Through my field ed., I had the chance to offer .bE at the Princeton University Chapel last week. If you want to see some photos, check out the alt.worship photo album here. Someone questioned that the worship experience concerned the apparent individualistic-nature of it.
It’s interesting – I’ve always thought that .bE was the perfect mix of both communal worship & a time of individual reflection. That’s always been the hope of the prayer stations and giving that space and time for reflection and contemplation. The beginning of the service has always had time of group prayer, worship through song and lectio divina. But when you think about it, the lectio divina is a very personal thing (unless you do it in such a way that you interact and share with a group), the Ignation prayer is very individual and the other times of prayer are very individual. The only thing we really do together is sing communally, but…
So in a sense, the entire service is very individualistic. And that is just what I was trying to fight against in creating this type of worship gathering. I’m wondering if this is the experience of other people in alt.worship. How can we make alt.worship a truly communal worship experience?