Communion via internet?

Our bishops have produced a brief service of Spiritual Communion When Unable to Attend a Celebration of the Eucharist which outlines a brief 'antecommunion' service culminating in an act of spiritual reception of Christ. This to avoid, it would seem, the pre-distribution of bread and wine to participants to be consecrated* by a duly ordained person present remotely by means of the internet. I would guess that this is because we collectively have not yet discussed this possibility in practical theological terms. And I recognise that my characterisation in the previous sentence already pre-loads some assumptions (so critiques might start there!)

 So what might be at stake in holding a communion service via an online meeting platform (Teams, Skype, Jitsi, Zoom, Big Blue Button etc)? It seems to me that there is one big difference that leads to consequential difference with a physically gathered community. The congregants are not together in one physical space: they cannot shake hands with one another at the peace, nor receive bread from one hand to another in that physical space, nor take hold of the cup of wine in that space that stood on the altar/table as the presider said the eucharistic prayer. In short there isn't a common loaf and a common cup.

The only way to make it work in real time is for each worshipper or household to bring to the event some bread and some wine of their own. But let's also note, near the outset of consideration, that the Church of England has traditionally not allowed communion to be celebrated by a priest alone**. That said, the definition of 'alone' is part of what is under consideration here. But I do note that if we don't count electronic attendance as 'presence', then a priest-presider cannot 'do communion' on their own even if they are 'witnessed' via media electronica.

The questions that, let's call it, 'remote presence Holy Communion' (RPHC) raise are as follows, I think.

• Do we need to have a common loaf and a common cup for it to be okay? (I'm avoiding the word 'valid' because that seems to me freighted with canon-law ramifications). 
• What is the value of physical presence that might make it decisive? 
• What indeed *is* human presence in such scenarios? 

 I wonder if concretising it might help to reflect upon these and any other issues. Imagine this: a duly ordained priest has before them on a clear table with a fair linen cloth on it (BCP allusion there!) a chalice of wine and a piece of bread. Perhaps they are in their home, perhaps a private chapel. Before them also is an electronic device using a conferencing platform so that people not in that room can see and hear and also vocally and visually participate in the proceedings. In rooms around the city are a dozen, say, people who are seeing and hearing the priest via their own electronic device connected to the same platform allowing them to be in a conference electronically with their priest. They have have the same order of service before them all. So the remote congregants pray with the priest silently and vocally, some of them read scriptures at appropriate moments, some of them lead the petitionary prayers at the appropriate time, they say the responses at the appropriate moments. They can hear each other and see each other. They greet each other with waves and nods and smiles at the peace. Are they at the same event?
 And then ... Well, what next?

Let's say the priest continues, prays the eucharistic prayer with the remote congregants joining in silently and aloud with the opening responses, sanctus and acclamations, Lord's prayer and words of humble access. The priest breaks the bread, consumes it and drinks the wine, in remembrance of Jesus. Has that priest taken communion? Now add to this scenario that each of the remote congregants has also before them a piece of bread and a glass of wine set on a fair linen cloth. Everything is as described in the previous paragraphs and also when it comes to the communion part, each remote congregant breaks the piece of bread before them and drinks the wine before them. Have they taken communion?

In the case of the priest alone consuming bread and wine in that scenario, the answer in BCP terms seems to be 'no' because there is no-one to communicate with the priest. If the remote congregants consume bread and wine also, then the answer is 'yes' if a meeting together really is a meeting together when electronically mediating otherwise remote congregants. It is 'no' if remote congregants do not add up to a meeting.

So at this point I notice that in another area of its life, the CofE has recently published something that may give us an answer to the question about what constitutes a meeting. This is to do with church council meetings check out the article linked to the next paragraph which summarises the article. So, are PCCs allowed to meet without meeting?

"PCCs should continue to meet, albeit remotely by Skype or Zoom or, where that is not possible, by a telephone conference call. Minutes can still be kept of such a “virtual meeting” and record as present all those members taking part."  So, for legal purposes a remote-participant meeting is okay. Can this 'okayness' transfer to a meeting for the purposes of Holy Communion? Well, clearly, the ability to act in community is possible since people can speak with and see one another. People's lives are affected by what goes on: minds are changed, emotions are roused or mollified, learning takes place, decisions with binding effect are taken in both kinds of meeting. In terms of the impact on people's hearts and minds clearly a meeting has taken place in both a remotely presenced PCC meeting and a service for worship together. It's not quite the same but the essentials as so far described are in place in both scenarios.

I asked previously whether the people in the scenario were at the same event. If they were watching a football match on a TV in a pub, I would say they were witnessing the same event but not 'at' the football match. However, I do think that the interactive nature of the scenario (they can see and hear each other and interact directly) means that they are doing more than witness an event (in this case a service), they are 'at' that event. They are participants in every meaningful way that I can think of.

The next question, then, is whether the addition to this scenario of bread and wine taken and shared in remembrance of Jesus depends crucially on non-remote presence in some way for it to be okay. Is there something essential added by the ability to physically touch other congregants? It's hard to say so when a number of congregations of the CofE have actually tried to avoid touching (in some congregations extreme social distancing has long been a norm) and yet still celebrated a Eucharist which is presumably okay. They have been remote in space. Though still housed within the same building -so is it being under one roof that is important, or in the same room? And if so, what would it be about that shared space that constitutes the okayness of the communion? If some congregants were in a different room, linked by a live electronic link and then some of the eucharistic bread and wine was taken to that other room for distribution, is that okay? (It's not far from what I've seen happen in some cathedrals when there's been a big service; there's been in effect two or three congregations sharing a common acoustic space -often electronically enhanced). I'm going to say 'yes' -even if not ideal.

Is there something essential added by having the same loaf and same cup of wine? -Given that many churches have already busted that by having wafers or more than one cup -even having individual cups ... well, let's say I don't think it 'breaks' communion; again even if it's not ideal. Is essentialness, then, in having the elements from the same altar/table? Maybe, but how far is that a convenience of administration? Ie if individual cups are pre-distributed, are they not consecrated? If a bunch of deacons held bread and wine as the president led the eucharistic prayer, would those pieces of bread and cups of wine be unconsecrated? I suspect no-one would seriously argue that.

I think you see where this is going by now. I'm struggling to find any essential thing missing from the RPHC scenario. It may not be ideal, but then a number of ways of doing communion often aren't. I don't think it's ideal to have wafers (far from it) but I don't think I don't have communion if the bread is a bunch of wafers.

