What is in Kelvin's Head?

Still Prayin’

19/10/2013

In many churches, St Mary’s included, there is at least one, often two short public service of daily prayer. Here in St Mary’s we have morning prayer at 9.30 and a dedicated band of people take turns in leading. There are generally between five and ten people who come – sometimes more and sometimes less.

For almost a couple of years now we’ve been experimenting with an evening service on Saturdays which is convened online rather than in church. After a break in the summer, that has now started up again.

When I first participated in a daily tradition of prayer I was working in the University of London in one of the University Chaplaincies. I remember once saying to someone in the college that I needed to get back for Evening Prayer and his response has stuck with me. “Say one for me” he said. He was not someone who would ever dream of coming to the service itself but somehow it mattered to him that prayer was offered in that place.

Something of the same thing is going on with the online service. There’s a small band of people who do it – never more than 10 because we don’t have the technology for more than 10. Sometimes we’ve approached that number but more often it is just a few of us. I find that when I tell people that prayer is offered in a google hangout online they are really interested but far fewer come and join in than care about it. There’s obvious delight in the very idea from some people who don’t ever make it into the hangout. There’s a touch of “say one for me” about the experience, I suspect.

People are also interested in what it feels like.

Interestingly the experience that it has most felt like to me is morning prayer at St Mary’s. I guess I am generally comfortable living life online and more so than many. However, it doesn’t really feel any different to me.

I’m interested in this because I know that clergy find it hard to say the daily office on their own. No, let me be more truthful, I know that I find it hard to say the daily office on my own. When I worked in a smaller church I could never quite drag myself into church to say it publicly and I shared what quite a lot of people say – that it makes them feel lonely. Now sometimes you can get yourself in th mood by reminding yourself that you say it with the saints and angels and with all the company of heaven, including those who are saying the same words in many different situations. There’s a core truth that you never pray alone which I believe. However, that is often easier to belief than to feel.

Saying the office online is one way that groups of people could chose to build into their spiritual practise. The little group that does it at St Mary’s now has been doing it long enough to be able to offer tips and I’d welcome any questions or enquiries. Best thing to do, of course, is just turn up to one of our services in cyberspace.

There’s more detail here:

http://thecathedral.org.uk/online-evening-prayer/

5 responses to “Tanzania”

Raspberry Rabbit

31/01/2007

A bit picky, yes. Idris will no doubt correct them when he’s there.

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Simon Sarmiento

01/02/2007

Umm. So Northern Ireland is part of Britain is it?
Four churches in the UK maybe.

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kelvin

01/02/2007

Well Simon, you are correct in your assumption that I was thinking of the Church of Ireland in Northern Ireland, rather than perhaps the Church of Rockall.

People who are being picky deserve to be picked up for slack talk. However, speaking as I do from the Second City of Empire, I hide behind this quote on the website for Number 10 Downing Street:

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page823.asp

“The United Kingdom is made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Great Britain, however, comprises only England, Scotland and Wales. Great Britain is the largest island of the British Isles. Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic form the second largest island.

The UK is just under 1,000 km long from the south coast of England to the extreme north of Scotland, and is 500 km across at its widest point. It shares a single land border with the Irish Republic. Despite its relatively small size the UK boasts incredibly varied and often very beautiful scenery.

The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are not part of the United Kingdom. They are largely self-governing with their own legislative assemblies and systems of law. But the British Government is responsible for their defence and international relations.

On this site the term ‘Britain’ is used informally to mean the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

I’d also refer interested parties to the Wikipedia page on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isles_naming_dispute

I offer this topic as a free gift to Bishop David.

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Bishop David

03/02/2007

As you would expect, I am all knotted up on this one. I am a citizen of Ireland – or the Irish Republic – or the Republic of Ireland. Nor Eire – or, as many of my parishioners in Portadown would have called it [never having moved on from 1922], the ‘Free State’. Meanwhile President Mary MacAleese is often termed President of Ireland which seems to me to be as notable a piece of ‘overlooking’ as when Ian Paisley refers to the ‘people of Ulster’ [which means some of the Protestant/Unionist population of Northern Ireland] and Gerry Adams refers to the ‘Irish People’ [which means not the Protestant/Unionist population of Northern Ireland]. I like Wiki’s rather coy description of Ireland as ‘currently split’ – meaning just the most recent 85 years. Which in the context of thousands of years of British misrule in Ireland is but a blink. And finally one comes to the interesting use of the term ‘mainland’ …

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steg

04/02/2007

Must admit when I saw you were writing about primates in Tanzania I thought your blog was going to be about ape conservation………………….

In my experience people from outwith the UK confuse Britain and England a lot. And they have a point. Do you always refer to the Netherlands or sometimes to Holland even when you are refering to the non Holland bits of the Netherlands? And how do you think that makes the Friesian’s feel? And so on.

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