I'm good at this

I led Collective Worship in a couple of Primary Schools yesterday.

I used some of my very limited knowledge of British Sign Language (BSL) to teach a small selection of signs and get the entire hall to use them for a concluding prayer.  So far, so normal.

One Headteacher ran with the idea as I was finishing and asked me further questions.  I explained how little I knew, how I had helping lead worship with an interpreter for a congregation of deaf people in the past, and how the Friday Church at St James’ was learning the Lord’s Prayer in BSL clause by clause so that we could now do about half of it.

‘Reverend Mullins has told you how little he knows,’ the Headteacher said to the children, ‘but you’ve seen how much he does know - he meant to say “I’m good at this, and I’m working hard to be even better at it”.’

I thanked him afterwards (he knew the BSL sign for ‘thank you’ by then) for reinforcing the school’s ethos in the face of the constant danger of it being undermined by inadvertent external influences like mine and English self-deprecation.

The picture is part of the classic view down Haworth’s Main Street made even more classic by the sun on this year’s first dusting of snow.  I’m told that the classic Hovis advert filmed on Golden Hill in Shaftesbury is based on a 1940s poster advert depicting a delivery boy toiling up Main Street, Haworth, but I haven’t yet been able to find a copy.

Halifax details

And, not a small detail at all, the surprising scale of the Piece Hall (originally for the sale of cloth) which rivals any major Italian piazza:

Framing and curating

Different choices of possible frames for a piece of art bring out different aspects of it.  I was reminded of this by one example this week: ‘the silver one brings out the central motif clearly while also making the piece seem colder, while the red one brings out small elements which are there in the background and by doing so makes the piece warmer’. 

And I just wondered whether that might actually be a (partial) image of preaching?  One is putting a frame around something (a passage of scripture, an experience of faith or of life) to ‘bring out’ something from it. 

There will be the obvious dangers.  Choosing a loud, large and inappropriate frame which draws attention to itself rather than the art.  An habitual choice of a favourite frame which (perhaps unconsciously) will only ever bring out a strictly limited selection of colours or features.  Or simply an unawareness of the effect ‘framing’ is having on what is being noticed.

All of which also reminded me of a different image offered over the last few years.  The image is  having responsibility for ‘curating worship’ – the responsibility for developing and leading liturgy is like the responsibility of the curator of an art exhibition.  The image is all the more compelling because all licensed clergy are ‘curates’. 

Perhaps that is also a(nother partial) image of preaching?  Choices are made about the things (scripture, experiences, reflections on them) which are included or excluded.  And, crucially, choices are made about what one chooses to exhibit side-by-side, how one labels anything, and about the order in which one leads people past things.

So, working with our 'Worship on the road to Emmaus' groups, I noticed that 'framing' our Communion liturgy with, or 'exhibiting it' alongside, Luke 24 (the Emmaus story) ‘brings out’ the way each such service situates us on the evening of Easter Day with what feels like the hardly credible first resurrection news and experiences freshly invigorating us.

And then, this week, 'framing'  exactly the same service with, or 'exhibiting it' alongside, Jeremiah 32 (the prophet investing in land in a war zone – a story which comes up once every three years in our Sunday reading cycle but with which our groups were unfamiliar) ‘brings out’ the way each Communion service is situated in desertion and in hope apparently being crushed by naked political power (it is literally ‘in the night in which he was betrayed’ after all, the covenant of hope is in this context).

Other 'frames' for the Communion service, other things which might be 'exhibited' alongside it, are a meal, the Passover, or a (wedding) banquet.  Each would ‘bring out’ something we might otherwise not spot or value or be challenged by.

And what about the way each Christian denomination is a frame which makes us notice and overlook quite different aspects of the whole Christian story and tradition?  Or what is 'brought out' of both our rapidly changed culture and our faith stories when they are exhibited next to one another?

The picture is Bridgehouse Beck at the bottom of our road.  It will flow into the Worth close by and on into the Aire in the next town, which will flow into Calder on the other side of our district and then into the Ouse on the other side of our county, emerging into the Humber estuary to flow through the edge of the parish I left behind in Grimsby nearly six months ago.

Developing views

I was in Lincoln Cathedral yesterday for the first time in six months and found the long planned work has been completed to furnish the area around St Hugh's shrine as a centre of worship rather than as a vast empty retro-choir space.  There are hints of a sheepfold about it.  I also found  a new willow-creation of St Hugh's swan by the shrine (look out on the left of the picture).  

Meanwhile, leaf-fall has also subtly changed the view from our shower room window in Haworth.  We can now just make out the chimneys of the former  mansion (now the Youth Hostel) on the horizon; the mill-owner would have looked down on the housing developed on the brown-field former mill site below.

Entwine our desires

I’ve been playing with the text of an early Latin Collect which came up recently.

Dirigat corda nostra quaesumus Domine tuae miserationis operatio, quia tibi sine te placere non possumus comes out (in the word order of the modern English Collect) as something like Lord, because without you we cannot be acceptable to you, may the activity of your compassion, we ask, direct our hearts which Cranmer’s seventeenth century revisers rendered O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee, mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts.

Both the translation process and the way this has been ‘improved’ by the reference to the Holy Spirit is clear thus:

Source / Prayer Book

Lord / O God

because / forasmuch as

without you / without thee

we cannot  / we are not able to

be acceptable to you  / please thee

may the activity of your compassion / mercifully

we ask  / grant that

- / thy Holy Spirit

- / may in all things

direct / direct

- / and rule

our hearts / our hearts.

Leaving that to one side, my playing has tried to create new prayers which capture what the Latin originators might have been encouraging us to feel towards:

Stir our hearts, Lord, we pray,

because we cannot come to you

without your mercy at work in us

or even

Entwine our desires

with your mercy, O Lord,

that you might delight in them.

Source / First new prayer

Lord /  Lord

because /  because

without you /  without your

we cannot  /  we cannot

be acceptable to you  /  come to you

may the activity of your compassion /  mercy at work in us

we ask  /  we pray

direct /  stir

our hearts / our hearts

Source / Second new prayer [negative ‘because without you we cannot be acceptable to you’ shifted to a positive ‘that you might delight in them’]

Lord /  O Lord

because /  that

without you /  you

we cannot  /  might

be acceptable to you  /   delight in them

may the activity of your compassion / with your mercy

we ask  /  [this is only implied]

direct /  entwine

our hearts /  our desires

Meanwhile, the largess to the poor is the feeding of the hungry as one of the corporal works of mercy in the Charlotte Bronte memorial window in St Michael's, Haworth.