new to you friday–peace and quiet

Phyllis Tickle, founder of the Religion department at Publishers Weekly and author of many books including the Divine Hours series, a collection of prayers for seasons of the year and of church life, spoke at this year’s Q conference in Chicago. I wasn’t able to attend (by the way, if anyone wants to pay my way to next year’s event, I won’t say no) but based on the tweets coming from my friends who did, she had a number of good things to say about spiritual practices like fasting, communion, sabbath and fixed-hour prayer.

As I noted in the original post, there is a growing desire for more reflection, more liturgy and more structure in worship. Growing numbers of evangelicals participate in Ash Wednesday services and Lenten fasts. Ancient hymns still connect, although the musical arrangements may vary. And the same generation clamoring for new iPhones somehow, at the same time, realizes the need to pull away, disconnect, and seek stillness.

First Friday at Christ Cathedral continues to be one way I find this sacred quiet. Of course, participation in spiritual disciplines must be long-term and multi-faceted—one service once a month won’t produce wellsprings of peace. I bet Phyllis Tickle said as much in her Q presentation……..which I’d know if I could have gone……..

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Authors like Brian McLaren and Robert Webber have written about “ancient-future” worship and spiritual practices. Many churches have added more contemplative vespers or chapel services in addition to the guitars and SermonSpice videos on Sunday morning, and Taize prayer services have started to pop up everywhere from the Unitarians to the Presbyterians.

Clearly, there is a growing desire for simpler, quieter worship options, even (especially?) among the younger generations. Is this symptomatic of larger doctrinal shifts, or simply the inevitable pendulum swing after years of the other extreme in American worship?

I’m guessing both, but for me it’s simply an opportunity to be still and to reflect, and I join hundreds of others the first Friday evening of each month at Christ Cathedral in downtown Nashville. Although all of the services offered at this Episcopal congregation are open to the community, they created the First Friday services as a “sacred space” especially for the city.


To pursue this mission the cathedral also offers violin and organ concerts, choral music performances, quarterly evensong services, and even something called “Liturgical Floral Design.” I’ve attended several of these events (not the floral one) but my favorite is First Friday. Each month the 90-minute service combines traditional elements of Episcopalian and Anglican liturgy, including a complete communion service, with surprisingly modern touches.

For instance, this past Friday’s service focused on the value of story as a way to communicate deep spiritual truths. A guest speaker shared several parables throughout the service (one accompanied by a dance from the church’s Epiphany Dance Company), and songs included not only the expected staid hymns but also a swinging version of “I Love to Tell the Story.” This being Nashville, the music at First Friday is always top-notch, and always different; this service had a jazz and piano feel while other Fridays have featured a bluegrass combo or a children’s choir.

The services include so many simple but effective elements, many of which—like the uptempo “Sanctus” sung three times before communion and accompanied by hand motions—don’t fit the stereotype. And each one also features something different to reinforce the theme; this month the church provided a basket of fabric scraps and encouraged each worshiper to take one and write a word or symbol on it to represent the story of his own life.

“At the offertory, you are invited to bring your cloth forward and attach it to a larger cloth that will be placed on the altar in preparation for the Holy Eucharist as a way of offering your life to the One who redeems and makes all things new,” they wrote in the order of service.


Don’t worry, I’m not about to become Episcopalian–the incense alone is enough to put me off that idea. But I do love entering this sacred space every month or two and finding an oasis of quiet where I can slow my racing thoughts and think about that One in a new way. I’ll leave it to our contemporary authors to explore the theological implications of these trends, although Webber’s work is on my should-have-read-a-year-ago list. For now, I’m content to sit in the back of Christ Cathedral, soak in the calm, and appreciate all those liturgical flower arrangements.