The one last thing that occurs to me as something that might be essential and missing from the RPHC scenario is that the bread and the wine are the same bread and wine. In the RPHC scenario people might have different bread and wine: one has Sainsbury's white bread and a merlot, another has home-baked bread and homebrew and so on. And yet the fact that we can have wafers and individual cups seems to apply here too. And if we did think this was a deal-breaker, couldn't we arrange to pre-distribute to the virtual congregants -and wouldn't that be a grand way to symbolise the unity, fellowship and belonging to one another of that congregation? So, I can't really think of a substantial theological reason not to have RPHC. I'm left with only concerns about possible misuses. These would be things like whether people have suitable bread and wine, whether they can be trusted to be suitably reverent, to dispose of left-overs in a seemly fashion, not to open it up to mischief with irreverent persons making of with consecrated elements for no-good purposes, and so on. And there are practical ways forward for all of those things because they all exist in some form in the non remote way of doing things currently.
I have a final act of naughtiness to perpetrate on this reflection. Canon B40*** of the CofE canons says we're not normally supposed to celebrate Holy Communion anywhere but a duly consecrated building without permission from our bishop. The exception is that we may do so in the houses of people who are sick -such that they can't attend church. Clearly the situation of pandemic lockdown was not in view in drawing up that canon leading to the impediment of a priest from entering such a house for fear of infecting the household (or being themself infected). It does seem to me that allowing RPHC in such a case would be within the spirit of the canon.

 And as a bit of further reading: try this twitter search and find that lots of people are already not scrupled about this. (PS a more recent article in Church Times seems to coincide at points with this post)


 End notes 
 * I'm using the word 'consecrated' as shorthand for the processes of making sure that the bread and wine are the elements of communion when people take them in remembrance of Christ. You'll notice I'm trying to avoid being specific about which theological interpretation of it is foregrounded. I take it as unremarkable that God can do whatever God wants. So a further question could be -do we think God wants us to do this?
**I've not been able to find this in the CofE canons though the BCP says: And there shall be no Celebration of the Lord’s Supper, except there be a convenient number to communicate with the Priest, according to his discretion. And if there be not above twenty persons in the Parish of discretion to receive the Communion: yet there shall be no Communion, except four (or three at the least) communicate with the Priest. (Book of Common Prayer 1662, postscript to the communion service)
*** Canon B40: "No minister shall celebrate the Holy Communion elsewhere than in a consecrated building within his cure or other building licensed for the purpose, except he have permission so to do from the bishop of the diocese: Provided that at all times he may celebrate the Holy Communion as provided by Canon B 37 in any private house wherein there is any person sick, or dying, or so impotent that he cannot go to church"

Call and Response: Litanies for Congregational Prayer — recommend?

Okay, so I have to admit that I'm a bit of a liturgy buff, I have a particular interest in liturgies for daily prayer and I'm also drawn to litanies and preces. I had to consciously rein myself back from overusing the latter in Book of Our Common Prayer. The scope of this book, then, grabbed my attention. Especially so because it promised, "Written with attention to beauty, theological resonance, and justice-mindedness," All good and often the first is ignored. So the question I approach it with is whether it does those things. I think this book fulfils that brief.

To be sure, it's hard to review a prayer or collection of them without a reasonable amount of time to actually pray them. So having 30 days means that what I am doing is more like first impressions and whether there are things that at first view I think will be enticing me into prayer or not and also whether I think I can mind's-eye them in congregational settings I'm familiar with. Actually praying them with a congregation in a substantial enough amount of usage is a different question. I'll do my best.

So what about contents? Well, I was impressed and excited by the introduction 'How liturgy saved my life'. A succinct and human-centred in-life rationale for using what she calls 'intentional liturgy'. Probably I tend to call it 'pre-written liturgy' nowadays, but I know what she means and it is difficult to find a term which also implies 'those of you who think you don't use liturgy are kidding yourselves -it's just that you don't write it down'. But this chapter in the book is one I think I shall try to encourage some people I'm in conversation with to read to help them to 'get' what I'm on about.

Then the "litanies". They're pretty varied and the contents pages breaks them into different section and there really is a wide selection of topics: humility; stillness; government; midwives; lament; 'terrorized city'! ; doing hard things; ordination; death; Advent; Lent and all sorts of other things. So I decided I would sample various ones that caught my interest.

Something to say was that I realised that my working definition of a litany is different to Fran's. I was expecting less variation on the response parts; for me that's the essential difference between a litany and preces; that in the former the responses tend to be more constant so the congregation can often respond without seeing the words. However, I do recognise that this is not necessarily how the dictionary puts it over. And I do like preces -my own work is full of them. And, in fact, as I read them in this book, several times I felt that chunks would fit well with some of the prayer forms in Book of Our Common Prayer. For example much of the Meekness litany would work in the last phase of the Lord's prayer pattern. I did wonder whether an assemblage of Fran's litanies could be constructed in the Lord's prayer pattern, maybe I'll give that a go

The litanies in Fran's book are often quite concept-dense in the ideas and reflections embedded in them. I would commend them for a meditative (slow) reading rather than racing through them. I also suspect that one-off usage will not do right by them: I suspect that using them several times in a period of days or weeks would enable the richness of the imagery and insight woven through them to unfurl within a soul.

Some of the forms had large sections of litanies in the sense of my normal working definition, and these were nice, though I suspect that with a congregation I might seek to expand on them a bit to get a sense of exploring meaning and of rhythm.

One use I imagined for them was in a prayer room or chapel where there are prayers posted to help. I also felt that this is one of the few e-books I have read that I might want to get as a hard copy; the easier to refer to when assembling acts of worship to lead.

Definitely worth getting as a resource for worship.

Call and Response: Litanies for Congregational Prayer — Fran Pratt: contemporary liturgy for the post-modern church.

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Please note I got sight of this book as a 'for review' deal. I was under no obligation in receiving a copy to review it favourably.

Time to ditch ‘We pray for . . .’

I really read this article because I am having a bit of a bugbear at the moment about the use of the word 'pray' and 'prayer' in worship and, in fact, prayer meetings. I'm starting to find the ubiquity of it feels like overuse: I no longer know what I'm supposed to be doing when some says 'we pray for ....'  And this seems to be part of the concern of Geoffrey Wilkinson who wrote the referenced article in the Church Times. Towards the end of the article, the author suggests,

“We pray for” is not prayer. At best, it is an invitation to the gathered assembly to pray for a particular concern" 

And I think that this may touch on part of my frustration with the phrase. It does depend, though, on what else is said. I agree that if a bare 'We pray for xyz' is used with no other qualification or elucidation, then the best we can do is bring a brief frisson of concern before God. Perhaps more than brief if the prayer leader gives pause and has signalled it. But often we will hear 'We pray for xyz and pqr and efg ...' without much gap to engage inwardly. I think this is what Mr Wilkinson is concerned about, at root.

However, I'm not sure how fully I agree with other points in the article.

By using the phrase “We pray for”, the Intercessor ceases to be a mediator between the people of God and God, and becomes instead a prayer leader. The proper meaning of “intercession” is thereby immediately lost.

