Radical Traditionalism

'You know I don't go in for liturgy,' Emily wrote in an email, 'so I don't know why it's Compline that gets to me'. Emily turned up with her mum (all the way from South Wales in her case!) at our first Zoom Compline on Sunday evening. As I may have mentioned I have fought shy of simply shoving our ordinary worship online once the progress of the pandemic allowed us to meet in person again, partly because our kit isn't very good, partly because a standard Parish Eucharist isn't really a very involving business if you're watching it on a screen, and partly because I don't want it to get into people's heads that online worship is any replacement for the real thing, the real thing being Christians actually being in the same place where they stand a chance of forming relationships that lead them on in their spiritual lives. But I still felt I wanted to do something that allowed those at a far distance to access our worshipping life. Compline, the Night Office, once a month seemed an ideal thing to try.

And so I sat in the Lady Chapel with a candelabra lit having put the link and an order of service on the website. There were seven of us in the end, which I thought was fine. I greeted everyone and then muted them: my experience is that online worship where you can hear everyone else is horrendous as attempts to speak in unison inevitably mean the pace gets slower and slower until you can't see how you're actually managing to move forward at all. There was a space for people to chip in with their own prayers, but nobody did (perhaps they will eventually). We sang Te Lucis Ante Terminum, the antiphon and Nunc Dimittis - at least, I did, I don't know what everyone else did - and at the end I snuffed the candles: 'very evocative!' Emily reported. 

Apart from practicalities such as trying to read and simultaneously keep an eye on the Participants list for stragglers, and having the camera elsewhere than my computer screen, there was one unanticipated issue. As Compline is the conclusion of the liturgical day, worshippers are supposed to leave in virtual silence; but in our online lives since March 2020 we have begun accustomed to waving goodbye to each other as we leave a meeting, to the extent that not to do so feels strangely uncomfortable and rude. Worshippers physically in the Lady Chapel wouldn't have felt the need to wave to each other, but that is now an engrained part of our social etiquette, and so should probably be retained!