Thinking allowed

Common Worship Almanac for 2022-23

on Tuesday, 18 October 2022 at 12.04 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as elsewhere on the net, liturgical news, liturgical texts, liturgy, software

My Alman­ac for the litur­gic­al year 2022–23, the year begin­ning Advent Sunday 2022 is now avail­able. The Alman­ac is a com­plete and cus­tom­iz­able down­load that can be added to the cal­en­dar on a desktop/laptop, a tab­let or a smart­phone provid­ing a fully-worked out cal­en­dar and lec­tion­ary accord­ing to the rules of the Church of Eng­land. Sev­er­al down­load formats are provided, giv­ing access to most cal­en­dar soft­ware on most devices.

As before, down­load is free, and dona­tions are invited.

What's new?

The Alman­ac is also avail­able as a web page that can be installed as a web app on smart­phones and tab­lets for easy access to all the data. New fea­tures include

• In the View tab you can toggle the dis­play of verse num­bers in the read­ings, mak­ing it sim­pler to copy and paste pas­sages to oth­er doc­u­ments in the desired format.
• Fol­low­ing the new Roy­al War­rant, updated BCP and CW pray­ers for the King and Roy­al Fam­ily are linked in the Resources tab; Acces­sion Day is now on 8 Septem­ber, rather than 6 February.
• Although not strictly a CW or BCP obser­va­tion, an entry is included this year for Coron­a­tion Day on 6 May 2023; it is expec­ted that resources for pub­lic observ­ance of the coron­a­tion will be pro­duced, and this mater­i­al will be added when it is available.
• Astro­nom­ic­al data (sun­rise, sun­set, moon rise and set and phase, sol­stices and equi­noxes) is now fully work­ing again, as is the sep­ar­ate Cross­cal cal­en­dar down­load at crosscal.oremus.org.

Donations

This Alman­ac is offered free of charge, and without war­ranty, but as you might ima­gine it takes some effort to com­pile. If you would like to make a con­tri­bu­tion to my costs then dona­tions may be made via PayP­al at paypal.me/simonkershaw. Altern­at­ively, Amazon gift vouch­ers can be pur­chased online at Amazon (amazon.co.uk) for deliv­ery by email to simon@kershaw.org.uk .

The Alman­ac has been freely avail­able for over 20 years. There is not and has nev­er been any charge for down­load­ing and using the Alman­ac — this is just an oppor­tun­ity to make a dona­tion, if you so wish. Many thanks to those of you who have donated in the past or will do so this year, par­tic­u­larly those who reg­u­larly make a dona­tion: your gen­er­os­ity is appre­ci­ated and makes the Alman­ac possible.

The Coronation of English and British Kings and Queens

on Saturday, 8 October 2022 at 2.13 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as coronation, history, liturgical texts, liturgy

Begin­ning with the coron­a­tion of James I in 1603 there have been six­teen Eng­lish-lan­guage coron­a­tions of Eng­lish, or from 1714 Brit­ish, mon­archs. Before that, upto and includ­ing the coron­a­tion of Eliza­beth I, the ser­vice had been con­duc­ted in Lat­in. The sev­en­teenth, for King Charles III, is sched­uled to take place on Sat­urday 6 May 2023.

As a small boy, over half a cen­tury ago, I was cap­tiv­ated by a souven­ir of the 1937 coron­a­tion of King George VI and Queen Eliza­beth which belonged to my grand­par­ents, and which con­tained the text of the ser­vice along with copi­ous illus­tra­tions and some his­tor­ic­al notes. From 1994 I have col­lec­ted cop­ies of the order of ser­vice of every coron­a­tion back to that of George IV in 1821, along with repro­duc­tions and edi­tions of the earli­er ser­vices back to 1603, as well as the music edi­tions that have been pub­lished since 1902.

For some time I have thought of pro­du­cing an his­tor­ic­al edi­tion of the coron­a­tion ser­vice with the dif­fer­ent texts in par­al­lel columns, mak­ing it easy to see the changes that have been made over the cen­tur­ies. This is a bit com­plex to pro­duce as a book (and per­haps not com­mer­cially viable) but a web page is easi­er to cre­ate, and can have oth­er help­ful fea­tures such as hid­ing or show­ing dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the page. So now there is a new page at oremus.org/coronation that con­tains the text of all the coron­a­tion ser­vices from 1953 back (cur­rently) to that of George II in 1727. Work on adding earli­er texts continues.

In each column the texts are aligned so that cor­res­pond­ing rub­rics and spoken words match across the page. Indi­vidu­al columns can be hid­den, mak­ing it easy to com­pare dif­fer­ent years. Hid­ing rows, or sec­tions of the text across all columns, is a fea­ture that will be added soon.

The coron­a­tion of King Edward VII and Queen Alex­an­dra sched­uled for June 1902 was post­poned because of the king’s ill­ness. When it did take place in August, a num­ber of modi­fic­a­tions were made to place less stress on the con­vales­cent king. Both the June and August texts are included in par­al­lel columns.

With the Coron­a­tion of King Charles and Queen Cam­illa sched­uled for next year, I hope this will be a use­ful his­tor­ic­al archive.

Liturgy at the Funeral of Queen Elizabeth II

on Friday, 23 September 2022 at 4.34 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as liturgical texts, liturgy

The death of the head of state of a coun­try is a sig­ni­fic­ant event, even more so when that per­son has been head of state for 70 years, and is head of state of more than one coun­try. The death of Queen Eliza­beth II, guar­an­teed to come at some point, was non­ethe­less an event that touched many people, and mil­lions if not bil­lions of people around the world mourned her in some way.

For the first time, Orders of Ser­vice for the funer­al at West­min­ster Abbey, and the Com­mit­tal at St George’s Chapel, Wind­sor, were pub­lished online, enabling those watch­ing on tele­vi­sion to fol­low the text and join in if they desired.

For future ref­er­ence, cop­ies of these Orders of Ser­vice are attached to this post:

• • Funer­al Service
  • Com­mit­tal Service

Stations of the Cross

on Friday, 4 March 2022 at 3.59 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as liturgical texts, liturgy, reflection

Sta­tions of the Cross is a tra­di­tion­al devo­tion for Lent, and espe­cially for Holy Week. It ori­gin­ated in Jer­sualem, where pil­grims would lit­er­ally walk along the route from the centre of the city to the tra­di­tion­al place of Christ’s exe­cu­tion, stop­ping en route to recall vari­ous incid­ents recor­ded in the gos­pels, or else­where in the tra­di­tion. The num­ber and names of the sta­tions were later codi­fied at four­teen (to which a fif­teenth sta­tion of the Resur­rec­tion was added in more recent times). Many sets of words and pray­ers have been writ­ten to acccom­pany the walk. I com­piled this par­tic­u­lar set for an ecu­men­ic­al ser­vice in my home par­ish, and sub­sequently pub­lished them on the Think­ing Anglic­ans blog. It envis­ages a scen­ario in which some of those who par­ti­cip­ated in or wit­nessed the ori­gin­al events are gathered to remem­ber what happened on that day.

1. Pil­ate con­demns Jesus to death
2. Jesus takes up his cross
3. Jesus falls the first time
4. Jesus meets his mother
5. Simon helps Jesus carry the cross
6. Veron­ica wipes the face of Jesus
7. Jesus falls the second time
8. Jesus speaks to the women of Jerusalem
9. Jesus falls the third time
10. Jesus is stripped of his garments
11. Jesus is nailed to the cross
12. Jesus dies on the cross
13. Jesus is taken down from the cross
14. Jesus is placed in the tomb
15. Jesus is risen

Common Worship Almanac for 2021-22

on Monday, 11 October 2021 at 9.48 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as elsewhere on the net, liturgical news, liturgical texts, liturgy, software

My Alman­ac for the litur­gic­al year 2021–22, the year begin­ning Advent Sunday 2021 is now avail­able. The Alman­ac is a com­plete and cus­tom­iz­able down­load that can be added to the cal­en­dar on a desktop/laptop, a tab­let or a smart­phone provid­ing a fully-worked out cal­en­dar and lec­tion­ary accord­ing to the rules of the Church of Eng­land. Sev­er­al down­load formats are provided, giv­ing access to most cal­en­dar soft­ware on most devices.

As before, down­load is free, and dona­tions are invited.

What's new?