I'm really not that worried about the distinction being made there, personally. And if I did, I think I might just come down on the other side of the issue. You see, I'm not really sure that the CofE means 'intercessions' in this part of the service: I think that the word was used because it has a certain gravitas but that what was really meant -and what is meant in practice- is 'petitions', 'requests', 'concerns', 'desires' and if we were honest to what a lot of people do, 'hopes' and 'wishes'. I'm not sure that 'intercession', as I understand it, is actually really suitable for regular public worship. The 'standing in the gap' stuff which involves the hard work of emotional engagement, empathy, patience, identification with others and so forth is really not something the average Sunday congregation is equipped to do corporately and most would probably find the intensity of it hard to be part of.

And, in fact, I'm not really sure I want to conceive of my role when I lead 'intercessions' at communion -or would want others taking that role- as mediating "between the people of God and God". I think I'm trying for "expressing requests and concerns" as a kind of spokesperson-in-congregation. I actually think that the kind of role described at that point feels uncomfortably close to usurping the role of Christ. I think that intercession is more like standing between God and the situation/people concerned -and we do that as a response to a vocation and as part of our ministry (lay or ordained) and, crucially, it's something we do in Christ -we take a share of the mission of God in the ministry of Christ. This is not what those Sunday morning prayers are largely attempting. Though I think that there is room for a conversation about how we situate our corporate petitions in the mission of God and our apprehension of it.

I'm also not fully with the assumption behind one of the remedies offered in the final paragraph:

THERE are two main ways of extracting ourselves from the “We pray for” mire in which we now find ourselves. The most obvious is to address God throughout the prayers, without faltering.

My main quibble with this is the assumption that it is not what is being done. I agree that the literal grammar of the phrasing suggests that we are, in a sense, describing what we are doing. However, I do actually think that most people who say this actually conceive of the phrase performatively, that is in saying 'we pray...' they are actually doing what they describe and bringing the matter to God, they do not conceive of themselves as merely inviting others to 'think their own thoughts prayerfully'. I guess that I am taking issue with that first quote I repeated: for a number of people it actually *is* prayer and the words are performative in intention. Now you might, as I do, wonder whether we can't do better, but I don't think quibbling about grammar is the right way to go to address that.

So, I guess the question then devolves to what I think could be done, going forward.

The article I'm reacting to is found here: Time to ditch ‘We pray for . . . It is possible that it may be behind subscription /limited sign up barrier.

I'm thinking that we actually need to encourage people to think more about what could be meant we the/we say 'we pray...'. One way to get a sense of that would be to ban using the phrases 'we pray...' or the word 'prayer' in our corporate petitions. This would make clear that what is often going on is a truncation of petitionary activity; we are coming to think that the word 'pray' is sufficient to say something. But what something?

So, take a phrase like "We pray for our government." Now, sometimes that may be followed up with some concerns which would be actual prayers in Wilkinson's terms: things like 'that they might have wisdom in their deliberations" for example. And if we followed up the ban on 'pray' we might just come up with an alternative like, "We ask for our government to have wisdom ..." or "We request you to send your Holy Spirit to work through the deliberations ..." The use of words like 'request' or 'ask' more strongly require a transitive construction than 'pray' now seems so. I suspect that once upon a time, when 'pray' was only just taking over from 'bede' or 'bid', it would have been nigh on impossible to say 'we pray for the queen.' Full stop. Without feeling it necessary to complete the sentence which was so obviously felt to be unfinished.

To refuse to use 'pray' might also encourage or even force us to consider what we are doing in terms of specifically asking for something or mainly giving expression to our concern. Those are not opposed matters; the latter can run into the former. Our concerns should be expressed before God: 'We are worried about ...'; "We fear for ...."; "We hold N in high regard"; "We hope ....". With those latter examples, we start to shade into naming our requests.

But there is one other component needed in leading public petitioning of God. That is the 'according to your will' or 'in the name of Jesus' dimension. This involves making requests that we truly believe are part of what God desires and is working for by the Spirit. This is no light or mean thing. In many, perhaps most cases, therefore, we will want to be restrained and perhaps a little imprecise. Perhaps we will want only to name our concern and encourage ourselves to hold it before God with a degree of unknowing about what the right thing to ask for us, seeking God's further wisdom and enlightenment. Perhaps sometimes that is what we need to say in public rather than being quite so bold before we understand better what we might be asking and best to ask.

Perhaps we should give up 'praying' for Lent! -Instead let's be 'asking', 'requesting', 'petitioning', even 'imploring' or just 'bringing our concern'. In taking up the challenge to 'say what we mean', we might just also discover that we say less and enquire more: that we learn more fully to 'wait on the Lord'.

Trinity in liturgy: Not Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer

I have been hearing some people blessing a congregation using the phrase "And the blessing of God; Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer be  with you....". I honour their desire to avoid reinforcing a gendered impression of God because I understand that the priming power of language can further set back our efforts to enable women to be genuinely empowered and I think that the use of feminine imagery for God (which is in scripture) and of terms that do not connote a particular gender (including avoiding gendered pronouns as far as possible) is part of helping along a just and inclusive church and society. God is not gendered in God's own being -both genders reflect God's image, so we allow a falsehood in as far as we allow God to be thought of in exclusively masculine terms.

That said, I have been uneasy for some years about the popular formula "Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer" which popularly seems to be the go-to replacement for the usual "Father, Son, Holy Spirit". The reasons for my unease are well set out in the post linked here and the bit quoted here gets to the heart of the problem.

"Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer don’t work. They are about what God does not who God is. They are about operations not ontology"

And to extend the point a bit further than in the linked blog post, in most cases, the things that God does are operations of God rather than a single Person of the Trinity: God creates, meaning the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit creates. God saves: the Father in the Son by the Holy Spirit works salvation. And so on. Which means that the Creator is not just the Father, the Redeemer is not just the Son -and so on. So the formula does not properly delineate the Persons in any case.



For this reason when I have been writing liturgy, I have experimented with triad of terms which attempt to capture the interPersonal relationships of God. First off, I have written some prayers which use "Begetter, Begotten and Begetting" -though I struggled then with how learned this sounded. So I have been wondering about, and tried for one context, "Lover, Beloved and Loving". I'm still wondering about that, but I think it could work, certainly in terms of the referred-to blog post.



'Father, Son, Spirit: Not Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer: via Blog this'

We need the singular ‘they’ and ears will 'pop'

Given impetus by the just move to allow people to flex gender-related terms, the pressure to develop a gender neutral but animate pronoun (because 'it' seems to denigrate personhood), I reckon that 'They' will continue to widen its usage. In this article at Aeon we read as an example, the following sentence: "Carey makes themself coffee every morning". Clearly to the author this sounds mangled. I was interested to note that for me it sounded okay. I think in my case because I don't know from the name what gender should be assumed for the subject and so as the rule in colloquial English is that singular 'they' is used when there is some doubt about the identity of the referred-to person, then doubt about gender, for me, allows the selection of 'they'.

