The Sound of the Liturgy, How words work in Worship by Cally Hammond

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I think that Hammond is essentially arguing form my default position, many of her assumptions about the way different aspects of Worship impact on the Worshipper seem to tie in to certain learning styles / personality types – those of us who like to think slowly and value the familiar with the opportunity to go deeper into the meaning with each repletion.

Therefore I am not sure overall how persuasive her arguments are, to me as reader she is preaching to the converted – but I am well aware that many (most) people don't actually think like me, and I am learning to accept that doesn't automatically make them wrong.

But what is it that she has to say?

One stream of thought is very much about “words”.

The push for “plain-English” creates poor liturgy – she dares to admit that “I risked the loss of an immediately clear meaning for the sake of giving more depth and nuance...”

This is a trend not limited to the Church, as an aside I have noticed that South West Trains have reworded their “security announcement” so that we are no longer urged to report things we find “suspicious” but instead things that “don't look/feel right”... clearly somebody somewhere has determined that the average passenger does not have the vocabulary to understand the word “suspicious”!

Linked to this is the point is that the liturgy needs to be made up of “words worth repeating often” - one of the dangers of the specially printed service sheet is that the “words” become as disposable as the paper they are printed on – single use liturgy by its very nature probably needs to engage you with the surface meanings of the words.

Sometimes you can say something new by using new words, sometimes you can say something new by using the same words in a different context. There are strengths and weaknesses to both approaches.

But then for a book about “words” a significant chapter is given over to posture, and to be honest I found this the most engaging part.

One key statement is her assertion that “the most authentic liturgical practice is not the equivalent of the oldest, or best attested, or 'original'.” This rejects the liturgical “archaeology” of the twentieth century – that the primitive Church did such and such practice does not justify our doing it. But this does not, for me, mean that we have complete licence to liturgical innovation – the authentic should be rooted in its community, we need to learn and inhabit liturgy. We might renew our liturgy, but it is good for us to make body of habits that hold collective meaning for us.

Taking one liturgical practice which often causes lively debate. Hammond points to a difficulty in westward facing Eucharistic celebrations – while it brings priest and people face to face, it can cloud the fact that both priest and people are addressing God (and not each other). I realise that the message of the priest with his or her back to the people is not easy to interpret – but the alternative is perhaps easy to misinterpret as a human dialogue rather than divine worship, or that the priest is the centre of attention, when everyone should be “looking” beyond to God.

Without wanting to tell tales, at St Michael's, Southampton City Centre, a couple of years ago we moved the weekday communion from a side chapel (where the altar is against the wall) to the nave (where the priest can face the people). In the chapel the 10 or so folk in the congregation were gathered closely together, now we are scattered around the nave. And for me the sense of community of the service as been lost for the slim advantage of see the priest face as he intercedes on our behalf (also they are now much further away – the first pew in the nave is a greater distance from the altar than the back row in the chapel).

We have largely lost a sense of posture as powerful, and Hammond makes good arguments for its recovery – for example that kneeling to confess gives the whole body, along with the mind, a humble aspect – and as I have said before the movement from my knees in confession to standing and proudly singing the Gloria is a great reminder of the sacramental transformation – kneeling is not about grovelling but about acknowledging that we stand before the Lord by grace alone.

Finally, in a comment on the content of liturgy (and critique of those who over indulge in “Jesus is my Boyfriend” choruses) she quotes Bruce Willis, in Die Hard, “She's heard me say 'I love you' a thousand times. She never heard my say 'I'm sorry'” - anyone who can make a valid theological point by quoting Bruce Willis is definitely a friend of my.

Amusing Ourselves to Death, Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman

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While this book was published in 1985, and it sees television as the source of all that is wrong with the world, (one feels that if Postman watched GoggleBox he might well throw himself of the nearest cliff), it is very easy to transfer the arguments forward 30 years and hit “find and replace”, exchanging Television for Facebook/Google etc, and retain a coherent argument without need for further amendment.

As an example try replacing television for Google in the following paragraph:

“Television is the command center in subtler ways as well. Our use of other media, for example, is largely orchestrated by television. Through it we learn what telephone system to use, what movies to see, what books, records and magazines to buy, what radio programmes to listen to. Television arranges our communications environment for us in ways that no other medium has the power to do.”

But then, while the book is powerful and persuasive, as I progressed through it I did get the nagging doubt. That Postman in 1985 was lamenting the demise of public discourse in essentially the exact same terms as many in the UK are now doing post the EU referendum perhaps points to the fact that it has been ever thus. Although nostalgia is not what it used to be, people have been lamenting the demise in public discourse since at least the time of Plato.

That Postman is writing in the context of Reagan lends itself to the drawing of parallels to Trump – that a mere film star was elected President offended the sensibilities of many in the 1980s, the worry that it was not Trump the “businessman” but Trump the “reality TV celebrity” that got elected that has many currently running scared.

