Another grey wet day, another day indoors. All Saints day too, and no Eucharist to attend except on line. BBC Four's All Saints day worship was from the Corrymeela Community in Northern Ireland, still going strong after fifty five years in its international ministry of reconciliation and renewal.
I was frustrated later by problems with finding Facebook's live stream of Mother Frances celebrating at the Rectory, and couldn't get either of the devices I tried to synchronise with Clare's iPad as we've done previously and sought to do today with social distancing. This really upset me. I listened, from hers at a distance. It was too small to read hymn texts, two metres away, but I could see that the audio lip sync was distractingly funny. Not good for prayer. It made me doubt the value of Mass facing the people in these circumstances.
After saying Morning Prater late, I visited the YouTube site of the Jerusalem Monastic community at St Gervais in Paris and watched most of last night's Solemn Vespers to cheer myself up. The audio stream is superb, the camera work is an act of thoughtful devotion in its own right, and the music, makes use of Russian Orthodox chants for a rich vein of French monastic liturgical texts. A feast of beauty in which the mixed community of men and women plus a congregation, numbering about eighty people, all stood facing the sanctuary, with only occasional glimpses of their faces from the apse behind the altar. Only the priest reciting the collect at the conclusion was see full face on. Nothing distracting.
I wish the parish techies would use a different platform or a plain linked user interface. It would make worship more accessible to those of us who rarely use Facebook An interesting sermon however, making a point about the saints being part of a mysteriously inclusive 'cloud of witnesses' not a crowd, which can include or exclude, by friendly or hostile. I find Facebook's messiness excludes me. It may be better to use the Facebook app, but it's one of many apps I don't want on my devices.
Despite a better night's sleep I felt physically tired all day and did my pacing up and down in two halves morning and evening with a rest after each. Yesterday on less sleep I walked further. Today I paid for it. After lunch I finished editing the six reflections I'm doing for the Parish Facebook page for the week before Advent. I'll pass them over to someone else to upload this week.
I watched the third episode of UK political drama 'Roadkill' this evening. All four episodes are already there on-line. Everyday life is overladen with tales about the 'Westminster bubble' and dodgy wheeler dealing, I'll wait to watch the last.
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