Intercessions for Epiphany

I have been asked to write some intercessions for the Epiphany Eucharist this evening. Here they are if you are seeking a set of intercessions. Feel free to use or amend them as you wish. 

As the magi offered gold, the gift for a King, we ask for your guidance for the rulers of our earth: for Putin and Russian leaders as their Christmas arrives, that they would now seek peace, for Ukraine, mourning and weeping the loss of her children, for Afghanistan, for Bethlehem and all of the West Bank, for Syria, for Libya and places forgotten by the news, and for China and all places where Covid and Flu are bringing misery. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer. 

As the magi offered incense before our great High Priest, we ask for your blessing on the our priests and on our people. And so we pray for Bishop N for N and the parishes of our diocese, and for all who minister to others, and bring the light of hope within our world. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

As the magi offered myrrh, a prophets healing antiseptic, so we ask for your healing help for all in pain this day. And so we pray for all who are in hospital, all in long term care. For the nurses, the doctors, the porters and paramedics, the EMTs and OTs, the carers and those whose wounds lie deep inside. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

As the myrrh scent of embalming filled both the stable and the tomb, so we bring before you all who mourn today. Those whose wounds of loss are fresh and raw, those buried or cremated or remembered this week and those who have lost the joy of Christmas because their loves ones are not there. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

As the magi looked for signs of the truth in the heavens, so we ask for your guidance for all who search for meaning in life. The truth seekers, and truth tellers, the journalists and pilgrims, the lost and the lonely, the heartbroken and confused. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

As the Holy family fled the horror of Herod so we pray for all who run from violence. The refugees. beaten partners and children, the victims of slavery and those bullied in their workplace. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

As the magi knelt in homage so we pray for ourselves. That we too would catch a glimpse of the glory found in Christ, that we too would have holy dreams and be guided on our journeys, and that one day we would too would truly see the face of Christ. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Merciful Father,accept these prayers for the sake of your Son,

our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

Intercessions for the Feast of the Naming of Jesus (the Circumcision).

On Sunday morning I was asked to do the interecessions on Sunday morning as we celebrated the naming of Jesus  (the Circumcision). Here is a generalised version of the intercessions I wrote. Feel free to use them in worship and amend as you wish. You may notice from reading my Evensong litany that, once again, I was inspired by a number of titles of Christ, but used fewer titles in the morning and tried to find ones which fitted the situations which were most in need of our prayers. 

Jesus name above all names, 

we pray for all who struggle with their call and their identity,

and all who have been cruelly and unkindly named or labelled;
we ask that the cruelty of racist or unkind labels would end
and pray for all who have been scarred by the spiteful words of others.

May your Holy Spirit whisper gentle words of love and guidance
into the ears of the wounded,
and bring remorse and a change of heart
to those tempted to taunt others.

Lord in your mercy,

hear our prayer.

King of Kings and Lord of Lords,
guide the rulers of the earth.
Instil compassion and love within their hearts
until the angels song of peace on earth and goodwill to all
becomes a concrete reality.
We particular bring before you those in power in N, N and N (current conflict situations)
and all suffering the wounds of war.
We also bring before you people and families in conflict,
and all who have struggled with stress and debt, hunger and cold 

throughout this Christmas and New Year season.

Lord in your mercy,

hear our prayer.

Emmanuel, God with us,

we ask you to have compassion on all who feel alone today.
Surround them with the embrace of your love,
and call people to act as your hands, your eyes and your ears
to listen and bring your comfort
to the lonely and those in pain.  

Lord in your mercy,

hear our prayer.

Rock of Ages and Cornerstone,
bring your strength and healing power
 to all whose foundations are crumbling this day,
particularly those in chronic pain
and all who need your healing-help.
We particularly ask for that help for N, N and N (sick list)

Morning star, Dayspring and Light Everlasting,

shine upon all who sit in darkness and the shadow of death today. 

Come alongside those who are dying
and those who sit and wait beside them
and bring glimpses of your coming Kingdom to all who mourn.
We particularly remember before you N and N (recent famous deaths)

and those for whom those deaths have triggered unresolved grief
and we ask you to welcome into your everlasting kingdom
those we have loved and lost including N and N (RIP list), 

And N and N whose anniversaries occur at around this time. 

Merciful Father,

accept these prayers

for the sake of your Son,

our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Amen.

