"A few prosaic days": savouring November's last weeks after Trinity
So says Emily Dickinson in her poem 'November'. With the rich glories of Autumn and the festivities of All Hallows past, the season begins to slowly turns towards Winter. Here in the British Isles and in Canada, we do not have Thanksgiving to look forward to at month's end. As the days get shorter, the weather more wintry, these weeks seem to peter out. Only Remembrance Sunday "pierces with its bleak remembrance", to use the words of Malcolm Guite.
A few prosaic days ...
The traditional Prayer Book collects reflect the prosaic quality of this time of year. The collect of Trinity XXI petitions for "a quiet mind"; Trinity XXII, that we might be "devoutly given to serve thee in all good works"; Trinity XXIII, that we "may obtain effectually" that which we ask for in prayer. It is all rather commonplace and ordinary.
It contrasts sharply with many contemporary liturgies creating 'pre-Advent' time, beginning with All Saints' Day and ending with Christ the King. There is an apocalyptic quality to what the Church of England's 'Times and Seasons' explicitly describes as "the Season". It is, of course, all more eye-catching than the traditional Prayer Book provision, anticipating the great themes of Advent, and filling November with a sense of dramatic liturgical time.
What, however, if we need "A few prosaic days" as the weeks of November pass? What if we should be reflecting the quietness of these last days of Autumn, taking stock and gathering our thoughts before the drama of Advent commences? The prosaic Prayer Book collects of these weeks are, perhaps, what we need: space for reflecting on the passage of another liturgical year. Space, too, before the onslaught of December, when we have to hold in tension Advent themes and the early start of commercial and social festivities.
Against the background of the prosaic nature of the days and collects, the collect of the Sunday next before Advent then makes sense: "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people". The quiet, commonplace character of the weeks leading up to the end of the liturgical year gives way to a petition which orients us towards Advent. We are not required to artificially sustain an anticipation of Advent throughout November. Rather, knowing that Advent is now close, the collect and readings of Stir-up Sunday prepare us for the approaching season in a way that contrasts with the distraction that is the celebration of Christ the King.
We should, then, savour this prosaic time, as the Sundays after Trinity draw to their end in these weeks of November. The petitions in the collects of these weeks are most appropriate for the closing of the liturgical year, beseeching that its observance may have ordered us more authentically in prayer and good works towards the One who is our salvation. In the words of the Epistle for Trinity XXII, "that ye may be ... filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ".
It is not a liturgically busy or fussy November that we need, with an attempt to manufacture an extended Advent, but a reflective ending to the liturgical year, drawing out those very prosaic, commonplace qualities which the Christian life requires, day by day, year by year, so that, "plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, [we] may of thee be plenteously rewarded".
One of the great advantages of the Prayer Book, I find, is its constant turning from collectivity to solitude, from celebration to quietness, from the miraculous to the prosaic. It has a lovely "gathering up" of the many facets of the human emotional, rational, interior, and exterior experiences, giving time and space for each. I think that the Anglican approach, in its poetic and gentle (if not muted) way, attempts to capture the transcendent in the heart of the familiar, as I believe you have alluded to in your blog. It would be interesting to reflect on the differing ways this is accomplished in the Anglican and Catholic experiences.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for your comment. Yes, I think you describe Anglicanism at its best, 'capturing the transcendent in the heart of the familiar'. The Prayer Book embodies this in a quiet, reserved, understated way, precisely because if it was not in a quiet, reserved, understated way it might overpower the familiar and the ordinary.
DeleteYour point about reflecting on the differing ways this is accomplished in the Anglican and Roman Catholic experiences is fascinating. My initial instinct is to say that RC spirituality can also do this but perhaps in different ways, using sacramentals and devotions whereas Anglicanism uses Common Prayer. What is similar, however, is the emphasis on the parish and community.
Yes to the comment about sacramentalism. I think that more robust doctrines of sainthood also play a role here. Traditionally, in classical Christianity, "sanctification of place" occurs through the invocation of a local saint, associated with a shrine, feature of the landscape, miracle, public tradition, etc. However, as RC continues to develop, this sanctification tends to move from being locally oriented to being "administered" by the Church organization. This is not always true (as the many local festivals and traditions around the RC world can attest), but the "administrative" hand never seems too far from the RC experience of sanctification of place. This, I think, might tend to put the emphasis on the Church, the transcendent, the holy as "opposed" to the profane, and thus (at its best, perhaps) the center of the sacred experience moves from the landscape and the community itself INTO the Church. The Church itself becomes the center of all.
DeleteParadoxically, the "state" church of Anglicanism, with its somewhat reduced calendar of saints and the decreased emphasis on the extraordinary miracular (less veneration of saints 'for the sake of' the miracles they have performed) tends to turn the sacramental emphasis on the general embodied in the local. I think of rogation days, and the general format of the Prayer Book applied to private life. Thus the Church moves into the local as local, but retains its universal character (while at the same time having less emphasis on the discreet judgement of bishops, archbishops, etc. meaning less of an "administrative" sacramentality while still being a hierarchy).
