The trip to Baltimore took longer than planned. The plane left Hartford late and my connection in Newark was longer than planned, both delays were the result of excessive winds.
The first question on the GOE asks for an analysis of two Eucharistic prayers, one from Rite I in the Prayer Book and the other from Enriching Our Worship, a supplemental liturgical resource, and one we use often at St. Michael's.
While each prayer contains the requisite components of a Great Thanksgiving (thanksgiving, remembering, offering, invocation of the Spirit, prayer) they give us vastly different images of God. Taken from the 1700s, Eucharistic Prayer 1 in the Prayer Book, gives us the image of a God who is utterly transcendent. Beyond us. Holy, holy, holy. Whereas the prayer from Enriching Our Worship gives us the image of a God whose creative work blessed humanity and made it good.
We don't use Rite I at St. Michael's. It's not because Rite I is bad, or even that I dislike it. We don't use it because it's not known to many of us (in the 30+ years since the "old" prayer book went away, St. Michael's has never had a long tradition of using Rite I). And while the language, from a poetic and symbolic perspective, is beautiful (very beautiful) it's written in a style quite removed from our daily use of English.
We do use Enriching Our Worship at St. Michael's. We use it a lot! The postcommunion prayer (God of abundance...) comes from this resource; often the form of the confession we use does too. During the season after Pentecost (basically from June until December) the Eucharistic Prayer we used was from Enriching Our Worship. The image of a God whose gender is neither male nor female, and the image of a God who "loves us a mother" and "never ceases to care for us" reminds us, in language we use day-to-day, that God is an intimate and constant friend and companion.
It's a blessed gift that we worship in a church where there are choices. Both of these prayers are good, and there are times in my life when I need the language of repentance and forgiveness--gifts of God in abundance in the prayer from Rite 1, and of course there are times in my life when I need the language of blessing, goodness, relationship, and embrace--gifts of God in abundance in Enriching Our Worship.
Neither is better than the other. In fact each of them is best.