A prayer based on the titles of Christ: Written for Evensong on the 1st January 2023

 Whilst writing my sermon for Evensong in Truro on New Year's Day I was inspired to do a bit of liturgical drafting based upon some of the biblical names and titles of Jesus. As usual please feel free to use this prayer in worship or amend/improve as you wish. 

Wisdom of God, guide the rulers of our earth,

Word of God, speak your truth into our lives,

Great I AM, surround the lonely with your love, 

Morning Star, to the desperate bring your hope, 

King of the Nations, help us learn your ways of peace,

Key of David, free those trapped within their pain, 

Root of Jesse, help those who feel they don’t belong, 

Rock of Ages, bring stability and safety, 

Anointed One, pour your healing on our grief, 

Way, Truth and Life, guide the travellers on their roads

God With Us, may we sense you in our lives. 

Light Of The World, guide the frightened and the lost,

Bread of life, fill the hungry and the poor, 

Spring Of Living Water, may your Spirit quench our thirst. 

Open Door, welcome those who look for truth, 

Living Vine, help us grow in love and grace 

Lamb of God, may your mercy fill our world. 

Our Beginning and our End, fill each moment we exist.

Jesus Christ, and  the name above all names, 

In your name we bring our prayers. Amen. 

Jesus Christ, and  the name above all names, 

In your name we bring our prayers. Amen. 

A litany for Her Majesty the Queen's Platinum Jubilee

This litany was written as part of a Praxis South training day with Helen Bent. We were encouraged to write a litany or collect as an exercise during the coffee break. As such I must admit I spent less time on this than I normally would when writing a litany, but I still think it expresses something of the gratitude we have for her life and service. Please feel free to use it in worship if you find it helpful.  We shared our litanies in Zoom breakout groups, and one line was missing a one-syllable word. I am grateful to Rachael Pennant for supplying the word "Posies" which sits the gap so beautifully. 

If you wish to catch up on the day the video will appear on the Praxis South Youtube Channel shortly.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIUuyQikfiWduVRYgdh34tQ

A Litany of gratitude to Her Majesty the Queen. 

For Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second,

we give you thanks and praise. 

For our country and freedom through all of her life, 

we give you thanks and praise.

For her prayers and her faith, a bright shining light,

we give you thanks and praise.

For the seventy long years of service she gave,

we give you thanks and praise.

For witness to you, the King of all Kings,

we give you thanks and praise.

For diplomats, handshakes, speeches and dinners,

we give you thanks and praise.

For quiet wise words, to guide those in power, 

we give you thanks and praise.

For her willingness to live in the public gaze,

we give you thanks and praise.

For the rules she has borne for protocol’s sake,

we give you thanks and praise.

For her service and strength, giving comfort in pain, 

we give you thanks and praise. 

For the plaques and the ribbons, the posies and smiles,

Oh ruler of all, our sovereign God,

we give you thanks and praise. 

Publishing Sheet Music on Kindle Direct Publishing - Some things I found out!

TLDR: This is a post about how I (eventually) got decent results publishing sheet music on KDP. (The Amazon self-publishing website).

At the end of 2019 I published a book called "the Rhythmic Psalter". It was basically a collection of psalms crunched into ten verses each, suitable for busy people or people who want to dip into the book of psalms. I published it via Kindle Direct, as that seemed nice and easy - and it was. I downloaded a Word template which I edited with the text in Pages (I have a Mac), after editing I converted my text to a Word document, uploaded the text to Kindle Direct Publishing, looked at the proof and corrected it, and pressed a button to publish. Easy peasy! And people could buy it from that moment onwards. 

Meanwhile I was working on a music edition of the same book. That was a totally different story. First I made the music images on Sibelius and exported them as tiffs at 600dpi so they would be good quality. Then I imported them into the same Pages template I had used before. When I was ready I made the Kindle version of the book. I tried exporting from Pages as an ebook but that didn't work so well. So then I tried using the Kindle online publishing gadget which worked very well indeed. Once again it was very easy and user friendly. 

And so, now to the hard part, and the reason why I am writing this blog post. I guess that I might not be the only person who has had this problem, and this is how I solved it. I don't know the technicalities why this worked and why other things didn't work. But this worked for me and I hope it works for you too!

First, the problem: When I converted the Pages file to (either - I tried both!) a doc or a pdf (a beautiful high resolution pdf!) and uploaded to KDP to make a print book, the music looked dreadful, like a bad photocopy with lines missing and fuzzy notes. These were not low resolution images when they went up, but they were dire when they came back down as a pdf proof. 

I read the instructions and it said that if I wanted to improve these images I would need to change the settings in Word so that the images were not compressed. I couldn't find a way to do that in Pages so I did a test with a friend who had Word and it seemed a bit better, so I got a Word licence for my Mac. Thankfully Word runs native on a Mac now without having to use Parallels so it didn't slow the machine down like it used to do in the olden days.

I also read somewhere in the small print that the Kindle Direct Publishing doesn't like Tiffs, so I went back into Sibelius and exported the images as png files instead. After doing some tweaking in Word to make everything look right, I uploaded....

...the proof came back with the images looking good (hooray!) but the formatting all wrong. Basically I had written my book in Gill Sans and the gadget (presumably because it couldn't find the Gill Sans font) substituted Times New Roman which shot the formatting to pieces. 

I read up some more, and discovered that if I embedded my font in the file that would work...I did this, and it didn't work, but I noticed that parts of the document where I had used Calibri were fine, so I just gave up and used Calibri for the whole thing. It was near enough to satisfy me, and didn't wreck my formatting. 

Then I uploaded a proof. Everything looked lovely, apart from the larger music files with accompaniments at the front of the book. For some weird reason they looked bad even though they were pngs. 

So I spent 8 hours flipping between Word, and KDP proofing, and Sibelius, exporting different files with different boxes ticked on Sibelius, and doing all kinds of things with images (including conversions to various things including jpgs and screenshots - I was getting desperate!) and this was what I discovered...

Pngs for these larger pieces of music just didn't work. I don't know why, but vector graphics files did, but only with certain settings ticked. So I exported the larger music files as vector graphics files (SVG) and imported those into Word. I had to crop them a bit in image editing as they had white borders, but that was OK. I then proofed and FINALLY the music was looking OK. I also had to keep doing re-proofing because, in Word, various things kept slipping onto other pages, and sometimes there were random word breaks which didn't exist in the original file, but that was fine in comparison to my previous problems. 

Therefore in conclusion I recommend these tactics:

1 - When making a book which includes SHEET MUSIC in Kindle Direct Publishing, use Word to create your original document and set the image resolution so that it is full resolution. To help get your graphics properly lined-up tick the gridlines box (under "view")

2 - When you make your images in Sibelius export them as png files at 600 DPI.

3 - Use a set font from a book template such as Calibri to write the text sections of your book. 

4 - If png doesn't work, try exporting from Sibelius as a vector graphics file (SVG). In Sibelius export options for SVG do tick the "lines and breaks" boxes, but DO NOT tick antialiasing box or the monochrome box.

5 - When you import your SVG files to Word they will have white borders. Use the "Crop" images function to crop them down to the border of your music. (Click on your image and you will get the "Graphics format" menu). It is under there. 

6 - If you are having problems getting your text to wrap around these images the way you want it to, there is a "wrap text" menu. I set mine to "top and bottom" and I also ticked "lock anchor" when I had the image where I wanted it. I also unticked "allow overlap" when I was fiddling with the image. 

7 - I then saved the book as a Word document and uploaded to KDP, proofed and finally I was done!

The Wellerman Hymn

 This shanty seems to be everywhere at the moment, so I couldn't resist writing a hymn to the tune. Here we are. Feel free to use wherever in a worship situation. 

The Wellerman Hymn

(to the tune of the shanty - feel free to use in worship).

Cmin 

There once was a man from Galillee,

Fmin Cmin

He healed the sick and set prisoners free.

Cmin 

He preached forgiveness and healed the lame

Ab                  Gmin          Cmin

And Jesus was his name.  

Cmin

He looked for followers far and wide, 

F     C min

He had no time for those puffed with pride.

Cmin

He called some women and fishermen, 

Ab                     Gmin             Cmin

And taught of peace and love. 

             Ab min             Ebmin

Soon will the Saviour come, 

            Fmin                                      Cmin

Like light that shines in the morning sun, 

            Ab min             Eb min

Healing the grieving hearts

            Fmin               Gmin    Cmin

With life that has no end.

He welcomed outcasts and raised the dead,

He fed five thousand with fish and bread.

He was the Way and the Truth and Life,

The Son of God on earth. 

But all his talk of a Kingdom crown.

Upset authorities in the town;

So they arrested him for fake crimes

And nailed him to a cross. 

