Monday, April 10, 2006
"These goals - clean water for all; school for every child; medicine for the afflicted, an end to extreme and senseless poverty - these are not just any goals; they are the Millennium Development Goals, which this country supports. And they are more than that. They are the Beatitudes for a globalised world." Bono
I offer the following in Response to the Blogosphere:
Every journalist who has contacted me in the last week asks, "aren't you encountering any resistance?" I have been very proud of my parish and my diocese in saying, "No. I really have not." The only negativity I've run across has been in the blogosphere, by people largely uninformed and without an experience of a U2 Eucharist as done by St. George's, either "at home" or on the road. (We certainly cannot take any responsibility for U2 services done at other churches in which we have not been involved.)
One of the quirks of the way many blogosphere communities operate is that folks can be talking about someone, or about someone's work, with no input from that person... And the person may not know the conversation has happened until days later. By which time the conversation has, understandably, moved on to something more timely.
In response to some of the conversation in the blogosphere re: the U2 Eucharist, most of which I came upon several days after the conversation ended, I offer the following reflections, clarifications, and information...
Just to clarify a few things that aren’t clear from the articles floating around the web… or the opinions floating around the blogosphere
Speaking for St. George’s, we did not set out to “bring in the youth.” Rather, we were hoping for an intergenerational worship experience, and it’s what we’ve had. We most certainly are not “dispensing with the older,” as some have suggested. Not only do we hold the services at night so as not to interfere with the morning services and the people fed by them, but at our U2 Eucharists, you will see 70-year olds, 40, 30, 17, 7-year olds… all raising their voices to praise God singing “Pride (In the Name of Love)” or yearning for the in-breaking of the kingdom of God by singing “40.”
For those concerned we’re not being Anglican enough or churchy enough, Classical Anglicanism was in part about worshipping Almighty God in the vernacular. Bach and Handel are amazing, but have not been the vernacular for quite a while… Someday U2 may no longer be the vernacular – let’s just hope we know when that happens lest we become like those thinking a “folk mass” is contemporary.
New Age? Hardly. The sermon at the service in Providence featured in the article on the web was followed by the standard creed you’ll find on p 358 of the Book of Common Prayer 1979. The Baptismal rite at our third U2 service at St. George's was also straight out of the Book of Common Prayer.
As for whether or not U2’s music is appropriate for a Eucharist (as opposed to at a youth group meeting), I offer “Yahweh,” a song of Eucharistic self offering (”…we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies…” [Book of Common Prayer, Rite I Eucharist])
Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I’m waiting for the dawn
Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don’t make a fist
Take this mouth
So quick to criticise
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahewh, Yahweh
Still I’m waiting for the dawn
Still waiting for the dawn, the sun is coming up
The sun is coming up on the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?
Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city
If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break
Paige+
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NEIDEEP at 9:19 AM