The Alman­ac is also avail­able as a web page that can be installed as a web app on smart­phones and tab­lets for easy access to all the data. New fea­tures include

• the Down­load tab now shows a live pre­view of the data that will be added to your cal­en­dar; as you select options from the menus the live pre­view auto­mat­ic­ally reflects your choices
• in the View tab you can toggle the dis­play of verse num­bers in the read­ings, mak­ing it sim­pler to copy and paste pas­sages to oth­er doc­u­ments in the desired format
• in the View tab the bible read­ings now have an addi­tion­al link to the NIV text at Bible Gate­way, as well as dis­play­ing the NRSV text (or the Com­mon Wor­ship psal­ter for psalms)
• a new short­er format for sub­scrip­tion links (old-style links con­tin­ue to work as well)

Donations

This Alman­ac is offered free of charge, and without war­ranty, but as you might ima­gine it takes some effort to com­pile. If you would like to make a con­tri­bu­tion to my costs then dona­tions may be made via PayP­al at paypal.me/simonkershaw. Altern­at­ively, Amazon gift vouch­ers can be pur­chased online at Amazon (amazon.co.uk) for deliv­ery by email to simon@kershaw.org.uk .

The Alman­ac has been freely avail­able for over 20 years. There is not and has nev­er been any charge for down­load­ing and using the Alman­ac — this is just an oppor­tun­ity to make a dona­tion, if you so wish. Many thanks to those of you who have donated in the past or will do so this year, par­tic­u­larly those who reg­u­larly make a dona­tion: your gen­er­os­ity is appre­ci­ated and makes the Alman­ac possible.

An act of iconoclasm

on Sunday, 16 May 2021 at 4.28 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as personal

There’s lots of talk at the moment of top­pling statues and remov­ing items com­mem­or­at­ing his­tor­ic­al fig­ures with what is now seen as a dubi­ous past. Here is a little story that has nev­er been told before.

Wadham Col­lege Library

In June 1980, 41 years ago, I was an under­gradu­ate at Wadham Col­lege, right at the end of my three years at Oxford. I lived in a room in a small court­yard on top of the then-new col­lege lib­rary. The lib­rary, opened three years earli­er, had been sig­ni­fic­antly fun­ded by a dona­tion from the Ira­ni­an imper­i­al fam­ily, and was named after the twin sis­ter of the Shah, Prin­cess Ashraf Pah­lavi, and there was a plaque com­mem­or­at­ing this ded­ic­a­tion over the inside of the main entrance. The fund­ing and the ded­ic­a­tion had been fiercely cri­ti­cised by the stu­dent body and oth­ers, and a num­ber of protests took place while I was at the col­lege. In Feb­ru­ary 1979 the Shah had been over­thrown and had gone into exile, as had his sis­ter, but the lib­rary ded­ic­a­tion remained, and so did the plaque.

Although not to everyone’s archi­tec­tur­al taste, I liked the new lib­rary build­ing (by Glas­gow archi­tect Andy Mac­Mil­lan of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia), and knew every pub­lic corner of it. There were also parts that were out of bounds to under­gradu­ates, and even­tu­ally I dis­covered that at the dead of night when there was no one else around then you could ven­ture unchal­lenged through any “no entry” signs or unlocked doors. In par­tic­u­lar, there was a spir­al stair­case lead­ing from the down­stairs read­ing lounge up to the lim­ited-access Per­sian sec­tion. The Per­sian sec­tion had anoth­er access door from the floor on which it was, but my recol­lec­tion is that that door was nor­mally locked.

It was dur­ing one of these night-time explor­a­tions that I dis­covered (as you do) that the Pah­lavi plaque over the main door was very simply fixed to the lib­rary wall, with just a couple of key­hole slots on the back that fit­ted over some screws in the lib­rary wall.

And so an idea formed in my mind, as I was near­ing finals that June. Wouldn’t it be fun, I thought, to remove the plaque? But how to dis­pose of it? The idea sat in my head for a few weeks as I revised and sat my finals. Many sub­jects held their finals early in the sum­mer term, but for my sub­ject, phys­ics, finals were right at the end of term, and after­wards nearly all under­gradu­ates left Oxford. I had already arranged to stay in col­lege for a few more days.

One night after the end of term, when all was quiet, I went down­stairs from my room into the lib­rary. I walked all round to be sure that there was no one else in the lib­rary, and I checked the place where I had thought of put­ting the plaque. All was deser­ted. Back at the entrance I reached up and gently lif­ted the plaque from off the wall over the door. It was about 3 feet or so long, 10 inches high and per­haps an inch or two deep, sol­id oak and mod­er­ately heavy. Across the lib­rary and up the spir­al stair­case, and I was into the closed Per­sian sec­tion. The book­cases here were tall, over 6 feet, and I care­fully placed the plaque on top of one, where it could not be seen from below, and where it was not pos­sible to look down from above. Or, and here my memory is a little hazy after all these years, did I come out of the Per­sian sec­tion and into the upper level of the lib­rary and place it on top of a book­case there? Either way, it would not be found accidentally.

