Rhythm is the longest English word without a vowel ”” though it has to be admitted that “y” acts as a sort of vowel. It is also basic to our enjoyment in life. We breathe, walk and swim rhythmically, usually without noticing it. We appreciate music, poetry and drama. We become more balanced in our quality of life when rhythms develop naturally.
A man of wisdom once wrote: “Hurry is actually a form of violence exercised upon God’s time in order to make it ”˜my time’.” (Donald Nicholl, Holiness.) In reordering our lives in moments of turmoil, it may be worth considering the rhythm of a year, rather than just of a day or a month. Imagine the year ahead of you. What comes to mind? When does that year begin? Whose year is it? An intriguing question is how do you make God smile? One answer may be that you tell Him your plans.
God sees farther and wider than you see, knows you better than you know yourself and loves you more than you have ever been loved.
Which Church year? And with rhythm within it? Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, mainline Protestant denominations – all have their own church year, and their own cycles of prayer. What does one do, pick the one they like? Doesn’t “common prayer” become just another good idea if, in fact, there is nothing truly common in the way Christians pray?
“Which Church year?”
Are the RC and Anglican versions really much different?
#2 – no, they are very similar. In fact, the seasons are identical, but certain feast days are different (e.g. January 1st being Mary, Mother of God vs Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus or Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus).
Not so fast. More than once on this blog I’ve seen someone say “X happened, which happens to coincide with Y in the daily scriptural readings, or the church calendar,” as if such a coincidence were indicative of God working (or not as the case may be). God offers some commentary on something the PB did or didn’t do, or that some court case over property went one way or another based on some coincidental perception of what is or is not happenings in the cycle of readings, cycle of prayer, or some church’s feasts? Huh? How does that work?
Neblogska [#4]: The “church year” (e.g., seasons like Advent, Epiphany, and Lent) is a broader concept than the lectionary (the cycle of specific scripture readings). You can observe the same seasons without using the same readings on the same day.
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Here are two example of why lectionaries differ. The old Book of Common Prayer had its own lectionary. ECUSA’s 1979 prayer book adopted a modified version of the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic lectionary. The RCC later revised its lectionary.
Meanwhile, the Church of England and many other Anglican churches adopted the Revised Common Lectionary devised by an array of Liberal Protestant Churches. Some call it the “Reduced Common Lectionary” because it tends to omit material that might offend politically correct ears.
The 1979 ECUSA BCP adopted the Roman Church’s SUNDAY lectionary, with its 3-year cycle of readings. ECUSA has a separate weekday lectionary with a 2-year reading cycle. All clear?
The Church Year, however, is the same between most churches – though not in common w/the Orthodox, who maintain the Gregorian calendar, I believe (or is it the Julian?). Therefore, while feast days and such may be differently labeled between branches of the non-Orthodox church, Advent starts at the same time, Epiphany is/starts the same day, Lent starts the same time, Pentecost/Ordinary Time are in common, etc. The lectionary (prescribed readings for each day) is different than the Church Calendar.
This is an important concept for me because I believe having our New Year be other than that of the culture (i.e. – the start of Advent) and having a unique set of seasons not recognized by the culture allows us to be in the culture (observing Winter, Spring, Summer & Fall) but also not of it. It is wonderful to have that rhythm in the Church calendar – and I wish I were better about observing it. I have to admit to being far too unaware of it most of the time.
This is sentimental drivel, false to its very core. The rhythm of the year indeed! He knows nothing of the “rhythm” of a year if he thinks it is a nice, orderly pacing from day to day moth after month. The natural year’s rhythm is a violent one from saturation to drought and back again. As to the church year, he has confused to comfort of repetition with true rhythm.
How you make God smile. Please! This is infantile and it is offensive. LM
Larry
Larry [#8]: Why so bitter?
Well um, I think it is a useful reflection. There has always been a rhythm to the year in pre-Christian and even pre-Mosaic times: spring with new growth, planting; growth in the summer, harvest in the Autumn in which we now thank God for his bounty’ followed by the fallow Winter until Spring again which gives us a time for rest and reflection and preparation.
With the Christian year it is also useful to follow this time through the lectionary giving us time to reflect on the path Jesus took and to concentrate on what those times have to teach us.
My understanding [based on a chat with an elderly priest a few weeks ago] is that in the UK the common lectionary is also shared by the Roman Catholic church so that our Rhythms have moved closer together in at least this area. Following the church’s year and falling in step both together and following the Lord through his journey as we journey through the year must be an aide to us in our desire to get closer to Him.
So yes, I think this is food for thought and a great contribution by Graham Kings in his own inimitable and mystical style:
“God sees farther and wider than you see, knows you better than you know yourself and loves you more than you have ever been loved.”
Yes – quite – absolutely!
#8 LM
“An intriguing question is how do you make God smile? One answer may be that you tell Him your plans.”
I suspect it might be a wry smile :coolsmile:
Christianity Today did a fantastic article some years ago on the flood of Evangelicals flocking to the Daily Office and other liturgical services. It is well worth the time taken to read it, and their related articles.
