The Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

As I have my face to the ground during this Lenten service, the thought crosses my mind, just as you can vaguely hear the priest’s footsteps as he carries the holy gifts: “how beautiful are the feet of him who brings Good News.”


At my first Pre-Sanctified Liturgy, at St. Peter the Aleut, ten years ago this year, I wondered, "how long can I last without peeking?" It's probably only 30 seconds or something, but it seems like a long time. As we were talking about it last week, Krista admitted she always used to peak. Very cute. Even this reminds me that the Apostles were those who had "seen with their eyes." (1 John 1.1) As the Lord said to Thomas, "Blessed are those who have not seen, and have yet believed" (John 20.29).

It is somehow in the singing of the Psalms of Ascent at the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts that I remember who I am. Each year reminds me that I am a member of the sojourning people of God, at search for our Promised Land in God. I grew to love these Psalms first through Eugene Peterson's fine book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

I don’t know if it is the same melody in all places, but it is that melody which strangely welcomes me to the Lenten pilgrimage in earnest. We are “going up” in the same way Israel's pilgrims ascended up to Jerusalem for the great festivals of salvation. But, even more, “God is the Lord and has revealed Himself.” We are members of his very Body. The fact that our liturgical journey in this particular Liturgy brings us up to partake of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ reveals that He is the ‘end’ of all our searching.

Currently listening to

My good friend Mike "T-Bone" Angus leant me this record last night. Brilliant, brilliant music. It reminds me of one of my favourite lines in High Fidelity when a girl comes into Championship Vinyl and asks the existentially in-the-dumps store owner "do you have Soul?"

Ray Lamontagne has soul. But not really James Brown style soul.

T-Bone was telling me that Lamontagne used to work in a shoe factory somewhere in the Carolinas, and then all of a sudden heard a Stephen Stills song one night while lying in bed, and he thought, "why am I not making music?"

The West Beyond the West

{Textile squares hanging in Kim's design studio at Capilano College reminded me of Tibetan "prayer flags"}.

Last Thursday morning Krista drove me to the airport and I flew just over an hour to the city of glass, water, and cedar. Douglas Coupland has written well about this fair city. And soon, in an annual dance, it will be drenched with cherry blossoms. In Life After God, Coupland writes about how the geography ofVancouver, hanging on the edge of the world, created a new moral space, beyond the boundaries of the Rockies, a place where people from "back east" could create something new.

Vancouver has always lived large in my consciousness, since, for most of my childhood it was "the city." My parents used to take us often - a few times a month to picnic on the lawn in front of the Ferguson Point Tea House at Stanley Park, overlooking Spanish Banks. We would stroll through Gastown in the early 80s, and I had a ritual of playing amidst the First Nations' treasures at Hill's, and then buying butterscotch candies in a tartan tin at some Scottish tourist shoppe.

At the course I took on Friday on the topic of "The Challenge of Sustainability for Heritage Conservation" , I learned that in the 1970's the plan was to raze all of Gastown to build a dozen or so high-rise towers. I also learned how, during World War Two, the Canadian beaurocrat W.C. Clifford wrote most of the tax code here in Canada specifically to encourage the demolition of older buildings. He wanted a fresh start, and worked tenaciously to make level every historic urban area in Canada a tabula rasa for his conception of a rational, Modernist plane. Clifford went so far as to actually call those who cherished older buildings "perverts." Are we? Am I? Despite the fact that "sustainability" is perhaps the slipperiest of planning buzzwords, and if you've been to a dozen conferences on the topic you've pretty much been to them all, I took one thing away from this day. That the possibility still exists to foster a culture of repair. This is really what the whole thing is about: finding modest ways to consider what we discard and throw away. The practice of salvage lived large in the course. Salvage is sometimes good - but not "vulturistic" salvaging... robbing Peter to pay Paul. The very fact that the culture of repair was mentioned was hopeful to me, planning as I am to take my broken wedding shoes to a cobbler one of these days.

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In the course of the weekend, I had many blessings: Attending Kim's classes with her and just getting some good visits in, meeting some new friends (as well as visiting old ones for French Toast on Saturday), and enjoying some peaceful music. Back in the Edmonton airport, as I waited for my Beloved to come pick me up, I talked Church politics (God, forgive me!) with an Eastern Catholic nun from Saskatoon. No matter how enchanting Vancouver is, there is substitute for coming home.

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Speaking of another kind of "conservation," please do take a moment to check out A Rocha Canada. This is an amazing organization that works worldwide, encouraging Christians to engage in care for the Creation. Our good friends Jay and Milissa Ewing are embarking on a journey with A Rocha as Directors of the Field Study Centre in Canada. This is an amazing work, so please join in prayer with and for them!

"The greatest of these is..."

I have written before about why I appreciate Valentine's Day. So I today I simply offer these words to my Valentine, my Beloved Krista:

"A loaf of dry bread and bare earth for a bed
In the company of the beloved, is full of happiness.
Let humility be the word,
Resignation the offering,
The tongue be the mint of sweet speech."

