蜜芽传媒

Spiritual reflection to start the day with Fr Philip Blackledge of Holy Trinity Scottish Episcopal Church, Melrose.
Good morning. This week I have been largely recovering from the Melrose music festival, a weeklong festival of varied and vibrant music of all styles, of which I am the Chair of Trustees. In our festival we heard music that was over a thousand years old, and music which hadn鈥檛 even been composed on the morning it was being performed. But the thread which led us through the whole week was the music of the church, both modern and ancient. The festival ended with the singing of Compline, the night prayer, and for me - passionate about music since I was a child - singing and prayer are so linked to me that it鈥檚 hard to think of one without the other.

The Abbey which dominates our town of Melrose is nine hundred years old, but like so many abbeys around the borders, it lies in ruins. But the music which was sung there, is as alive and as vibrant as it was when those first stones were laid, not ruinous but whole, living. We sang it at Compline. Tenth century plainsong, aching and mournfully beautiful, music from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which winds itself around the plainsong and grows out of it like vines from branches, ornamenting the song of the church. And the prayers that were prayed in that Monastery eight times a day for hundreds of years, we still pray today, keeping us in the night and greeting us at the dawn.

So I use one of them for my prayer today:O LORD, our heavenly Father, Almighty and everlasting God, who has safely brought us to the beginning of this day: Defend us in the same with thy mighty power; and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any danger; but that all our doings may be ordered by your governance, to do always what is righteous in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen