The ninth Sunday after Pentecost saw me being subdeacon for the third time. Both the second and third attempts have been accompanied by a few mistakes. The steps, bows and genuflecting are under control thanks to our wonderful Dean who gives very clear cues to both the Deacon and I with regard to when to move - the advantage of having highly polished shoes and a large sized foot. A pointing toe therefore gives ample warning that we are required to move forwards. The intercessions have been progressing - they are still taking me a good two to three hours to prepare and they are still by no means perfect. Most interesting is the background research I feel I have to do to fully understand the implications of what I am doing. Firstly, there is Lambeth and our ongoing prayers for Rowan Williams. The second is looking into which diocese is in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer for that day and the third is to check the latest news in order to be up to date for the prayers of the nations. For the latter, I use the BBC News website. arriving before the service is by necessity early in order to check the intercessions book - who is on the sick list, who has recently died, anniversaries, baptisms, weddings, confirmations - all names need to be included. Consider my mortification on my second time as subdeacon, when I had read through the 20 + names on the sick list to then go on to the recently departed only to realise I had forgotten the aged in our community. There was no way I could go back from the departed to then read the names of the aged! (I blame an excursion onto the IMDb RA board prior to going in to the cathedral for that oversight!). The other challenge I have is the chalice - administering the chalice looks easy...but it is not! Tall people, people who don't touch the chalice, ladies in hats all pose a problem simply because it is very hard to judge how much a communicant is receiving. Not only that but if we have a celebrant and two chalice assistants - it is more than easy to lose track of which people have been given the chalice and which haven't particularly if the Deacon speeds through their chalice administration and you are administering to every second person in the row. I think maybe the Roman Catholics have the right idea when they queue in single file to receive the sacrament - then again I'm not sure if they don't just get a wafer and no wine. Speaking of Catholics, World Youth Day is abuzz here at the moment. The Pope has now arrived and we have thousands of young pilgrims walking around in bright orange hats with similarly fluorescent coloured backpacks.
The two photographs are of Abbey Dore in Herefordshire (above left) and Newcastle Cathedral (right). Despite the photos being small (I am still trying to work out typepad's new formatting tricks), you will hopefully notice that the arches are very similar. They are in fact replicas. Hudson Berkeley, a benefactor of Newcastle Cathedral must have visited Abbey Dore in the early 1900's and been so taken with the church that he had the arches copied. The friends of Abbey Dore, should they visit this Cathedral, would no doubt be astonished to see the similarities with their own Church. (Unfortunately the Newcastle Cathedral photo is taken closer to the altar compared with the Abbey Dore photo, but in reality, the similarity is striking).