In short, when I think of RC, I think of a shrine to a local saint, attended by those who wish to receive (from the priest) some kind of special dispensation; when I think of the AC, I think of local people being turned again and again to their daily lives and yearly experiences by a Church and Prayer Book that remind them of the holiness that is already there.
This is, of course, as unfair and reductive a view as any can be; my only hope is that it will provide a sort of rough, temporary scaffold with which to erect a better, more perspicacious opinion.
Yes, I do think you capture here something important in the Anglican ethos. The very different status of clergy, the absence of shrines, the reformed commemoration of the saints, and that emphasis on the 'ordinary': all of this has a very significant influence in shaping an Anglican understanding of domestic and communal life, of the landscape and the polity.
DeleteJohn Milbank has a reference to Anglicanism being "sturdily incarnated in land, parish and work yet sublimely aspiring in its verbal, musical and visual performances". I think I broadly agree with the statement while hesitating at the "yet" because those verbal, musical and visual performance do not contrast with Anglicanism being embedded in land, parish and work but rather flow from and reflect this. They too, in other words, are sturdily incarnated.
Alongside the different approach to commemoration of the saints in Anglicanism, I might also point to our very reserved and modest Marian piety, which prevents an intense contrast between profane and sacred (not least because Anglicanism has historically avoided an indecent focus on the issue of the BVM's perpetual virginity). It is also difficult to understate the cultural impact of married clergy with their domestic obligations.
I have often read Anglicanism referred to as a particularly "Incarnational" spirituality. I think that this is important, and it is perhaps a quality shared with the Eastern churches, with their emphasis on Theosis and the divine and the human meeting and coming together (not as equals, but as bride and bridegroom, to use the classic analogy). The somewhat subdued emphasis on Mary, as you mention, is evidence of this--there is no need for a "supernatural" Mary, rather, the profundity is in the effect God had on the life of a ordinary girl--who also seems to be the pinnacle of human sainthood on the grounds that she simply said "Yes" to God. She does not need to be more than ordinary (ie supernatural) to be the extraordinary being God needed her to be.
DeleteI think your comment also reflects what I have often regarded as the chief Anglican virtue, namely humility. I once heard a Lutheran say of their dogma, that "we do not know how it happens, only that God says through Scripture that it does happen." That kind of contentedness with the capital-M Mystery is what again tends to unite, it seems to me, the Anglican and Eastern outlooks. Catholicism tends to have a strong tendency to formulate and dogmatize--for which I do not blame them, being forced often in an official capacity (sometimes for political reasons) to reach conclusions on dogmatic matters that are both specific and final.
But Anglicanism is much more content to leave what some might call a "generous margin" on dogma and what some American Anglicans (of whatever variety) might falsely regard as "room for personal choice." I would say that this is really a kind of humility before the Mystery Tremendous, a reluctance to attempt to pin down the acts and will of the Spirit by use of logic or any scaffolding of dogma.
This may be what sets the Anglican Church apart from other Reformed Traditions, and indeed why many Anglicans are confused as to whether or not their Church is within said tradition. My reading of the Reformed suggests that, unlike Luther or the Easterns, they are much more willing to apply (what they might call a) "rigorous" reading to Scripture, deriving pseudo-legalistic logical formulas from statements in the Good Book and attempting to generalize them in the most rigorous way possible. I do not mean to be unkind toward that tradition in general; only to say that is perhaps why so many Biblical fundamentalists emerge from that branch of theology, and why so many wildly divergent paths have sprung from the Reformed movement, and perhaps why the more rigorous Calvinists often seem to me to be rather aggressive in their use of logical postulates derived from Scripture to "pin down" their opponents.
Forgive me, this seems to veer into rant. I assure that is not the case; I have respect for the Reformed Tradition, and do not pretend to understand it completely or dismiss it. But I think that, of the Reformed schools, the Anglican is perhaps the most theologically successful, having neither the arrogance of reason or the claim to dogmatic authority vested in its bishops and ministers-- simply a generous humility before the Mystery revealed in God's world every day.
'A generous humility before the Mystery revealed in God's world every day' does strike me as a rather good summary of the 'domestic' character of Anglicanism. What perhaps sets us apart from other expressions of the Reformed tradition is the determination of Elizabeth that her religious settlement, while clearly Reformed, would both not go beyond the requirements of a modest, moderate statement of faith while also maintaining those structures (parish, one liturgy for the realm, cradle-to-grave rites) which were (and are) inclusive and comprehensive.
DeleteThe subdued emphasis on Mary does, I think, exemplify this. The modest title given to her - Blessed Virgin Mary - secures this. There is no liturgical usage of Mother of God, Our Lady, or Ever-Virgin. The Book of Homilies refers to her as this "this most noble and most virtuous lady". This seems to me to capture rather wonderfully both reverence and domesticity.
Similarly, the ministry of the presbyter is defined as 'administering' Word and Sacrament, a term which puts me in mind of a tradesman, knowing how to fix a fence, using the right tools etc. There is, then, no exalted 'guru' claims, no insistence on in persona Christi, and - related to this - no spirituality around celibacy, and (historically) no exercise of private absolution outside of very particular (and rare) circumstances.
All of this points to the generous humility you describe. It is one of Anglicanism's best characteristics.