-Anand Karaj, Sikh Marriage Ceremony, 1552

Rachmaninoff at First Baptist

Saturday night, after Vespers at our own church, we attended the the Da Camera Singers' performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's All Night Vigil. It was exhilarating to hear the strains of his familiar setting of
Благослови, душе моя (греческого роспева)
"Praise the Lord, O my soul," sung with live voices, and, to my ears, it was sublime. I'm told by those who would know that the mainly English-speaking choir handled the Slavonic well.

At coffee hour yesterday, I chatted with a musically sophistocated Muscovite fellow-parishioner about it. She had avoided the concert because she was reticent to believe that a chamber choir could sustain the vocal power required for the piece. Perhaps this is true, but I didn't notice. I heard subtlety and serene strength. Apparently Rachmaninoff never intended this piece to be done liturgically, but simply as "a sacred choral symphony." I can understand why... it's degree of difficulty would baffle all but the most accomplished church choirs. Nevertheless, hearing this music was witnessing the presence of the eternal Kingdom.

It was also meaningful for me to be at First Baptist Church in Edmonton for the first time, as it is the spiritual home of our friends Greg, Sara and Soren Hendricks, and a sister church to First Baptist in Vancouver, which holds fond memories for me. I used to go there sometimes with my sister Kim, to hear Dr. Bruce Milne's summer preaching on the Book of Revelation, some 12 years ago. Then, and on Saturday night, even without the incense, I knew I was on holy ground.

At Superstore with the Iconographer

Lately Krista and I have been reading a fair bit of poetry since she splurged and bought me Rilke's Book of Hours. And some might know that "On His Blindness," by John Milton, is one of the poems closest to my heart, describing acutely what I felt at a few times on my journey to the Orthodox Church. (I can identify somewhat with this friend and fellow traveller).

On His Blindness

WHEN I consider how my light is spent
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.

- John Milton, 1608-1674

Last night I had the experience of going grocery shopping with the master iconographer, Heiko Schlieper. He is 76. We are friends. I've known Heiko only 3 years, since I moved to this provincial city in the Spring of 2003, a city locked in winter for seemingly half the year. I started working very closely with Heiko just as his eyesight was dimming. I watched him paint his last icons, a panel of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God, and Christ's Last Instructions to the Apostles, over the door exiting the narthex of St. George's Church. I interviewed him on tape each morning for about six months, before I went to work at the Tree Stone Bakery, gathering information on the several-year-long project of painting his masterpiece of St. George's.


After some intense training, in December '04, I helped him gild the last icon in the Church (not the dome pictured here, which he did solo in the early 90s). He used double-weight German gold leaf from the Ruhl company, "gold-beaters" Heiko calls them. We mistakenly applied 12-hour gold size and so it was nearly midnight when we climbed the ten-foot scaffold to start gilding. It was incredible. Specs of gold floated in the sacred air. As I recall, Heiko didn't offer his traditional incense (Benson & Hedges 100s) that night. I worked very slowly and carefully. Heiko, nearly blind, worked quickly and perfectly, his fingers knowing his image and the gold so well. Is it sacreligious to admit that we blasted Mahler that night as we gilded?

Since the Fall, we have shopped together with Heiko. It is an everyday activity that one can easily take for granted. Heiko had carefully arranged a service called "Seniors Driving Seniors," to take him shopping, but they only drive you, and he needs assistance in the store to procure his gourmet ingredients. So he had arranged with another company to have an assistant meet him there, but when he finally did, the guy they assigned admitted that he could not read! So, it works out much better this way. We go together - and since Krista and I have the requisite skills of both driving and literacy, grocery shopping goes much more smoothly. And, Heiko generously cooks amazing sauces and treats for us to freeze and use at home, always adding, "It's easier to make a larger amount." Last night we went to both the Italian centre and Superstore. Heiko cracks wise, usually with salty limericks about our former Governor General. It is good simply to be with him, to help him find his quail eggs, sardines, and pork fat for his homemade sausages. I sometimes think he can do more blind, at 76, than most people can who have sight and the prime of life. He "best bears His milde yoak."
May God grant him many years...

The south transept of St. George's Church.

Suite Francaise

I go through phases with reading novels. For a time, I will read novels rapaciously, one after the next. Novels are the books that I cannot put down. I have stayed up all night reading: The Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse Five, Barney's Version, The Brothers Karamazov. Then I will go through months, years! of not cracking a novel, consumed as I can get with the stuff of my last post. But recently a good friend and colleague (another Matthew), recommended Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. She wrote it during the Nazi occupation of France, before perishing in the death camp of Auschwistz. Her daughters protected the manuscript, thinking it was a journal, only to find out later it was a breathtaking fiction. Only recently was it translated from the French. I started it last night, and read the first several chapters. It has the feel, even in translation, of a classic. So, if you're the novel-reading sort, I recommend Suite Francaise.