Was it a protest at the Ira­ni­an regime, or a stu­dent prank? A little bit of both I sup­pose. I had thought of put­ting a sign in its place with words such as “the Ayatol­lah Khomeini Lib­rary” – that would cer­tainly have made it a prank in my eyes, but I did­n’t carry through with that.

It was a couple of months later, in mid-Septem­ber, dur­ing the long sum­mer vac, and before I star­ted my first job, that I returned to Oxford for a few days. Wan­der­ing round the col­lege I bumped into the chap­lain (Peter Allan, later a monk at Mir­field) and we arranged to have lunch the next day, at the Trout at Wol­ver­cote, if I recall cor­rectly, or was it the Perch at Bin­sey? “Did you hear,” he asked me, “that someone had removed the Pah­lavi plaque from the lib­rary, and it had dis­ap­peared?” “And what,” I said as inno­cently as I could, “is the col­lege doing about it?” “They’re just relieved that they don’t have to decide what to do with it,” he replied. So much, I thought, for my little act of rebel­lion. But I stayed silent. And I have stayed silent until today.

I’ve nev­er heard wheth­er the plaque was found, though some time later I left a note in the lib­rary say­ing where I had put it. Sev­er­al years later the lib­rary was renamed the Fer­dowsi Lib­rary after the Per­sian poet Abul-Qâsem Fer­dowsi Tusi (c.940‑1020), a much less divis­ive figure.

This dia­gram­mat­ic view of the lib­rary shows how the dif­fer­ent levels inter­act (and the default view shows the entrance door, over which the plaque was sited, and the spir­al stair­case up to the Per­sian section)

https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/…/virtualtour/mezzanine.html

These pic­tures show the exter­i­or and inside of the lib­rary, and apart from the pres­ence of com­puters, it was pretty much the same in 1980.
https://www.wadham.ox.ac.uk/…/a‑day-in-the-life-of…

Two fur­ther links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_MacMillan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashraf_Pahlavi

Little Gidding Pilgrimage 2020

on Friday, 2 October 2020 at 4.33 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as Little Gidding, liturgy

Each year the Friends of Little Gid­ding, of which I am the Chair, organ­izes a Pil­grim­age to Little Gid­ding. For the last few years this has taken the form of a walk from Leighton Broms­wold to Little Gid­ding, with stops (or ‘sta­tions’) for short reflec­tions along the way. The day begins with a cel­eb­ra­tion of the Euchar­ist at Leighton Broms­wold, and ends with Even­song at Little Gid­ding fol­lowed by Tea.

The events of 2020 made this format impossible, and instead we held an online event with a num­ber of pre-recor­ded seg­ments and some ‘live’ read­ings and pray­ers, as well as a little inter­ac­tion between those tak­ing part. Fol­low me as I walk from Leighton Broms­wold to Little Gid­ding, intro­du­cing the vari­ous stop­ping points, and talk­ing about the Fer­rars’ exper­i­ence of the dev­ast­at­ing plague that hit Lon­don in 1625, and that forced them to leave the City and move to Little Gid­ding, while Fiona Bramp­ton, Chap­lain at Little Gid­ding, reflects on the impact of COVID-19 on us today.

Foot­age of me and video edit­ing by Alex­an­der Ker­shaw. Foot­age of Fiona filmed on my iPhone, and edited into the video by me, along with ‘live’ read­ings and pray­ers recor­ded via Zoom.

2020-21 Almanac for Common Worship and BCP

on Thursday, 17 September 2020 at 5.31 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as elsewhere on the net, liturgical news, liturgical texts, liturgy, software

Now avail­able for the year begin­ning Advent Sunday 2020: Alman­ac, the cal­en­dar, lec­tion­ary and col­lects accord­ing to the cal­en­dar of the Church of Eng­land, for Com­mon Wor­ship and for the Book of Com­mon Pray­er. Down­load to your cal­en­dar or use the web app.

Down­load is free, dona­tions are invited.

What's new?

