Applying the Brakes

*Ahem*

Hello.

The first post of any blog always feels a little strange to me, like when you're at a party and someone says, "Tell me about yourself." Suddenly, you can't think of a single thing about yourself except that you eat food and that sometimes you sleep and that you like sitting on soft things and that you are basically like every other human. So the plan is just to steamroll through this like you do when you're writing an online dating profile or the first letter to a pen pal or a 250-word bio for a school project or your workplace's website.

I'm Emily. I'm a deacon at a wonderful church in Seneca, South Carolina, downtown community fellowship. I'm a writer and a teacher and a researcher.

This is a blog about our church's engagement with liturgy throughout the year. It is addressed to the members of our body, but it's not exclusively intended for us. If you're not a dcf-er you will still hopefully find something valuable here. The dcf family has observed many of the more prominent features of the liturgical calendar (Lent, Easter, Advent) for a long time, and this blog is a way for us both to continue with and deepen these practices as well as to expand our experience of celebrations and practices we might be less familiar with.

At times that will come in the form of reflections and writings of mine, but often I'll be linking to some wonderful sources (books, blogs, poems, essays, etc.) that can give us more to reflect on. Sometimes there will be reflection on the value of liturgical practices. Other times, like during this Advent season, we make an extra effort to encourage members of our church family to participate in written reflection and sharing (of course, contributions are welcome any time of the year). Anything that gets shared during our Sunday Gathering will also be posted (with the permission of the author, of course), on this blog. If anyone wants to participate, please email me at boyteremily@gmail.com.

A note on the blog's name:

I considered a lot of different words, especially some that get used at dcf a lot: rhythm, practice, season, etc. I settled on cadence because it is related to these words, but it has some additional connotations that I found particularly significant for this blog.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "cadence" can refer to the flow of musical or poetic verses, rhythmical construction, and "the measure or beat of music, dancing, or any rhythmical movement." These cadences come about by design and for the purpose of beauty and expression. Another definition refers to the "equal measure or proportion which a horse observes in all his motions when he is thoroughly managed," bringing to mind the idea of cadence as discipline.

On the other hand, cadence can refer to less measured things like the rise and fall of the human voice or the rise and fall of "elemental sounds, as of a storm, the sea, etc."

Fascinatingly enough, the term "cadence braking" refers to "repeated rhythmic application of the brake pedal in order to slow a skidding vehicle" (I knew the technique but not the name). At first I passed over this definition as irrelevant to the topic at hand, but then it occurred to me that the rhythms of spiritual life can serve just such a purpose: to slow down the skidding vehicle of our hectic lives and give us space to breathe and reflect and be still. That's my hope for this blog, and I'm eager for what's to come.