The second part of the title of the article: 'it won't seem wrong for long' is right. The rules of grammar are not set in stone, they are not pieces of legislation. They are the current state of social convention about how syntax, morphology and lexicon are used. The social convention is always being negotiated to deal with new experiences, viewpoints and social perceptions of things like class. This means that the more something gets used, the more that our inner 'polling' of frequency will adjust to normalise something. So something that seems wrong will sound okay over time with enough use. This has happened over many unremarked things in my lifetime. For example, the Americanism "it is not so big of a thing" now sounds normal and I might even find I say it myself because I hear it so often. It is replacing the rule of my childhood where one could only so "It is not so big a thing". It tends only to be the politically charged things that get remarked on and fought over.

The phrase in my title about ears popping, I am recycling from the early eighties when it seemed that for many of us the use of 'he' to include women seemed wrong -even though replacing it was fraught with difficulty. But some referred to that in circles where liturgy was discussed as 'if your ears have popped' -that moment when you could no longer hear 'he' as gender neutral. This ear popping moment is the precursor to the next ear-popping moment -when 'they' begins to feel okay as a singular in wider syntactic domains. If we practise it, we can hasten it by priming our inner polling facility.

I think the interesting thing to keep an eye on as a testing measure of what is happening would be at what point singular 'they' for God becomes possible. I've just started experimenting with it in writing prayers, but I'm still looking for a way to do it that would act as a bridge from 'he [/she]' to they. I suspect an explicitly trinitarian setting is the way forward.

'via Blog this  'We need the singular ‘they’ – and it won’t seem wrong for long | Aeon Ideas:

Evolving Advent

Advent has had a varied history. Sometimes in some places it's been a 40 day preparation season a bit like Lent. Sometimes it's been about a week. At some point it started to be thought of as the Church's new year. At some point it gained in the West the form of a 4 Sundays before Christmas season of preparation -with the penitential feel that tended to go along with Lent. The idea was that Christmas began on the night before Christmas day. I won't go into the details, there's Wikipedia for that!
However, it seems to me that it is difficult for the season to be kept in that way in the contemporary west without is being seen as killjoys and legalists. This is because in the popular psyche, Christmas begins before 25 December -which is felt to be the culmination of the feast. As a child, I can remember thinking that the 12 days of Christmas were the previous 12 days not the following ones. That was logical: you'd end up on the most important day with the most gifts!

So, as I have written before, I think we should re-configure how we approach (metaphorically and chronologically) Christmas. Now might be a time to start sketching out ideas as we go through things this year with a view to beginning to change things next time around

Suggestion the first. Let's start the preparation sooner. I'd suggest after remembrance tide; so about two weeks into November -this would roughly coincide with a Celtic Advent which was 40 days prior to the Nativity. However, I'd suggest that the preparation season be staged and take account of the new Kingdom season -which is essentially November, ending with the final Sunday of November (Christ the King). I'd suggest that from mid November to mid December a time of relative fasting be considered -perhaps in the style of Muslim Ramadan where some feasting is woven in and then a couple of weeks before Christmas this would ease off.

Suggestion the second. Some marking and staging of the preparatory weeks: Lets have an Advent wreath of seven or eight candles, each to be lit on each Sunday progressively (there are those menorah-like candle-stands from Scandinavia, perhaps, to draft into service, eh?). And this might enable us to fix a current problem with the four/five Advent candles thing: the 'traditional' themes of the candles don't fit the lectionary readings for their respective Sundays. So we could do with a rethink of that, probably by tying in the candles to the respective Sunday themes -and writing prayers and little songs to fit that. For much of the Church of England this candle-lighting stuff is only about a generation old anyway: it hardly counts as hoary tradition, in reality and we have no canonical oughtage driving this: it's purely churches liking to 'beef up' the seasonality (perhaps responding to the Advent calendar's popularity). So let's take back control from unthinking antiquarianism and make the nice little liturgical additions serve well rather than pulling in another direction.

Suggestion the third. Liturgical colours. Let's face it, the use of red for Kingdomtide is more about differentiating from Advent which was using purple when in fact Kingdomtide's themes would more naturally lend themselves to purple (or black even). So how about, by recognising the increasingly 'feasty' nature of things as December progresses, we perhaps started to use red in Advent, or perhaps the last couple of weeks before Christmas day? That would free us up to use purple in November. Maybe we might even stage things like this: black for the first couple of weeks of November; purple next and finally in the last run up to Christmas, red. Perhaps we might fancy returning to using blue like used to happen before Roman canonical conformity interfered: Black>blue>purple (imperial colour for Christ the King?)>red. Maybe we could colour our candles accordingly?

Advent: do we need to reclaim the season?

Okay, so the season is well over, but perhaps, while it is fresh in our memories, we could think about how to improve things into the future?
The article has some interesting thoughts but I do want to ask who is the 'we' here? The article seems confused between thinking about 'we' as a wider society and 'we' as Christians.

... some churches in the USA are exploring the idea of Extended Advent�– reconnecting with the fact that Advent used to be a season of seven Sundays until Pope Gregory VI cut it down to four in the 11th�century ( Christmas without Advent is cheating: Why we need to reclaim the season | Christian News on Christian Today)

To be fair, Advent has had several forms in the western churches. And today in the East, it is 'little Lent' and practised as a forty day season of preparation. The Celtic church seemed to have the same forty-day season. However, in the contemporary world, we might want to recognise a huge tension. While the inherited religious tradition has twelve days of Christmas starting on 25th December, the culture around about tends to see the 25th as the culmination of the season, perhaps supplemented by New Year's eve.
So strategically, we might be better to recognise that Christmas season begins earlier and have our more Lent-like preparatory season before that. I would suggest that pretty much all the current Advent season is, in effect, the Christmas season with the parties, the food and coral services where the incarnation is read about and sung of.
This would mean that perhaps the Kingdom Season should be treated as a preparation season. Interestingly its lectionary themes do tend in that direction. So, perhaps we should start 'advent' in November and shade into Christmas season in early-mid December. Encourage fasting in November. Perhaps consider a Ramadan-style fasting in that time (the shorter days in the northern hemisphere might make this not to burdensome).
Perhaps it is time to encourage experiments about all of this. including how to mark the various bits and phases with liturgical colours, music and ceremony.

Sentimentality, Business and funerals

 The article I'm about to reference is about sentimentality and how it shows up in art and also, interestingly, business. It reminded me very much of an insight I had when I was more involved in funerals. The article tells us:

There are two causes of sentimentality in business. The first is a fear of the fragility of the audience, a worry that it won’t be able to cope with the truth. You think the truth is actually OK. But you fear that other people will get excessively agitated and upset. Sentimentality in Art – and Business | The Book of Life

 Once or twice as someone who had been asked to conduct a funeral, I realised that funeral directors don't always act in the best longer term interests of the bereaved. Now, don't get me wrong here: this is not a general 'down' on funeral directors: some of them definitely do get how their vocation is to help the bereaved and most of them most of of the time comport themselves in a professional and appropriate manner. However, just a couple or three times I felt in my interactions with funeral directors that their desire to help the bereaved had been, in the words of this article, sentimentalised. That is, they were approaching the task of offering comfort in a way that slipped over into a refusal to face a certain cold, hard, fact: someone had died. Perhaps that is even a little too harsh, perhaps what I was observing was not a refusal, rather simply a redirection or skirting round the 'elephant in the room'.

