Category: communion

Remember me!

After last evening’s Communion Service with LCSB on line, here are the prayers I used for those who want to see them again.

Welcome

This is a piece of wood, cut from a tree, much like a carpenter would use.

This is a cross, cut from a tree, where a carpenter would die.

This is a candle, a light to keep faith alive:

faith in the world turner, the cross wise one, who speaks to us through the wood.

Communion in the kitchen

Prayer of delight

God of all we rejoice at your delight!

At your delight in the world you created,

at your delight in Jesus, your Son, baptised and ready to go,

at your delight in us, affirmed and ready to follow him.

Invitation to communion

Birthed in a manger, a wooden box where cattle feed.

Brought up in a workshop, a place of wood where he learnt a trade.

Brought out of the River Jordan, baptised by water and the Spirit,

Jesus, the cross wise one, invites you all to his table.(

Prayer after communion

Companion Christ, True Vine, we have eaten heavenly bread, we have drunk the wine of promise.

We commit ourselves to a life of kinship.

Sustain us on the road that in partnership with the poor

we may travel on to eat and drink in justice and peace in the vineyard of the Vinegrower.

Blessing of the trees in the woodland

Hazel: male and female flowers

A blessing from the larch and the beech;
May they shelter you in their season.
A blessing from the hawthorn and the willow:
May they delight you in their season.
A blessing from the hazel and the oak;
May they supply you in their season.
May you ever be sheltered, delighted and supplied in this holy place,
By the power of the Holy Three.

Great God, who made the darkness for rest,
Surround us this night
So that our words, our thoughts, our breath,
May rest in you.

Janet Lees for LCSB 10.01.2021

Drink up!

Dear Benedict,

Having given due consideration to food, in the following chapter (chapter 40) of your Rule you give equal thought to drink. It’s that I’m writing about today. In your time and place that drink was wine and you were happy to endorse it, in moderation , of course. Time passes, culture changes, wine ages, and here we are in the 21st century with lockdown contributing to an increase in the consumption of alcohol in Britain over the last year.

For some this will be Dry January, a thing that actually only originates from 2014, and is more popular, it seems in France, Switzerland and Britain, thought Finland had a version in 1942. Of course in this meaning ‘Dry’ means no alcohol not ‘no liquid’.

That meaning of the word has a longer history. Many small Congregational Churches (before becoming the United Reformed Church in 1972) were ‘Dry’ in that sense. Their practice had been influenced by the Temperance Movement in the 19th century. This social movement developed in response to concerns about the effects of alcohol consumption on health, family life, social cohesion and so forth. Interestingly, local leadership was often in the hands of women. In these small churches it lead to a prohibition on the use of alcohol on their premises for worship and social occasions. I grew up in such a community and have served as minister in others.

Your reflection ‘Wine makes even the wise go astray’ and your thought that God will reward those who abstain seems to accord with such practices. It seems a good time to mention that on Sunday I will preside at a ‘dry’ Eucharistic service for members of the Lay Community of St Benedict (on zoom).

A rehearsal in my kitchen

From the remembered bible: Think of your stomach and take a little wine.

I’m not sure whether in the correspondence here, the emphasis was on ‘stomach’ or ‘little’ or just the fact that the water wasn’t all that clean. Chapter 40 sends with the simple suggestion: ‘Don’t whine about the wine!’

May I not whine…

From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.

Let’s dance!

Dear Benedict,

Me again, still on chapters 23-30 I’m afraid. I’m not sure what you make of this but I’m encouraged by those who have been in touch with me about this blog and the comments and thoughts they have shared.

When writing about the pattern of work and worship I said something about it being like a dance: together, apart, together apart. So now I’m thinking about this section on discipline and it seemed to me that the dance goes on here too. It’s a slightly different dance, with a graver tune perhaps.

I’m wondering what sort of faults put your monastics in need of discipline? In my calling as a minister I have sometimes been gifted the most amazing stories. I’m mindful of the personal cost to people who share their inner most thoughts and experiences with another person. I’m also aware how complex such episodes can be and how they reveal the depths of community life. We don’t really have that sort of detail about the communities you were writing for in the 6th century, which is one of the things that makes it difficult to understand your discipline process.

We have other stories of discipline, personal experiences or community observations. Each has their own context: part of a dance somewhere else. As I write this I think of a woman who experienced torture under Pinochet’s Regime in Chile, 2 women who came here from East Africa, one who got leave to remain and one who didn’t, of my personal observations of racism and sexism in the church and wider community and so on. Each one has it’s own backstory, each one is part of a dance.

I’m concerned we behave like adults which is difficult when our experiences of discipline begin and childhood and are often stuck there. These things lodge inside us, body, mind and spirit, and influence our steps in the dance. Some of what you write about discipline doesn’t sit well with adulting as I attempt it, and indeed time spent inside the church can sometimes reveal a tendency to infantalise and long for a nostalgic return to childhood. I am mindful that the words discipline and disciple share a common route. So too our understanding of the former depends on our experience of the latter.

I’m not a good dancer. I enjoy dancing but don’t practice enough to be confident. If I get it wrong the worst that might happen would be no one would ask me to partner them in the next dance. But I can imagine that sitting out dance after dance on the sidelines could be hurtful and lead to further alienation. Even so, the community can be damage by one, or more, who dance merry hell over everybody and everything inside the community.

I write as one who loves to sing and one of my favourite morning songs from my time as school chaplain was the hymn Lord of the Dance by Sidney Carter. You can here it sung from a church in Leeds here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04zd4kg

It’s a song I love: Jesus dances with us through his life and ours. I taught it to my Sunday School class when I was in my late teens, in Essex. One Elder told me it was heretical, because there was no mention of Jesus dancing in the bible. There is in mine and it’s an image of life in community, right or wrong, that I’ll dance with.

Together, apart, together, apart: let’s dance. Try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5b15lTnGm0

From the remembered bible: Listen, wisdom is calling in the streets – and dancing too!

Dance with me, Jesus.

From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.