In His Peace
Jim Elliott <>< [url=http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/january8/1.38.html]Learning the Ancient Rhythms of Prayer[/url] Why charismatics and evangelicals, among others, are flocking to communities famous for set prayers and worshiping by the clock. Paul Boers 1/08/2001
Irenaeus: Bitter? No, just angry, because such prose, careless and ill thought out, sentimental and bathetic, cheapens the issue of the great rhythms that can effect our worlds. See Pageantmaster above and his/her notion of natural rhythms. Here is the tissue thin idealization of the real world, the product of someone who has never been obliged to deals realistically with Mother Nature, who is, as I have said before I think, good to sleep with but a bitch to be married to.
I will grant that spring does indeed follow winter, but only in a calendrical sense. Mother Nature’s REAL rhythm is death to the unfit, eat or be eaten. We superimpose the factitious rhythm pageantmaster talks about because it makes us feel comfy and orderly and ritualized. Nor did Christ establish a “rhythm” in any meaningful sense of the word. He said, “Prepare to die; know the consequences; and I can help you if you will believe in me.” There is no “rhythm” here. His story is a jagged one, battered and difficult with a bitter ending for Him. There are rhythms to our lives, but they are in our heart beats, in the irregular and inescapable repetitions of our sorrows, in the subtle pulse of fertility that rules all life. The only good news is that there is an irregular but perceptible rhythm to loving. Frost puts this matter well when he finished his quatrain : ” …as sea to shore
Holding the curve in the same position,
Counting an endless repetition.”
Larry
I suppose that as a former oarsman I learnt the hard way that a crew may individually have good but different technique but that is all as nothing unless they can establish a common technique and rhythm – surely the same is true of us as Christians. We can achieve more if we lockstep and march in time or rhythm, varying that rhythm as the race requires.
BTW I am in no sense suggesting any link between the cycle of the Christian rhythm and its nature-based pagan forbears which it replaced. Christ frees us from the tyranny of such things. However the harvest and growth of course, the planter and the keeper of vines are common metaphors in the New Testament as one would expect would connect with an agrarian people.
Pageantmaster [not pageantmistress!]
I certainly grant the argument in the first paragraph.
As to your name, apologies. I was being dumb, I guess. Larry
But my point was, Oageantmaster, that the rhythm you speak is is a far more complex matter than the simpleminded images of King. It is painful to read. Even to suppose there is an English word without a vowel is too ignorant, too silly, to characterize correctly. LM
#15 Thanks LM
It is strange that ‘y’ does not seem to be officially recognised as a vowel. I have never understood this, but there we are. Perhaps sometimes it behaves like a consonant as in yacht or yeti.
#17. If you say “yacht” slowly, you will see that it is a vowel. “”Yeti” is EE-eti. We could spell the word “yety” and it would be the same sound. My complaint with the author here is a minor one in this matter, but is it REALLY an intriguing question to ask what makes God smile? God smile? This is religious baby-talk; the sort of thing that gives cutsey-pie a bad rep. Larry
#17 I suppose that you will be telling me that yoghurt, yak and yuck starts with a vowel as well?
Oddly enough, although we cannot approach understanding Him I have always thought of God as rather child-like in a way as are we required to be as we approach God as Jesus told us. He is not like us and we cannot know His ways and from what I have read he appears to take a child-like delight in things including his creation: loving, trusting, innocent as love is and fascinated in the smallest details of our lives and totally open. That is a God I can trust and love.
I am sure you have got it LM but I think the point about us telling Him our plans is of course that man proposes but God disposes. Does He smile on us, does He show His pleasure? I will leave that one up to you LM.
Yes, they start with a vowel. Just listen to the sound. What is the difference between a vowel sound and a consonant sound? Say them and you will hear them. Y is never a consonant – and in fact, it ought not to be in the alphabet since it has no distinct function.
You image of God is a little chilling to me. Your description of his characteristics do not match the universe in any of its aspects, that I can see, but then, what do I know of Him? De gustibus…I suppose. Go back and listen to God talking to Moses, or better yet, to Job. Whatever God’s love is, we cannot grasp it directly; this is why he sent a mediator who speaks our language as well as His. But I can see nothing that is child-like in anything he has said or done. And I don’t think Jonah would see it either. Larry
#20 LM
I am not sure how my image of the God of love is chilling 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 and as for us coming to Him in a child like way:
“Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them,for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” Matthew 19:14 and of course it is through Jesus’ sacrifice and our own baptism that we are ‘children of God’.
I do accept though that your view and mine may be different and perhaps that difference comes out in your quotations from the Old Testament whereas mine would tend to come from the New. For me God is awesome, his business is very serious, but for those who follow him his warmth, joy, love, trust and generosity is boundless.
Perhaps for my view it might help looking at Genesis 1 and the enthusiasm, love and generosity and joy with which God creates the universe and grants gifts to man before the fall, a pleasure you see in children, and in fathers for their children and after each act in Genesis 1 the pleasure with which God sees that what He has created is good.