The craziness of the Advent season led me to really enjoy my stay at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. The village of Walsingham is a population of barley 500 people and sits out with the grazying sheep 175 miles north of London. The shrine itself takes up about half of the town with it's residence halls, church, conference center, and offices. The shrine prides itself on being as "high church" as possible. I respected their quest in this venture as they wanted to express each and every act of worship well and with purpose. This sense of doing tasks with purpose stemmed to how they ran every element of worship during the whole weekend retreat. The retreat was called "Adoraemus", meaning "new life". It was for anyone ages 18-30 and about 50 participants showed up for the "pilgramage". It surprised me how many different areas of England everyone represented as almost every area was.
The usual schedule was very lax and would go in a pattern as follows: 1. go to morning worship, 2. have lunch, 3. go to the pub, 4. afternoon study, 5. go to the pub, 6. have dinner, 7. go to the pub, 8. have evening worship, 9. go to the pub again. There was only one pub in the village that was called "The Bull". It was a nice, quaint little place right in the town square. As you would walk in, you would think it any other normal small village pub...... until you saw all of the pictures of past Shrine priests and icons of saints on the walls. Yes, this was no ordinary pub- this was a "churchy" pub. Thus, my afternoons and evenings in Walsingham were usually spent "drinking down a pint", looking at the pictures of Jesus on the wall, and having deep theological discussions.
These discussions would include lessons for me (the only Lutheran in the entire village which gained me the nickname "Martin") in high-church practices of the Church of England. For example, on the first evening we all gathered in the Shrine Church for an Advent Carol Service to mark the begining of Advent. It was an absolutley beautiful service filled with candle light and more familiar hymns. It came to the end of the service which I thought I had down pat- Eucharist, Lord's Prayer, Blessing, Benediction, done. I triumphantly was speaking the Lord's Prayer when I suddenly realized that everyone else had dropped out. In the more Eastern Orthodox tradition (which the Church of England borrows some traditions from) the last part of the Lord's Prayer (For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory forever etc..) is not said. Thus, I did an entire solo of the more western addition to the Lord's Prayer completley by myself with everyone looking at me blankly. And if that weren't enough, as soon as the priest said the blessing I got out of my chair and walked down the isle thinking it was time to go. Everyone suddenly started kneeling again! I quickly lunged for a kneeler as I turned around and saw the priest pick up this huge frame of a GIGANTIC communion waffer with little flames shooting out of the sides. He then proceeded to take this huge star-bursty thing and wave it around infront of the congregation while the organ played a "Star Wars" type theme. I was very perplexed.
I was told afterwards that this star-burst thing was actually called a Monstrance. It is used to signify Christ physically being here with us. The Monstrance is quite important in major feasts as it is the culmination of Christ in the Eucharist and Christ in the body. A very interesting thing to have learned, even if it was through embarassment. And so, my brithday became a day of really "being" in the stillness of this village and learning new worship traditions in a pub that had Jesus portaits hanging on the walls. Needless to say, it will be a birthday I will never forget!
This evening I went to the opening of an art exhibit that is being held in the sanctuary of St. Michael's. The exhibit incorporates 16 local artists all making pieces based on the theme "shelter". This theme was picked by the group who is putting on the show to reflect the fact that the event is a benefit for the Winter Night Shelter of Camden. The Winter Night Shelter starts in Janruary and runs through March. Each church in the area is assigned one night in the week to house a certain number of homeless residents. It is a very amazing idea as a fundraiser and it certainly seemed to go well tonight. Even though it was a dreary and cold December evening, over 150 people came to see the pieces. It was fantastic to see where each artist took this theme and how the show really spoke as a collective unit. December is proving itself to be a challenging month. I can now see why people in our parish have problems with seasonal depression. The sun sets here at around 3.30pm. It takes events like this art exhibit to really shine light where there is a lot of darkness.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment