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Tenebrae
Inside the unassuming church of Old Saint Paul’s in the city centre of Edinburgh last night, the congregation gathered to hear the choir sing the service of Tenebrae for Maundy Thursday.
The service comprises psalms and readings sung to plainsong and faux-bourdon settings. This evocative rite with simple but dramatic ceremony helps to draw us into the darkness of the Passion. During the rite the lights are gradually extinguished until just one candle, representing Christ, remains shining in the darkness. This is a foretaste of the Resurrection; the light that banishes darkness.
When I was living in Edinburgh the Tenebrae service was always my favorite one of the year, and this is the first time in 12 years that I’ve missed it. The service is sung throughout (except for a small amount of spoken text at the end), and is performed from a booklet compiled for All Saints, Margaret Street in London (including the instruction to the choir to “exit to the south grill”).
One year I cut short a business meeting in Washington DC, to catch a flight home to Edinburgh to attend Tenebrae. And for me, it’s always been an important part of Holy Week; one that I miss very deeply now that I’m in Dublin.
March 20, 2008
New OSP web site
It was back in 1995 that Robin McMorran created the first web site for my old church in Edinburgh, Old Saint Paul’s; hosting the site on a free server somewhere in the Netherlands.
Then in 1998 I took over and design and maintenance of the site; moving it to its current domain name of osp.org.uk. Since then the Old Saint Paul’s web site (also sometime known as OSP Online) has gone through many design iterations, including this version of the site from 2005:
But just as I moved away from Edinburgh in April 2007, disaster struck. The web hosts were hacked, and all the content of the server (including all backups) were lost. I was busy moving to a new country, and didn’t really have the time to rebuild the site from scratch. So the vestry made the sensible decision of commissioning someone more local to home to build a new site.
Justin Reynolds has a long association with Old Saint Paul’s, and has produced numerous web sites for other organisations in the Scottish Episcopal Church. Plus he’s a professional web designer - and as such, was an obvious choice. I’m just glad that, amongst his other commitments, he was able to find the time to work on the OSP site.
Anyway, so the new site went live this morning, and I’m sure you’ll agree it’s pretty fantastic. Do have a look around, and let me know what you think. The address is: osp.org.uk
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