And it occurred to me that this was because there was a customer/client dimension which could prioritise short-term feelgood vibes of the service offered and so colluding in or even encouraging a degree of denial. This would be because the purpose of a funereal company is like any other company in crucial respects;

When imagining how to get other people
to like us or be loyal to our company or interested in something we’d
like to sell them, we too often feel we have to omit all the weaknesses
and rough bits. 

And, let's face it, when thought about from a bottom-line perspective, an undertakers' business is about selling funerals more than it is about helping bereaved people for the longer term. In the shorter term, it is desirable that people feel good about the service you've offered and that means the temptation to a sentimental approach is big. The longer-term perspective, however, sees that denial of a death is not going to be helpful for the growth and flourishing of the bereaved.

There is another problem that can hang around funerals and which can get entangled in the relationship between undertakers and bereaved. In some families, perhaps most to some degree, there are dimensions to the relationships between the deceased and the bereaved that are unwhole, unhealed or even downright fractious. This typically brings guilt and even anger close to the surface in and around a funeral service. This is very much the kind of thing identified in the article as a second dimension:

The second reason for business sentimentality is darker. People sometimes get very sentimental when they feel very guilty, when something pretty bad is going on just off-stage. It’s a kind of bubble wrap around brutish things. 

 Again, don't mistake my meaning. I'm not thinking of those rare times when undertakers are negligent about things like labelling bodies. I'm thinking of those situations when the unresolved tensions and guilt among the bereaved is simmering or bubbling. It is only natural then that undertakers, sensing this (who wouldn't?) want to bring out the bubble wrap and keep a lid on the emotional turmoil. An understandable desire even if unhelpful in most long-term bereavement processes.

So sometimes there has to be a way, gently but firmly, to do some things that don't collude in pretending that somehow there has not been a death. Some of the rites or ceremonies around funerals are there precisely because the harsh recognition of a death has to be made before it can begin to be incorporated into the personhood of the bereaved from that time forth. Sometimes a minister at a funeral will need to say the words 'dead', 'died', 'death' etc. even recognising that such things may bring tears. But this can be cathartic. It may usually be necessary to help people to process their grief.

PS Giles Fraser recently wrote in a way that broadly coheres with what the concern I've tried to express here is about albeit focussing more on the trend.

Beyond the aesthetic or cultural

I can well appreciate the concern that Edward Dowler articulates in his article on 18 December (subscription link though may become available after a few weeks). I think, however, that the ideas to reform canon law which he fears are not to individualise to a particular incumbent but rather to give churches the possibility of determining what might be suitable, including not to use traditional surplice, alb, stole or scarf. I suspect a reformed canon would have caveats about accountability to the wider church through the bishop. Let's have some realism -unimpeded licence is very unlikely to be granted. Concern for denim jackets is almost certainly to be dismissed as unworthy rhetoric. On the other hand, it seems to me that an appropriate sort of denim garment (jacket or otherwise) could be very appropriate for a presider at a biker Eucharist, perhaps.

It is worth looking at what actually goes on before forgetting that the straw men aren't real. We could look at practices in other than Anglican churches like the Methodists or Lutherans. We could also look at those CofE churches where traditional liturgical garb is not used for services where it is currently canonically specified. These, in actual fact, tend to have a dress code replacing late Roman gentleman's wear with late modernity's equivalent. I further note that quite often clergy who do this may wear a dog collar when in everyday mode they might not. Clearly, they are trying to be 'loving and faithful servants' of the rites in context. While the title of the piece suggested that we might get beyond the cultural, the reality is that we can't do so; we live in and through culture and retaining artefacts of previous cultures doesn't retain their original meanings.

The concern for maintaining traditional symbolic attire doesn't address the difficulty of the historical contingency of the adoption of these items of clothing and thus their symbolism. And it slides over the disconnectedness of the symbolism for 21st century Westerners. Cranmer wanted liturgy 'understanded of the people' and we got as far as changing words from Latin to Tudor and then to contemporary English. We didn't really get round to properly sorting out what ceremonial and vesturely language would be truly understanded of the people. Mr Dowler, if I read aright, would have us remain symbolically in the medieval period speaking a visual-ceremonial 'Latin' to symbolically late moderns.

The argument about standing in a line of continuity and history leaves out the many modifications and changes that have already gone on. It also gives too much importance to post-hoc rationalisations of accidents of history. Let's get past spats about tat and denim jackets and try to have a conversation about what contemporary gestural, ceremonial and visual cultures could offer to the renewal of our 'corporate body language' as we worship together.

Looking back on the Long Slow Eucharist

So, it's done. Last night the last movement of the Long Slow Eucharist at Greenbelt was concluded. You may recall that I advertised it beforehand a post or two back. I have a few reflections on the experience and felt a, perhaps slightly meandering, blog post might be a helpful thing -to me at least.
The idea was to have a communion service which took most of the festival and wove together the wider festival and the act of worship. There was a further aim to reference and use the festival theme "The Bright Field" taken from the RH Thomas poem of the same name. The outworking of this in the case of the LSE was a focus on mindfulness as a way of learning to pay attention to the created world with the hope that we could become better able to notice and enjoy the epiphanies and the "ordinary wonder". So the liturgy aimed to help form (or at least introduce) participants in practices of giving attention as well as of making strong connections between the wider festival and the acts of gathered worship that formed the Long Slow Eucharist.
These aims showed themselves in the inclusion of various kinds of mindful meditation practices into the liturgy. And these were done both as individual exercises and also small group work (it is, after all, a corporate thing -a liturgy). Many of these exercises also drew connections to the wider activities of the festival by using it as raw material for reflection and bringing insights and recollections from it into the liturgy.
I should say that 'liturgy' I mean more than the words on the page (which are reproduced below) and include guided reflection and discussions and sharing in small groups. Also included are the symbolic actions within the sessions.
In the primer session on the Friday night which was simply a talk by me to give a bit of a prospectus about what would be happening.

