Monday, April 7, 2008

In This House of Brede

My housemates and I, after roast beef and red wine for dinner, have just watched In This House of Brede, based on the eponymous book by Rumer Godden, and thoroughly recommend it. Then we sang Compline in our chapel.

Oh, and while I'm blogging, to record some details of today: after managing to sleep after a pretty poor Saturday, I got up, drove to church, confessed, then sang - along with Justin (who was cantor and organist), with several of the ladies from the mixed choir now joining in the Gregorian chant - at the Sung Mass. Fr Rowe exhorted us to shepherd our own souls, that spark of the Divine within, made in God's image and likeness, spiritual and immortal: for in saving our souls at the cost of all else, even our lives, we will certainly gain everything; lest, if we lose them even while gaining all else, we ineluctably lose everything. Justin was pleased to shepherd us all into singing the very singable Proper of today, together with Mass VIII, Credo III, Ad regias Agni dapes at the Offertory, Psalm 22(23) along with the Communion at Communion (!), "The King of love my Shepherd is" before Mass, and "Praise to the Holiest in the height" at its end. There was roadwork going on just round the corner, so we had the church door shut till the Preface, but the incense (about which I would never normally complain) got so thick that, lest we all perish, or at the least the choir stop singing, we had to throw it open for the rest of Mass, so we then had jackhammers and the like to contend with...

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