Praying With Our Bodies

We're gonna pause at moments.

I'm gonna try to concentrate them and interrupt our worship as little as possible.

But we do take these moments about once a year, like I said, to just pause and remember why we do what we do.

Uh, this year I'm gonna try to really focus us basically just on the physical things we do that are non-verbal.

So you can kinda read what we do in terms of the text, both in the bulletin that we use every week and in the Book of Common Prayer, which is where it comes from verbatim.

But there's a lot of what we do that's not written down, that we do with our bodies.

And so that's kind of the couple of comments that I'm gonna offer this year.

We focus on different things year after year, but that's what's gonna be this year, so these ceremonial acts.

Um, and the biggest picture kind of why we do what we do is to pray with our bodies.

So we pray with our minds and with our lips, with our words, uh, but a lot of what we do as Anglican Christians, kind of in this long historic tradition of worship, uh, liturgically, is pray with our bodies.

And so that's why we do what we do when we do all of the ceremonial acts that are non-verbal.

One of them you're doing right now.

So we've, we've already begun this process of worshiping with our bodies already.

So we're st-- Yeah, well, well done.

[laughs]

[laughs]

[laughs] Um, standing is part of our worship.

Uh, it's a way that we lift ourselves and stand, um, confidently before the presence of God.

There's this kind of old adage that there's like liturgical calisthenics, so you stand, stand, sit, and kneel throughout the service.

You actually get a little bit of exercise in the course of an Anglican worship service.

Um, standing to speak and to sing, um, sitting to listen and meditate, and kneeling to pray.

That's kind of the broadest strokes, kind of when we stand, sit, and kneel, these ways of praying with our bodies.

Um, we stand in order to speak, so even if you're sitting, I'm standing if I'm speaking.

In fact, as a little aside, only bishops historically are allowed to sit when they teach.

Everybody else has to stand when they're talking to other people.

We're gonna pause at moments.

I'm gonna try to concentrate them and interrupt our worship as little as possible.

But we do take these moments about once a year, like I said, to just pause and remember why we do what we do.

Uh, this year I'm gonna try to really focus us basically just on the physical things we do that are non-verbal.

So you can kinda read what we do in terms of the text, both in the bulletin that we use every week and in the Book of Common Prayer, which is where it comes from verbatim.

But there's a lot of what we do that's not written down, that we do with our bodies.

And so that's kind of the couple of comments that I'm gonna offer this year.

We focus on different things year after year, but that's what's gonna be this year, so these ceremonial acts.

Um, and the biggest picture kind of why we do what we do is to pray with our bodies.

So we pray with our minds and with our lips, with our words, uh, but a lot of what we do as Anglican Christians, kind of in this long historic tradition of worship, uh, liturgically, is pray with our bodies.

And so that's why we do what we do when we do all of the ceremonial acts that are non-verbal.

One of them you're doing right now.

So we've, we've already begun this process of worshiping with our bodies already.

So we're st-- Yeah, well, well done.

[laughs]

[laughs]

[laughs] Um, standing is part of our worship.

Uh, it's a way that we lift ourselves and stand, um, confidently before the presence of God.

There's this kind of old adage that there's like liturgical calisthenics, so you stand, stand, sit, and kneel throughout the service.

You actually get a little bit of exercise in the course of an Anglican worship service.

Um, standing to speak and to sing, um, sitting to listen and meditate, and kneeling to pray.

That's kind of the broadest strokes, kind of when we stand, sit, and kneel, these ways of praying with our bodies.

Um, we stand in order to speak, so even if you're sitting, I'm standing if I'm speaking.

In fact, as a little aside, only bishops historically are allowed to sit when they teach.

Everybody else has to stand when they're talking to other people.