In that I mentioned the aims as set out above and also that the aim was to have an event covering the time of the whole festival. In a sense to try to make visible the claim on the Greenbelt website that in a way the whole festival could be regarded as worship by giving that claim a concrete eucharistic form.
It's quite a big ask at a festival to get people to come back to the next bit of the same liturgy rather than to come to one in a series of essentially stand-alone events. Therefore, I did not expect huge numbers: it's a significant commitment when there are so many other things happening and there is an increased chance of having to make (invidious) choices about what to attend when inviting things are happening at the same time. So I was expecting we might only have about 20 people. In fact we probably had about 50 at the primer session on Friday night, 40 or so on Saturday and Sunday and 30 on Monday -the rain may have deterred some, but then there were a handful came who hadn't been before. I'm not sure whether the blurb in the programme should perhaps have been clearer about the continuity issue and I'm not sure how it would have felt to simply be at the final session without having experienced the prior two. Certainly some of those I spoke with at the end wanted to see it happen again next year.
One of the ways to weave together the wider festival and the gathering for LSE that I put in place was "Re.immersion cards" these were given out between gathered sessions and had on them suggestions for ways to engage the festival, I will include these at the relevant points below.
One of the things I was quite pleased about which doesn't show up in the way the liturgy is set out is the way of helping people to form small groups for discussion. One of the participants made a particular point of thanking me for this at the end of the Saturday evening session. While thinking about this beforehand, I realised that it was likely that there'd be a number of people who would have come with one or more other people and a number who would essentially have arrived in the session alone. Since I feel that the theology of Eucharist gives a preference for a Communion to be a corporate event rather than one where people essentially attend as individuals and remain so, that there should be some way to encourage people to interact together as part of the LSE. This meant trying to find a relatively uncringeworthy way to get people to talk together. I considered asking those who had come alone to identify themselves so that they could be 'adopted' by others around them. But then it seemed to me that this would potentially feel patronising or stigmatising in the context of a culture where singleness is suspect. So I opted rather to ask the accompanied to stand and then to look around to befriend one of those still sitting and for them all to introduce themselves to each other. This took place near the beginning of the Saturday (that is the first 'proper' session).
In the main sessions, the non-congregational lines were mostly spoken by one of two or three other voices apart from myself as presider. This includes the lines in the thanksgiving. The role of presider was enacted by leading the responses into the thanksgiving and standing at table to handle the bread, wine, water and vessels as well as the opening and closing prayers.
We had a slight logistical problem in having microphones tethered by wires at one end of the tent. I very much felt that the communion table should be in the dead centre of the space which meant that there was a gap of 3 or 4 metres. So, if I wanted to speak something while at the table, I couldn't; I had to either rely on the voice of one of the helpers or tread back to a microphone. Mostly the way was to use the voices of others while I performed the actions. This was mostly okay or even good. At one or two points it was less smooth than I would have liked.

Long Slow Eucharist Primer

Read out the RSThomas poem at start of GB guide. Highlight the bit both sides of the laid-out stanzas (not hurrying into the future or holding back in the past), making connection to mindfulness, being aware of the present moment.

Genesis of idea

The idea began in leading retreats and days of prayer involving spending time praying and learning together, and then ending with HC. BUT then I thought, HC is meant to be about praying and learning -not just a set-piece hour relatively disconnected from the rest. And vice versa: life and activity is meant to inform and be informed by our worship; centrally worship is HC.
AND the GB website claims that the whole festival is meant to be worship.

Rationale

To integrate the  festival and acts of worship (liturgical events) and help us to FEEL the connections more fully.
Slowing down -taking time to worship -so why not take a good long time ...
Mindful in the sense of paying attention to the simple and commonplace as potential epiphany. So the worship is to try to help connections and epiphanies to occur.

Mindfulness (I lead sessions at Northumbria University) is fundamentally about learning to direct attention and be conscious of oneself in the present moment. -More later.

The Liturgy

I intend 'liturgy' to mean the whatever we do together as God's people before and with God to build up each other and to be equipped for God's work in the wider world.
So: not wedded to particular forms just because ...
Smearing the Communion service across the days. This means messing with the order otherwise it might feel backloaded (a discovery from early experiments)...
7-fold /4-fold action (Doing in remembrance) Take bread, take wine, bless them, break the bread; ... wine; eat bread; drink wine (> take; bless; break; share)
the sessions pick up these but spread them across the 3 sessions and interweave ministry of the word and prayers.
There will be times of communal reflection as well as individual...

Slowth (vs sloth or slowness)
Ctr hurry or hurriedness -supposed curse of modern life and esp. of so-called time saving tech like transport and ICTs. Leading to Slow mvt and "multitasking is a sin". I disagree  a bit: the problem is with our attitudes and taking hold of them. Not the tech in itself. It is a convenient shared fiction that these things own us / control us. But it's actually our need to learn to use or not use them wisely. To make them servants of human welfare not tyrants of dis-ease.
Our experience of Time: memory and attention. Age and busyness. Slowth is about deciding for slow when it is appropriate for the sake of our mental and emotional (and physical) health.
To be mindful is not emptying mind but filling it with single attention on just one thing in order to be in the present moment.
Breath, a sight, an awareness of God .....
Also about self awareness especially with attitude of being compassionate to ourselves: slow to 'anger' about our reactions, slow to judge, curious about what we find.
Exercise: Basic breath awareness exercise.

Immersion exercises for Friday to Saturday

Take a few minutes to be still amongst noise, activity and/or hurry. Just be physically still without interacting with those around and simply observe the sounds, smells, sights and feel of the moments as they pass. Sense yourself as a quiet centre amidst it all. And enjoy …

Perhaps set an alarm to call you to stillness.

Long Slow Eucharist, Introit

Saturday 6pm

In the worship text, bold parts are to be said all together, italicised parts are headings or information, ordinary type is normally said by a single voice.

Surfacing
A Light in the name of God; author of all being, who lights the bright field of our world with Life
A light in the name of God the eternally begotten, who invests the bright field of our world with grace
A light in the name of God the Go-Between who energises all with God-ward-ness
Three lights in honour of God
in whose three-fold friendship we now gather.
Three lights attracting festal fragments
So may we gather them and full-feel them
To know them with brightening hearts.

Introductory comments. (in this case mainly offering some words of welcome and to reaffirm that this was the first of three gatherings. The main theme would be 'taking' more about which would be said later in the session)

Blessed and hallowed be your name, O God; Giver of good gifts;
you have guided and sustained us and brought us to this space and drawn us to this occasion.

We are gathered here to encourage one another to grow more fully into the loving purposes of God.
We are gathered here to grow in our appreciation of God and God’s ways.
We are gathered here to be nourished with the acknowledged presence of God.

Taking in the Festival: orientation, groupwork and ownwork. The 'taking' of bread and wine to be complemented by taking our own experiences and bringing them to table. The groupwork

Petitionary prayer, Closing with
Our Father ...

Reading
1Chronicles 29: 10-12
So David blessed the LORD in the sight of all the assembly; and David said, "Blessed are You, O LORD God of Israel our father, forever and ever. "Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, O LORD, and You exalt Yourself as head over all. "Both riches and honour come from You, and You rule over all, and in Your hand is power and might; and it lies in Your hand to make great and to strengthen everyone.

Reflection on 'Taking' and Taking and tasting exercise

Taking bread and wine for hallowed use
With this bread that we bring
We will remember Jesus
With this wine that we bring
We will remember Jesus
Bread for Christ's body, wine for Christ's blood
God's gifts, and ourselves to this table we bring. *

Re.immersing...

