Franklin of Anselm: Updates from Living in God's Time
My Year With The Community of St. Anselm, A Choose Your Own Adventure Story…Where God's in Charge
Last Sunday, the Community gathered on Zoom for a nighttime service meant to bring the immersive and integrated members together, to celebrate Pascha alongside the Orthodox churches, and to continue the story of the Resurrection, which continues to inspire and instruct us throughout Eastertide. Anna, the Integrated member from Zimbabwe, and I planned the service: … Continue reading Paschal Compline
Maundy Thursday Months ago, when The Community of St. Anselm hosted a teacher at the Palace every week, we welcomed an endearingly prickly, quirky theologian who taught us about the Eucharist. Perhaps teaching a bit above our collective understanding of Communion (we were just expecting an overview of different traditions: high, low, and so on,) … Continue reading Re-membering a Community
In the Community of St. Anselm, we end up designing a lot of prayer stations — we made a big effort for the House of Bishops and an Ash Wednesday Retreat, especially — but for the first time, this Holy Week, some of us actually asked to set up a round of prayer stations. Before … Continue reading Intercessions in Isolation
Every Friday, Community members design and lead a Vespers service, reflecting our interests, traditions, or concerns during our time at Lambeth. Last week, I led our service remotely, via Zoom, and tried to incorporate a lot of technology and a lot of humanity at the same time. I figured out how to screen-share the few … Continue reading Consider the lilies…
Greetings, friends! Thank you for your patience in the midst of this long period of radio silence. I have a lot to report — and a lot of half-finished drafts on here — and I hope to fill in the last few months’ gaps soon. Today, I just want to start back by sharing a … Continue reading “Rejoice!” in the midst of isolation
A few weeks ago, the Community of St. Anselm joined Archbishop Justin and the staff of Lambeth Palace to record an Advent service for BBC Radio 4. A choir from St. Martin’s-in-the-fields, my new/for-now home parish, provided the anthems and carols, while my sister Sheelu and I offered short reflections on what Advent means to … Continue reading Technicolor Glory
The first week of November, Dr. Alison Gray, from Westminster College, Cambridge, taught us about the Psalms. An excellent and approachable instructor, Dr. Gray introduced us to the history, voices, and devotional application of the psalter. She also described the three dominant types of psalms. Based on Walter Brueggemann’s classification of the psalms, Dr. Gray … Continue reading A Season of Psalms
A few weeks ago, we had our first on-site retreat, here at the Palace. Throughout the year, immersive members are split into two sharing groups, and usually spend one evening a week together. For these four days, however, we spent most of the day just with our six members and three leaders. The stories of … Continue reading Fragments from Bethany
Friends, you will not be surprised that I have already been back to Shakespeare’s Globe…twice. I attended the final performance of Merry Wives of Windsor and another production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this time with thirteen members and friends of the Community alongside me. Because of the events of the last two weeks, Titania’s … Continue reading Creation & Rebellion
My friends, in this post, I will discuss and connect many events of the last week: our Commitment Service on Wednesday, Sept. 25th, the Vespers services that some of us designed to help us process our Commitment, and the monthly service of Healing and Wholeness that we celebrated Monday, the last day of September. I … Continue reading Outward Signs
Franklin of Anselm: Updates from Living in God's Time 