Soon will the Saviour come, 

Like light that shines in the morning sun, 

Healing the grieving hearts

With life that has no end.

But after dying he rose again

And promised life that would never end;

He died to save us from death itself

And wipe away our crimes.

He will come back here from heaven’s domain

And all our loved-ones will rise again;

Our broken world he will make brand new,

And take away our pain. 

Soon will the Saviour come, 

Like light that shines in the morning sun, 

Healing the grieving hearts

With life that has no end.

Soon will the Saviour come, 

Like light that shines in the morning sun, 

Healing the grieving hearts

With life that has no end.

Sue Wallace Jan 2021.

Stations of the Spirit 2020

This past month has been a rather extraordinary time, when I seem to have temporarily become a video artist, curator, and project manager. After the success of the Via Luminosa online this year (now taken-down for another-time), and also the "Rumours of Hope" vigil, I started some conversations with the cathedral Precentors' network and agreed to curate something similar for Thy kingdom Come, a series of "Stations of the Spirit". Like "Rumours of Hope" the series would contain readings, prayers and reflections from a number of different cathedrals and guest speakers. Like the Stations of the Cross these "Stations of the Spirit" would form a journey, but instead of being a journey to Calvary, they would give a snapshot of the work of the Holy Spirit from the dawn of creation, all the way  through to Revelation.   I also managed to recruit a number of musicians to help me, as well as using the odd piece of my own (especially the atmospheric Byzantine-tuned harp music which seems to work so well with bible readings). As a basis I used the Stations of the Spirit that I wrote last year (see the post of the 31st May 2019 for a rough idea of the script) but this time I decided to have 9 stations rather than 10, using part of the reading from Revelation in Station 10, and the blessing from that final station. 

The cathedral Precentors were amazingly supportive and some other Canons and also Deans volunteered to give readings. I was also sent some wonderful images, notably the video footage and photographs of the fountain at Chester and the beautiful images of the icon in Bradford Cathedral's chapel of the Holy Spirit.  

Musically I wanted to reflect the beautiful music produced in the cathedrals, but also wanted to reflect the broad nature of the music on offer in various churches, by mixing the old and the new, the choral and the instrumental. The Chapter of Peterborough gave me permission to use the music of Peterborough Cathedral Choir, and the Chapter of Christ Church Oxford gave me permission to use their music too. I was also able to use a piece from St Peter's Singers who provided music for Leeds Minster for major occasions in the life of the church. Dan Sladden, succentor of Ripon Cathedral, gave me some music from the Cambridge Chamber Consort, his choral group of former choral scholars, and Peter Gunstone gave me some music from Accord, who can do wonderful classical pieces, but also do a cappella arrangements of newer songs by Hillsongs and Matt Redman. The newer styles of music were represented by Joel Payne, who writes some lovely and thoughtful new songs, and Metanoia, who run the music for Rock Mass and mix well known worship songs, with guitar riffs from secular artists.

I wanted to include a time of reflection during each station, but the nature of internet videos is that times of "silence" online can seem like the internet has frozen or the technology isn't working. Instead I decided to have a piece of instrumental music and gentle images after each talk to give a chance for people watching the videos to pray and reflect. Those watching could always pause the video for a while if they wished to have some true silence. Once again we had a wonderful variety of musicians helping with this. Tim Parsons, assistant Director of Music at Exeter cathedral,  gave me permission to use the lovely Tomkins piece that he recorded at the beginning of lockdown, just before being furloughed, but I was also given  oboe, cello, flute and piano pieces and two lovely reflective and etherial pieces by Steve Lawson, the electric bassist. Some musicians wrote their pieces especially for the event: Andrew Maries beautiful oboe improvisation matched the wonderful imagery of flying through a nebula very well, Steve Abley created a reflective piece for the station based on the woman at the well, Tim Farnhill wrote a lovely flute improvisation, and Liam Cartwright improvised upon the ancient plainchant melody "Come Holy Ghost our souls inspire." I loved the wonderful variety and beauty of these pieces. 