Blessed are you God; you gave us to each other for a time and now you call us to join you in the wider relationships and activities of this bright field. People called by God, when you leave this venue ...
go knowing you are loved
go secure in God’s sustenance
go revelling in God’s continuing presence.

Saturday's Re-immersion in festival (Saturday to Sunday)

Try to 'collect' at least five experiences of 'ordinary wonder' -where you have a sense of the beauty, is-ness or glory of something ordinary in the festival that you encounter. Give yourself permission to notice them consciously and tarry a while to appreciate them.

*Prayer based heavily on Church of England, Common Worship prayer of preparation © Archbishops' Council: under license for use.

Long Slow Eucharist, gradual

Sunday 6pm

"Gradual" is a word meaning a journey from one point to another. Often, usually, in liturgy it refers to the music and process of taking the gospel book to the point where it will be read. In this case the term is used because this is the middle gathering of three and helps move us from the taking phase of the LSE to the final.

Resurfacing
A light in the name of the Father of lights
A light in the presence of the Light of the world
A light in upholding of the bright inspiring Muse.
Three lights drawing in festal fragments
So may we gather them and full-feel them
To know them and God with brightening hearts.

Introductory comments. The main focus at this session is 'blessing' or 'thanksgiving' (brief explanation about Jewish blessings, hallowing by thanking etc)

Blessed are you, God; giver of good gifts; we are thankful for companions and conversation, time and place, and leisure to bring them together. As we are gathered:
May we encourage one another
As we converse:
May we grow more fully into your loving purposes.
As we share:
May we be nourished with your presence O God.

Exercises: “Take of your shoes...” -literally (just one if two is a faff because you are wearing boots, for instance. Or even do the exercise with your hands). Just feel the grass beneath your feet for a minute or two. Try to fill your attention with the feel of grass beneath your feet. Then, with or without footwear, walk slowly around for a bit, noticing and filling attention with the the sensations of walking, moving.

Reading
1Timothy 4:3ff
They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer. If you put these instructions before the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound teaching that you have followed

-Reflections: rationale, communal exercise in 'counting our blessings'. Essentially this involves sharing in groups one each of the things discovered in the prior re.immersion exercise. We write them down (on the exercise cards and bring them to table.
 Thanksgiving...
God be with you
And also with you
Let's lift up our hearts
We lift them to our God
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God
it is right to give thanks and praise

Blessed are you God: for every good and perfect gift comes from Above;  [the cards with the blessings written on are poured/dropped on the bread and wine on the table] …
Thank you for blessing us by your presence and bringing us joy.
You reach out to commune with us through every particle of creation.

We laud you for Jesus who shared our condition, suffered our abuse, and entered our death.
dying and living, he declared your love, gave us grace and opened the gate of glory

We praise you for Jesus' sharing of our Earthliness & connecting with our brokenness.
In Christ we know ourselves beloved of you, that we are truly children of God.

Blessed are you God; your generosity brings us this bread & wine; earth-& rain- & sunlight-born, products of human care and delight. In our sharing of them now, renew us and mend us.
Father as we do this, may we re-present Christ in the world

Re.immersing...
God, you draw us into the field of your nurturing presence, you give us to each other and to the world that we may create together care and flourishing, life and delight. May we show forth your image as we seek your love-bright purposes in the wider field of this festival.
Amen.

Re-immersion in festival (Sunday to Monday)

Try to notice three things that remind you of the brokenness of the world. Spend a little while tracing in your mind the connections between this festival and the wider world through these things.

Long Slow Eucharist, consume/ation

Monday 6pm

Resurfacing
Source of all life, as a child to her mother:
We turn to you
Saviour of all life, as a flower towards the sun:
We turn to you.
Sustainer of all life, as music to silence:
We turn to you.

Explanatory comments. -Focus this time on breaking and sharing. 'Breaking' is also taking in the breaking of the world as well as the breaking of ourselves as we connect with the broken things and places of the world and in our own lives.

Blessed are you, God; giver of good gifts; we are thankful for companions and conversation, time and space, and leisure to weave them all together.    
As we are gathered:
May we encourage one another
As we converse:
May we grow more fully into your loving purposes. O God.
As we share:
May we be nourished with your presence.

Breaking open of wordly sorrows: exercise. By 'worldly' is meant not 'sinful' necessarily but rather 'belonging to this earthly vale of tears'. The exercise is to share in small conversation groups something that we lament over, perhaps it is something we've heard about in the festival, perhaps it is something from the wider world. In token of this we fill a flask each with a few drops of water to symbolise the tears shed (recalling the Psalm that pictures God saving all our tears in a jar). This flask of water is brought to table ready to be added to the wine later.

Call to confess our sins … (framed as how we have prepetrated or perpetuated brokenness in the world)
We acknowledge that we have played our part in the breaking of the world.
And that we have allowed ourselves to despair
(a moment of silence)
We refuse the risks of faith, preferring the safety of our sorrow or cynicism
we are afraid of being broken.
(a moment of silence)
Loving God, father and mother to us, speak hope into the bleak fields of our life
Speak comfort into the sorrow of our hearts
Speak love into the brokenness of despair.
forgive us and make us whole
words of forgiveness are spoken leading into...
Let us choose faith even where we find it hard to see God or to hear God’s voice and our minds are awash with questions
We turn to God and choose to persevere
Let us choose hope in this world created in goodness, but where goodness is run through with pain, crushed, and death is always present
We turn to God and choose trust
Let us choose love even where love hurts and selfishness, greed and apathy seem mightier
We turn to God and choose life
God in Christ asks us whether we would continue in the way of Spirit and truth:
Lord to whom shall we go
you have the words of eternal life.
We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God

Preparing ourselves, and the bread and wine
We are the Body of Christ
God's Spirit is with us
We have blessed God:
We have given God thanks and praise

By your Spirit brood over us and over these gifts of your creation: as we eat and drink unite us in the body of Christ.
As bread and wine are made one with us, may we become one with you; living our prayer and praying our life.  *

Proclaiming and celebrating Christ's death and rising in glory, let us find in this bread and this wine an assurance that we are indeed your beloved children.
As we eat and drink now, make us one in Christ, once dead and now alive.

Around this table we come with creation groaning in childbirth anticipating its liberation from decay. We offer our sacrifice of praise and join with the eternal song of heaven.
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Heaven and earth are full of your glory,
hosanna in the highest.

Breaking of bread
We break this bread |the bread is broken and placed on tables| to share in the body of Christ.
Though we are many we are one body because we all share in the one bread. **

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world; have mercy on us.  (x3)

We pour this wine |the wine is poured from bottle into glasses| to share in the blood of Christ.
Though we are broken we are healed and forgiven because we all share the wine of the new creation.

