one of these that is also Sacramental! Why are Christians divided that way? Grrf.

This new generation of Christian Revolutionaries most definitely places prayer above analysis. But where will their prayers lead them? Will they forever restrict themselves to person-to-person, “relational” solutions? Or will they choose to influence political leaders on issues they share with the left — poverty, war, environmental destruction — with the same force that the Christian Right exerted around abortion, gay marriage and other areas?

Go read the whole thing (it’s a long “Feature” kinda story.)