When I struggled to learn new music my teacher would say; “Stop trying to add something of yourself to what Mozart’s already done! Just let him speak though you.” To my teacher, a singer is a channel through which a composer speaks, and despite her admonitions I still find it difficult to simply let the composer speak through me.
This idea of hers can also be applied to the written word and nowhere more so than the words in the Book of Common Prayer. I enjoy its cadences and the ‘spoken music’ of the prayers found in it speak to me deeply. A good reader – and we are lucky to have some good ones in the Benefice – will allow the words of the prayer book to speak through them. Whilst listening to the readings I hear the concerns, hopes and wisdom of the past as the prayers address concerns similar to my own and I find inspiration from the words.
However some churchgoers prefer extempore prayer which is made up as it goes along. This type of prayer is sacred but can also have its funny moments. I once heard a member of a small chapel praying for people throughout the world who were not as fortunate as those in England. He was doing quite well until he warmed to his theme and then tried to scale up his thoughts from the parochial to the global. He was not an educated man and was obviously struggling to find words of a magnitude appropriate to his global theme. Finally he exclaimed, “Bless, O Lord, all those in the Northern Hemisphere and those in the Southern Hemisphere but do not forget those in the middle.”
In an instant, my thoughts turned to the people who lived in that newly discovered space between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. What did they look like? What did they eat? Did they use the Book of Common Prayer or prefer their prayers extempore? These questions were immediately resolved when I realised, that were it not for extempore prayer I would not even have known of their existence!
All this goes to show, that sometimes repetitive prayers may enlighten the mind, but extempore prayer can excite it.
View from the Pew 