The tears of affliction |the water in the flask is added to the wine| we bring for hope:
Tears may stay the night but joy comes in the Morning.

sharing of communion;
the hallowed bread and wine are shared with these or similar words:
The body of Christ broken for you
The blood of Christ for your forgiveness

Gospel reading John 21:15-17
Hear the words of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to John
Glory to you O Lord.

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.

This is the gospel of the Lord
Praise to you O Christ.

reflection: drawing a parallel between Peter's being commissioned and ours as we go into the rest of our lives, having been fed by Jesus, the Bread of Life.

Ending
Blessed are you God; you lent us to each other for a time and we give thanks for what we have learnt and the support we have known.
Whatever we have heard that is Good
Let us remember and take to heart.
Whatever we have found challenging
Let us recognise the benefit and find wisdom to carry out.
If we have offended in some way
Let us come to know it gently and make amends wisely

As people loved by God and called into the wider world:
We go to seek God in all
And find God in each
To discover God at work
in creation and human culture
To discern God’s blessing
And to be God’s blessing to others

Sharing signs of peace as we leave

Re-immersion in wider life

Choose one of the things that you feel God might have been drawing your attention to during the Festival. Draw up at least one thing you could embed in your life as a response to that thing.

*This phrase from Iona Commmunity Communion
**Prayer from Church of England, Common Worship prayer of preparation © Archbishops' Council: under license conditions for use.

The fun in funerals and the bittersweet

I've attended a number of funerals in the last few years as a support to mourners. Mostly the deceased have been students, most young people in their 20s. A number of them have been non-religious ceremonies. And I've also been to a number of funerals for other people too. One of the strands running through many of all of the above has been a declared desire to celebrate the life of the person who has died. In fact, thinking about it, when I was reasonably regularly conducting funerals myself, this was a refrain I was increasingly hearing as I spoke with the bereaved next of kin and friends.

The BBC have recently run an article on this growing phenomenon in which we can read:

 Instead of looking ahead to the afterlife, British funerals increasingly rejoice in memories of the deceased's triumphs, relationships and their favourite songs. There's a phrase for ceremonies like this - "a celebration of life" Happy funerals: A celebration of life? - BBC News

The manifestations of this desire can show up in a variety of ways, but my experience would note requests from the family of the deceased for people attending the event to wear bright colours or particular forms of clothing that were in some way meaningful to the person who has died. Also what was said in the ceremony would highlight the fun and good times. This makes more sense in the increasingly commonly articulated idea that the only afterlife that can be guaranteed or made sense of by many is 'living on in our memories'. In that scenario, one wants happy and positive memories to be a host to!
There's a lot to affirm in this but there are a couple of concerns that a responsible ceremony-leader should probably be balancing in the planning of the occasions.
To be affirmed is the recognition of the value of human relations and of memory: that each of us is because of the others in and around our lives and that the things we can celebrate about those we have loved are the very stuff of growing and worthwhile relationships (in general terms, at least, occasionally I do wonder). To be affirmed (though I suspect this is not really what is intended by those wanting celebrations of life) is the bittersweetness of such recollections. In the fond recollection there is an awareness that this has come to an end and this produces a feeling of Sehensucht. And I think that is probably a good thing at a funeral.

"Instead of looking to an afterlife" is an interesting counterpoise. I take it that it is meant as a characterisation of a traditional religious funeral. And I certainly gained the impression in comments about funerals as celebrations of life, that one of the things that people were trying to get away from is feeling that they could only really participate if they had some kind of belief in the afterlife and/or God. The two don't necessarily go together, of course: some people believe in some kind of God without an afterlife and some consider an afterlife perfectly possible but not really God. What we should take from that is that it is not necessarily the case any more that the concern uppermost in mourners' minds about the fate of the deceased after death and doing something for them to make things better or at least not to get in the way of their post-mortem happiness. Denial or agnosticism about life after life therefore shifts the horizon of the ceremony in most people's understandings. Now it has to be about the way that those who are left carry on and a big part of that is how they remember the deceased.
Never mind that most CofE funerals have, for a good while, included concern for the bereaved and incorporated some kind of eulogy; clearly the God/afterlife themes have a stronger cultural hold associated with the church funeral hanging on in the popular imagination than the frequent realities of the actual experiences of the funerals.
This leads into my concerns. A bit further on in the article, we read: "despite being being the great leveller, death is increasingly seen as an occasion to express one's individuality." That can work quite well with the celebration of life and may have played a part in strengthening the idea: what one wishes for oneself, is projected onto the funerals of others (and that in turn becomes a template for still others). I don't have a problem with that except in one respect. Sometimes the wishes of the deceased may not be appropriate for the needs of the mourners. As one of those interviewed puts it...

He doesn't want any tears. The purpose is not to dwell on loss, he says, but to rejoice in what happened when he was alive: "I don't want them mourning - I want them laughing."

But, I want to say, it's not just about what you want. In any case, you will either be completely absent, or at least in a position, I would hope, to appreciate better the needs of those left behind. They may need to grieve and the ceremony probably should be an occasion when something of that can be expressed in solidarity with other mourners. This gives permission for it to be done. In actual fact, it is an honour to the deceased that their impact has been such that they will be missed. Tears are appropriate. That's not to say that laughter is out of place and I think that there is a rightful reaction against funerals being only about grief.
You see, I think it is important that the positive place a funeral can have in the bereavement process is recognised. For it to do that, it should normally help the bereaved to face their loss, at least in the initial or early phases. To do this in community with others is part of what a funeral offers by way of benefits. Bereavement also involves recognising and beginning to renarrate ones own stories in relation to the person who has died; to make meaning out of the event of the death by situating or re-situating in the stories which carry most meaning for us. This is a time for bittersweet and for Sehensucht, and something of that should normally be part of the funereal proceedings; after all, any remembering has to entail some recollection at some level that a sad event involving the one remembered has taken place. This has been where, traditionally, relating to the big story of God and human destiny has come in.
So, it seems to me, that remembering something of the significance and the abundance of the life of one who has died is important. To give hospitality to laughter and tears is likely to be part of that. In some cases the laughter is part of the ceremony, in others, part of the informal eating and drinking afterwards.

And we remember. And it is true that remembering is a kind of afterlife for the one remembered. We do all belong to one another in the memories and stories we share; we don't just exist in our own heads but in the minds and memories of those we love and who love us (as we are reminded in 'I am a Strange Loop' by Douglas Hofstadter). Keeping the memory alive, in this sense, is a kind of maintaining the remaining life of the deceased.
As a Christian, I want to affirm that and gently suggest that there is One Who Remembers more fully, intimately with greater love and more realism than any of us. Remembers each and every one of us. Eternally. And as creator is able to give life to that remembering in a way that far exceeds the lingering but fading recollections of us humans. Giving a fullness of life and a perfecting of life. Dipping that lively remembrance in glory and setting it in a web of recollection of the best and of fulness and completion. We call this New Creation. Do we dare speak of this hope?