I was also deeply thrilled by the talent and inspiration of the artists involved in this project. Canon Katie Lawrence, Precentor of Wellington Cathedral, gave me two wonderful dances, one to accompany a song by Lacey Brown (whose liturgically-deep music I encountered whilst on placement in Seattle in 2003), and one to the gut-wrenchingly beautiful "O Magnum Mysterium" by Lauridsen. Ally Barrett volunteered not just to do a talk, but also to provide images for the station on the Baptism of Christ and the Annunciation. Richard Horton from Visions, gave me images of flowers that he had taken since lockdown, which I had originally imagined would be in the creation station, but which instead appeared in Station 2. Nic Walters provided me with a large selection of video footage from different events he has done. He shot some images of bubble blowing specially for me, and also collated together beautiful images of fountains, flames, crowds, doves, water and the "I love you" word sequence that I remember being very moved by when I was still working with the Visions group in York. 

I love the story behind the "I love you" word sequence. A group of artists gave pieces of paper to people in the Glastonbury festival, asking them to write "I love you" on those pieces of paper. They then scattered them around the festival site, and after a day collected the ones that remained back in. They had been torn, rained upon and creased, and yet the words "I love you" were still there and still readable in many of these pieces. I still find that video very powerful to watch. 

Of course, as well as collecting together all these contributions, I also did a fair bit of video editing myself. One of the reasons that I decided to make the project aspect ratio 4:3 rather than widescreen is that I have a lot of old footage collected together and edited in the days before mobile phones and widescreen were commonplace which were stored on old DV tapes. Stretching 4:3 is a lot harder than shrinking widescreen, but also I must confess to rather preferring 4:3. It makes composing an image that "works" a little bit easier somehow, although in years to come I may migrate, depending on whether I can replace or re-shoot, or successfully edit some rather precious images from the past.

It was wonderful to dig up images taken in the heart of the Jordanian desert and fountains that I shot in the palace of Versailles. (They only run water through them on Sunday afternoons in the summer holidays as it takes an enormous amount of water to make these fountains work). The flame that became the title sequence image was taken just outside the entrance to the Edicule (the empty-tomb) in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It is the Holy-fire, re-lit each year at Easter, and the melting candle which was also used in the titles was taken in the same church, but deep-down in the basement, in the chapel dedicated to St Helen. In contrast the almost single-shot image of floating past greenery came from a punt-ride in la Venise Verte in the Marais Poitevin. I have taken images from a boat a number of times, but never with the smoothness of a punt on a canal on a summers day. One day I would love to return and re-take it in HD but the lighting would need to be just right too.

The Stations of the Spirit are still available for you to view online, and they will remain online for the future. 

Station 1 - Creation. 

With Bishop Graham Cray, prayers from the canons of Peterborough Cathedral, and music from Andrew Maries, and also St Peter's Singers in Leeds. Their album is available here. 

Station 2 - The Valley of Dry Bones. 

With Revd Jeremy Fletcher, prayers from the canons of St Edmundsbury, and music from the musicians of St Edmundsbury, and also the Reverend Robb Sutherland and Metanoia. 

Station 3 - Water flowing from the Temple.

With Canon Roly Riem, prayers from the Canon pastor of Coventry cathedral, and vicar of Romsey Abbey, cello music from the Revd Thomas Wharton and an anthem by Revd Peter Gunstone and Accord. 

Station 4 - The Annunciation. 

With the Revd Ally Barrett, prayers from the Canons of Ripon Cathedral and music from Steve Lawson, and the Cambridge Chamber Consort with Dan Sladden, Succentor of Ripon. 

Station 5 - The Baptism of Christ.

With the Reverend Bryony Taylor, prayers from Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, and music from Tim Farnhill, and also Christ Church Cathedral choir. 

Station 6 - The Woman at the well. 

With the Rt Revd Bev Mason, Bishop of Warrington, prayers from the Canons of Chester Cathedral, and music from Steve Abley, and also Joel Payne, whose worship music is here. 

Station 7 - Jesus Breathes on the disciples. 

With a reflection from myself (some technical difficulties meant that Brother Stuart's reflection arrived too late to insert within this station, so instead it was released as a separate item). Also with music from Liam Cartwright and Lacey Brown whose music is available here. 

Reflection - I am sending you.  

With Brother Stuart Burns, with another piece of music, "To whom should we go" by Lacey Brown. 

Station 8 - The Day of Pentecost. 

With a reflection from Bishop David Williams, Bishop of Basingstoke, prayers from the canons of Bradford cathedral, and music from Steve Lawson, and Peterborough Cathedral Choir. 

Station 9 - The Holy Spirit Falls on the Gentiles.

With a reflection from the Very Reverend Andrew Nunn, Dean of Southwark, prayers from Truro Cathedral, and music from Tim Parsons of Exeter Cathedral, and also Accord.