How to worship
Joe posted this in the comments section before, but just in case you didn’t see it…
Tag: Music
Liturgical Gangsta
In the past I’ve attended non-Catholic churches and heard things like “We don’t do liturgy“. The funny thing was that when I came back the following week the service was exactly the same. It was identical the next week…and also the week after that… Things happened pretty much like clockwork.
The truth is that they did have liturgy, it was just their liturgy…
Music for the soul
I just spent a wonderful morning with a good friend. We had breakfast, caught up on news and then spent the rest of the morning playing guitar together and singing. It was absolutely wonderful. There really is something about music which both soothes and enlivens the soul:
“Music is the vernacular of the human soul” – Geoffrey Latham
Jesus, Friend Of Sinners
My favourite band, Casting Crowns, just released a video of a song from their new album “Come to the Well”. The song is called “Jesus, Friend Of Sinners”:
This is definitely one of my favourite songs from their most recent album Come To The Well. It has a few lyrics which I find devastating:
Jesus, friend of sinners, …we cut down people in your name but the sword was never ours to swing…
A plank-eyed saint with dirty hands and a heart divided…
Open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers…
…and finally…
Nobody knows what we’re for, only what we’re against, when we judge the wounded…
It is this last line which I find the most powerful. Before hearing this song I had never really thought that when I judged someone, I was judging someone injured. We’re all wounded, of course, both by the Fall and our own personal histories.
Until I heard these words I had never really considered that when someone does something which disappoints or hurts me, it might be due to a wound which that person had previously sustained, so rather than judging and condemning that person, I should instead see him as someone in need of healing.
Over the past few months I have, on occasions, remembered this song and the resolution it inspired: Be More Gentle With People. When I have done this, and managed to set aside my indigence and anger, and tried to “look for the wound”, the results have been quite surprising. I have found my heart softened and the reservoirs of compassion and patience which I had long thought empty, refilled.
Now, if only I could remember this resolution a bit more often…
Worship Signals
Hahn Solo
Love theology. Love music. Love puns.
Friday Frivolity: Wrong Worship
Following the rather interesting discussion that has recently been going on at St. Joseph’s Vanguard, I thought this would make a good Friday Frivolity entry: