the place of icons in our worship at saint ben’s
O
n this past Trinity Sunday, our community dedicated a reproduction of Andrei Rublev’s trinitarian icon for use in worship. The icon was purchased in memory of Terry Berg, but as is always the case with anything incorporated in worship, it is dedicated to the glory of the triune God, proclaimed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Music that accompanies some of us on the walk of faith… including a new list by Jenny Moore-Koslowsky
One of the favourites on the old site was our Top Ten Music lists, in which various musicians connected to our community offered their own version of what they considered essential listening for the life of faith. Those lists were originally inspired by a little section in the introduction to Rodney Clapp’s book Border Crossings, in which he invites the reader to “enrich your music collection with at least two albums from among the following, and use them as the soundtracks of your life as you read this book.” He then goes on to offer this really interesting list of stuff, divided more or less equally between jazz and country. What Clapp doesn’t do is to provide any annotation as to why these particular albums, though in the course of the book itself at least some of the albums are discussed. Well, we’re interested in the “whys,” and so the following lists include a fair bit of detail as to why these folks think these albums are worth your attention. Oh, and though I’m not a musician, I have offered up the first list in the section… meaning that whether or not you are a musician you too can give this a whirl.
On May 14, 2008, several hundred people gathered at St John’s Cathedral in Winnipeg for an ordination service. Helen Manfield, who has been a part of our community of saint benedict’s table since close to its beginnings, was ordained priest, and two others were ordained deacons. This sermon was not preached at that liturgy, and indeed will probably never be preached at all. It is, however, offered here as my ordination gift to Helen, and as a not so subtle challenge to others in the church that perhaps it might be time to reconsider how we frame our liturgies of ordination.
Jamie Howison, May 17, 2008
As I sat in my designated seat at the front of the cathedral, vested in my cassock,
surplice and stole, playing the altogether perfunctory role of “bishop’s chaplain” (which involves little more than processing in and out of the cathedral in front of the bishop, and holding the pastoral staff during the ordination rite itself), I could not help but think back to my own ordination in that same cathedral almost exactly twenty years earlier. Actually, my thoughts were most caught up in the memory of a sermon preached by Tim Sale the following morning at the parish church where I was serving my curacy. My own ordination, you see, had looked remarkably like Helen’s, with the notable addition of a surprise trumpet fanfare during the procession to mark the fact that our bishop of the day had recently been elected as Metropolitan Archbishop of the ecclesiastical province. “It was,” preached Tim in his sermon,
It was quintessential Anglicanism – music, pomp and circumstance – in a heritage that is almost as old as Christendom itself – the choosing and making of deacons and presbyters, priests.
And yet – and yet… I am personally confused and troubled by so much of what we did yesterday. Let me share with you why. The heart of my confusion lies in the gospel message in tension with the church’s embodiment of that message.
The trouble is that our Anglican version seems curiously and dangerously out of touch with both our current reality – and much more fundamentally, with biblical teaching… But on the side of human reality – we all love a good parade – a good spectacle.
A song sample
Last year some of the musicians connected to saint benedict’s table recorded a CD: We will not be silent. It contains music we use every week and it represents some of what has grown from the roots of this congregation. The CD is available at the church for $15 or you can buy it on iTunes where it’s available by the track ($0.99 each) or as a digital download of the whole album for $9.99. Click here to find our first album on ITS.
As a taste of what you’ll find on the CD, here’s an excerpt from Mike Koop’s song I know it’s you.
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