The sombre restraint of Remembrancetide

Remembrancetide. It falls in mid-November, with the leaves fallen and the trees bare, the days shorter, another year reaching its end.

A fitting season to remember. Far from the garish, loud days of Summer, these November days encourage a sombre quietness as we recollect loss, death, grief, sacrifice.

The last days of Autumn, as the dark days before Christmas draw near, encourage the modesty and restraint of our remembrance.

We do not gather to celebrate victory or give expression to patriotic fervour.

The symbol of Remembrancetide is not the national flag but a little poppy - a memory of Flanders fields - pinned to our lapels.

The parson, standing close to the local war memorial, is in surplice, hood, bands, tippet: fitting ecclesiastical attire, echoing the modesty and restraint which hold and still us before the sombre quiet of Remembrance.

A crowd gathers, each with the little poppy in their lapels. Quiet nods of greeting. Little, if any, talking. There is an inherent reverence to this moment that calls forth quietness, stillness.

The local war memorial is not grand. Noble, yes, but not grand, not overwhelming, for that would detract from Remembrance. Hence the sombre minimalism of the Cenotaph in London. Grand architecture may be appropriate for other memories, other moments in our national story. This day, however, requires restraint and modesty before the memory of great loss.

The two minutes silence, the heart of Remembrance. Sombre, solemn, respectful stillness before the memory of great loss. We do not attempt words. Those whom we remember are known unto God. And that is sufficient.

The Last Post cuts through the quiet of this November day, recalling service and sacrifice; the Rouse a foretelling of the hope of the Last Trump.

The prayers offered by the parson should be like those of the National Service of Remembrance. A short, decent collect, as we "do honour to the memory of those who have died in the service of their country and of the Crown".

Then the Lord's Prayer, said many times in trenches, uttered in fear, offered in battlefield services, recited over a comrade's newly-dug grave.

It is not a time for fussy liturgy, edgy prayers, or banal liturgical responses. Collect, Lord's Prayer, blessing: these suffice. Like the padre on the battlefield, with few, trusted words gathering up before God emotions and experiences of such depth and nature that clumsy, awkward, hollow contemporary liturgical texts cannot comprehend.

As with the National Service of Remembrance, 'O God, our help in ages past' is sung. The sparse words of Isaac Watts' rendering of the psalmist's ancient prayer give voice to our lament, our needs, our hopes: "Be thou our guard while troubles last, And our eternal home".

The blessing. The parson invokes the name of God of Abraham, the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for our peace: "And give you his peace this day and always". In the face of the memory of great loss and sacrifice, a stark reminder so vividly of the fragility of earthly peace, the blessing draws us to the greater, enduring peace that is the gift and presence of God, to sustain us in our own times and troubles, guiding us to the peaceable City that is enduring.

It ends with the National Anthem. Ours is not a bombastic, nationalistic anthem - entirely unsuited to Remembrance - but a modest civic prayer for the well-being of the realm, the realm for which those we have remembered gave their all, that it would know peace and safety.

We go our ways in quietness, another Act of Remembrance now past; grateful, before God, for those who once responded to the call of duty; saddened that their times required such sacrifice; aware that "Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away"; assured that the everlasting God is "our guard while troubles last, And our eternal home".

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant. To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

laudable Practice

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