something different Sunday

Hello All,
This coming Sunday, 20 May 2012, St Cyprian's returns to a traditional form of worship, Sunday Morning Prayer.  This form of worship follows a different pattern from our usual Sunday Holy Eucharist. Morning Prayer, and it's counterpart Evening Prayer, are traditional forms of corporate, or congregational, prayer read daily in the Episcopal Church. There are psalms said together, scripture read, hymns sung and prayers recited. In the Church our tradition holds that when the offices are prayed we join the host of faithful in the world praying to God, in worship, in giving thanks, in sharing our dreams.
One of the tenets of the Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is a member, is the tradition of Common Prayer: we faithful followers of Jesus gather together regularly to worship God and live amongst each other in community. What we believe about God, and what we disagree about that belief, is put aside when we gather to worship. When Elizabeth I of England asked the Church to gather in Common Prayer she was cognizant of the bloody religious wars of her time; by gathering in worship she said she did not to know what was in people's hearts but that they gather together in prayer and worship. It was a call to reconciliation from the violent past to turn to a gathered community, creating the peaceable kingdom.
In seminary Morning and Evening Prayer began and ended our days, beginning in worship together thankful for the new day begun and closing in thanksgiving for the day past and a restful night. For me this ancient pattern of the Morning and Evening Prayer, also known as the offices, the worship based on the hours of the day, offered moments of thanksgiving and of grace which bracketed the joys and challenges of the day. At times when I was stressed and acted without grace to one of my sisters or brothers in seminary I stood next to them during worship and reconciled through the recitation of these prayers of common worship; adding our prayers to the many in worship.
So join us Sunday at 10.10 for worship with Morning Prayer, and join the voices around our world praying to God.
See you at Turk and Lyon.
peace
eric