The Alman­ac web page has been com­pre­hens­ively updated since last year to make it easi­er and more use­ful. Updates include

• the down­load page and the daily view have been integ­rated into a single tabbed page
• the oremus Bible Browser (which includes the full NRSV, the AV, and the psal­ters from the pray­er book and Com­mon Wor­ship) is added on anoth­er tab
• a resources tab provides dir­ect links to all the offi­cial Com­mon Wor­ship texts, hymn sug­ges­tions (with links through to Hym­nQuest) and some oth­er litur­gic­al resources
• the Alman­ac daily view includes sun­rise and sun­set times, which can be cus­tom­ized to your location
• on phones and tab­lets you can add an Alman­ac icon or tile to your screen so that it is access­ible like an app (details in the Help tab), and you can swipe for­wards and back­wards through the days, and through bible pas­sages in the Bible tab

As usu­al, the Alman­ac is avail­able in a num­ber of formats for adding to Microsoft Out­look, Apple Cal­en­dar, iPhone or iPad, Google Cal­en­dar and oth­er cal­en­dar applic­a­tions. It can be synced from a desktop cal­en­dar to a tab­let or smart­phone (includ­ing Apple iPads and iPhones, Android phones and tab­lets, and Win­dows Sur­face tab­lets). There is also a csv format, which can be opened in a spread­sheet for fur­ther manipulation.

Nat­ur­ally I hope that the Alman­ac is free of errors, but I dis­claim respons­ib­il­ity for the effects of any errors. My liab­il­ity is lim­ited to provid­ing a cor­rec­ted file for import, at my own con­veni­ence. Please help by noti­fy­ing me of pos­sible errors.

Donations

This Alman­ac is offered free of charge, and without war­ranty, but as you might ima­gine it takes some effort to com­pile. If you would like to make a con­tri­bu­tion to my costs then dona­tions may be made via PayP­al at paypal.me/simonkershaw. Altern­at­ively, Amazon gift vouch­ers can be pur­chased online at Amazon (amazon.co.uk) for deliv­ery by email to simon@kershaw.org.uk .

The Alman­ac web page car­ries the date 8 Septem­ber 2000, so, as the Beatles sang, “it was twenty years ago” that I first provided a digit­al litur­gic­al cal­en­dar, which in a couple of years evolved into a fully worked-out lec­tion­ary. There is not and has nev­er been any charge for down­load­ing and using the Alman­ac — this is just an oppor­tun­ity to make a dona­tion, if you so wish. Many thanks to those of you who have donated in the past or will do so this year, par­tic­u­larly those who reg­u­larly make a dona­tion: your gen­er­os­ity is appre­ci­ated and makes the Alman­ac possible.

Are individual cups legal for communion?

on Wednesday, 26 August 2020 at 10.45 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as liturgical news

Since March, the Church of Eng­land guid­ance issued by the bish­ops has stip­u­lated that com­mu­nion should be received “in one kind” only, and that the chalice, the com­mon cup, should be with­held from all except the priest tak­ing the ser­vice. This has been backed by leg­al advice that a single cup must be used, and if it is impossible to share a com­mon cup, then the cup should be withheld.

Now a group of bar­ris­ters has chal­lenged this leg­al advice that it is unlaw­ful to use sep­ar­ate indi­vidu­al cups, issu­ing a con­trary leg­al opin­ion that the over­rid­ing pri­or­ity is that com­mu­nion should be admin­istered in both kinds, and that this should allow indi­vidu­al cups to be used.

The Church Times reports on this story here.

Heraldic Glass at Little Gidding

on Friday, 21 August 2020 at 10.56 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as Heraldry, Little Gidding

Little Gid­ding is a place with which I have a long asso­ci­ation. It gave its name to TS Eliot’s last great poem and before that in the early 17th cen­tury Nich­olas Fer­rar and his exten­ded fam­ily lived there in a house­hold of pray­er and work. Eli­ot fam­ously described the tiny church at Little Gid­ding as a place where pray­er has been val­id, and hun­dreds of vis­it­ors and pil­grims come each year to exper­i­ence the beauty and holi­ness of this quiet and peace­ful place. Kar­en and I first vis­ited Little Gid­ding when we moved to the area in 1986 and I’ve been Chair of the Friends of Little Gid­ding for the last dec­ade. Anoth­er of my long-term interests is her­aldry, which first drew my atten­tion as a child at the end of the 1960s, and I have belonged to the Her­aldry Soci­ety since 1974.

These two long-term interests come togeth­er in the win­dows of Little Gid­ding Church, which dis­play the her­aldry of Nich­olas Fer­rar, King Charles I, John Wil­li­ams Bish­op of Lin­coln, and Wil­li­am Hop­kin­son, the 19th cen­tury land­lord who restored the church. In an art­icle on the web­site of the Friends of Little Gid­ding I describe the four win­dows and also invest­ig­ate the coat of arms gran­ted to Nich­olas Ferrar’s fath­er, Nich­olas seni­or, and how this dif­fers from the arms depic­ted in the window.