One of the current great tensions is that because social media is “unfiltered” there is no way to limit the circulation of “fake” news. To quote from Postman again “Walter Lippmann, for example wrote in 1920: 'There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.' … [he assumed] that with a well-trained press functioning as a lie-detector... the public could not be indifferent to their consequences.” - The press have largely lost control of content that the public encounter, but, if we think about Hillsbourgh and The Sun, even when the press were in control and filtering content it is difficult to characterise them as either a lie-detector or well-trained. So again while the mechanisms are different I am not sure it the outcomes are materially different.

But on one point Postman is insightful – he trys to shift us from seeing Orwell's state censorship as the threat to Huxley's Brave New World of pleasure seeking self censorship – we are definitely the generation who played Pokemon Go while Rome burns, even if Rome has always been burning.

After you'd gone by Maggie O'Farrell

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I guess I should begin with the usual “spoiler” warning – as this is a complex narrative which is revealed in layers – therefore I will probably end up giving at least some of the story away.

This is a bitter-sweet narrative, populated with women who love deeply and yet in various ways are suffering as a consequence. Although it takes two to tango, this is the story of three generations of women, the men exist only as the context for the women's lives and love.

The account of Alice's grief is almost overwhelming – a testament to O'Farrell's skill that she breathes such authenticity to her writing. But there is a purity in the love, and the loss, of Alice, while the loves of her mother and grandmother are more complex.

The patterning of relationships across the generations, for example that all three women have been swept up in a whirlwind of love at first sight, raises questions about destiny – how much are we independent actors, how much are the boundaries of our lives pre-defined? Perhaps there are also questions of nature vs nurture within that too.

I am not sure if the fact that I ended up worrying about who was feeding the cat is a signal that I was distracted from the main narrative or a strength because I was so drawn into the world O'Farrell was creating that a starving cat was a genuine concern.

Shrines of the Saints in England and Wales by Michael Tavinor

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This book provides a gazetteer of the principal shrines, and the historical facts of their origin, reformation destruction, and recent renaissance.

I found it unfortunate that the “experience” of the shrines was restricted to a 6 page postscript. The book addressed the “what” but despite its billing, for me, failed to address more interesting question of “why”.

Conchie, What my Father didn't do in the War by Gethin Russell-Jones

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There might be a concern that a Son writing the biography of his Father would tend towards hagiography, but Gethin paints a picture of his Father, John, that is honest about his weaknesses and flaws. That this is his second book following on from the account he co-authored with his Mother of her service at Bletchley Park.

That as fiancées one was a conscientious objector and the other a government code breaker can not have been entirely easy and yet it seems that it did not significantly impact on their relationship.

Out of the questions that Gethin, in writing the book, is clearly trying to work through is why his Father decided to formally register as a conscientious objector given as a student minister he was already exempt from military service. Such was his commitment to the pacifist essence of Christ's teaching that John felt compelled to make a public witness and actively reject military service and not simply rest passively on the exemption he already held.

Having made this public stand early in the war, during his studies his beliefs evolved, moving from a social gospel to a more “hard-line” Calvinist position – and there is a certain frustration in Gethin that despite this bold stand his Father did not continue as an activist, and indeed during his childhood his Father hardly spoke about being a pacifist.

But although the emphasis of John's belief shifted there is no suggestion that he actually rejected his pacifist or embraced militarism. There are pointers to him remaining a bit apart from his Calvinist colleagues – that he was not someone to adopt a “party's” beliefs as a package, but would form his own views on each matter. There is a “chicken and egg” question here, were his idiosyncratic beliefs the cause or consequence of him being a bit of a loner?

It is an engaging exploration of a man who, faced with the great tide of historical events, was prepared and able to stand up alone for his beliefs.

Real Newport by Ann Drysdale

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This book rejoices in the ordinary, a “guidebook” that the tourist board might not exactly sign up to, but the emphasis is on the “real” not the “airbrushed”. This is warts and all writing, but from an affectionate perspective, honest not critical.

Ann Drysdale writes with a witty charm, in the preface series editor Peter Finch describes it as “outbeat”, and I think I might have share an outbeat mind with Ann, as the slight flights of fancy that her mind takes her on as she encounters and describes the city seem very familiar to me.

I found something a little akin to Southampton, a city which I think is also uncertain about its identity. Southampton famed as the home port of great cruise liners, past and present, (as well as flying boats in their day). While vast numbers of tourists come to Southampton, their general intention is to past as quickly as possible through it to the beginning of their holiday, holding it with a similar affection as you might Terminal 2 at Heathrow. I often think the welcome signs on the city limits should declare “Southampton, the city people love to leave!”. While it is a great port, the city essentially has its back to the water – that city planners felt the need to rename of the High Street “QE2 Mile” is really one of those Orwellian proofs of the disconnection.

Interspersed throughout the book are Ann's poems, mostly written in response to past encounters with the city, evidence of an ongoing relationship, which add warmth of feeling in the book.