Church

For the Sunday Muse prompt #235: ** Breath by breath, bead by bead, the prayers of this parched heart rise. Lips quivering with the yearning of a thirsty heart, pursed to take the blood and flesh, blessed, transubstantiated. Kneaded by hands washed seven times- stripped of yeast and the things that beguile- we come to take the bread in hope to shed our turpitude, arise anew. In the ritual of rest and reset, we speak our words into the world, lingering in the liminal space between asking and accepting

Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash, for the Day 8 prompt. --- With bowed heads and clasped hands we come In quiet supplication, knees bowed, flesh unstrung- Hearts humbled, at the feet of the priest For bread broken. Blessed. Becoming crackling body And wine. Slipped into silver urn. Spilt blood. Divine liquid. Pange, lingua, gloriósi Córporis mystérium, Sanguinísque pretiósi,

Photo by John Price on Unsplash Three things over the weekend brought into relief why my relationship with church can sometimes feel conflicted; swinging from the deeply emotive to the somewhat irritating over the course of a few days. First off was a truly immersive worship experience on Sunday morning, one in which the songs seemed God-sent especially for me, particularly Jaye Thomas’We Wait For You which is one of my favourites. Off the back of that, I went home and binged on worship music on Spotify. ...

https://soundcloud.com/jd-rambler/eps-2-trusting-god – From a reflection from a few weeks ago on Trusting God… Apt given where I am on the cusp of a not-quite milestone birthday

From the Hillsong social media campaign to get people thinking about the wider import of Easter, allied to the clocks moving forward an hour overnight… #CrossEqualsLove #HelloSpring

From time to time, my rather loud, Pentecostal church goes back to basics and sings a communal hymn in place of a choral presentation. Days such as these - I feel - lend themselves more to the more contemplative (or less engaged some would argue) worshipers such as me. The hymn today was particularly apt, particularly the 3rd stanza given the disturbing news my friend B shared overnight about her loss. ...

– In keeping with the sense of calmness from this morning, the homily at church today was a reflection on peace, with a key theme being how it is under-girded by a sense of implicit trust. This triggered a recollection of a message Bruce Ware gave many years ago at a New Attitude Conference where he likened trusting God to sitting on a three-legged stool, the three-legs in this case being a recognition that God is all powerful, all wise and all-loving, having our best interests at heart (summarized here). ...

Given my decidedly abysmal attendance at church this year, it is somewhat out of character that I arrive early enough to catch the beginning of the opening hymn, the incredibly mellifluous All Things Bright and Beautiful. It is one hymn, in all its variants of tune and stanza, which I have come to associate with growing up all those many years ago on a University campus in Nigeria. For all of ten years, it was a perennial favourite amongst the teachers and prefects who led morning assemblies, and along with my well worn copy of Songs of Praise remains stuck in my head as markers from that phase of life. ...

The final lingering vestiges of self deceit died today. Against the incontrovertible evidence, I had remained hopeful that I had the ability to transcend my well documented phobia for dancing. Sometime between Ose O Jesu and some other Yoruba song which has escaped my memory, I realized that my rather feeble attempts at ‘dancing’ - clapping rhythmically, nodding my head from time to time, and shuffling from side to side - bore as much resemblance to dancing as a bee buzzing through the air bore to a fish swimming.. My sense of unease was worsened by the fact that it was a thanksgiving Sunday and we had to dance to the offering box. Interestingly, if the number of dancing worshippers was a significant sample of the larger community, then I am fighting a lost cause in refusing not learning to dance.

I think I have never danced in my entire life - not in church, not on my solitary foray into a night club, not at all the birthday parties I attended as a kid, not ever. I don’t remember if it was a concious decision, or if it was/still is a result of a deep seated phobia even I am unaware of, or if I have always lacked that seemingly natural ability to coordinate the limbs in resonance with external tunes, or if I just plain can’t be bothered. ...