The Psalms are surprising when we think about (1) their place in scripture and worship, (2) the way they are raw expressions of emotions. The Psalms are not neat and clean statements – rather psalms express the full range of human emotions and conditions. Interestingly to me, the Psalms, for their part in scripture and worship do not always appear to be “religious” or dignified (at times). But regardless, those who possess a conviction of faith and spirituality intentionally place these songs in a place of prominence.

Part of the reality of the Psalms is through them people are exposed to the genuine emotions and experiences of people. Through the recitation of the psalms, we can be transported to a place of connectedness and given an image of the relevance of the body of scripture in our world; we really are not as different as the writers of scripture as we might believe.

A Benedictine, Sebastian Moore, gives insights into this claim when he said, “God behaves in the Psalms in ways he (sic) is not allowed to behave in systematic theology… [psalms which seem to be] rough-hewn from earthy experience [are] absolutely different from formal prayer.” We, certainly as North American Christians, tend to leave messiness out of our prayers, because we feel that God wants praise from us and intercession for others. Yet, when we are real with ourselves, we know the mess that is our life of faith.

Norris posits, “… the true religions of America are optimism and denial… psalms do not spring from a delusion that things are better than they are, but rather from the human capacity for joy.” The frankness of the psalms helps us give voice to the world as we experience it – not the world we think should exist – and the hope that the things which give us life can be found in the middle of the mess of life.

When discussion a poem from Emily Dickinson, “Pain – is missed – in Praise,” Norris offers a reminder of our nature as hopeful people. “One thing we often try to do is to jump from pain to praise too quickly by omitting the necessary but treacherous journey between them…” This proves to short sell both states in the process – there will be pain and there will be praise and we must experience the movement between the two.

There are some psalms which “polite society” wants to skip because the emotions “aren’t us.” Yet if we step back, we realize that the words of the psalmist could easily spring from this present time and situation. And often the enemies the psalmists (and by extension us) rails against is not an “enemy out there” but rather it is our own demons we rail against.

Thoughts for reflection

* Devotion by itself has little value… and may be a form of self-indulgence. Unless devotion leads to transformation of the personal into the relational with God and community it may become stale and useless.

* Psalms may not offer an answer, but they will allow us to dwell on the question. How might a change of perspective on the psalms bring us into a closer relationship with God?

Questions up front – mostly rhetorical but still worthy of contemplation.

1. What is it that prevents us from embracing community and draws many of us to depend on personal wealth?

+ Note, I am guilty too.
+ I feel the dominant thing that drives us to amassing personal wealth is a sense of fear. I sense we fear not having enough (whatever that means); we fear disappointing or discounting our predecessors who instilled a work ethic and the mantra that “productivity is next to nothing.”
+ An apology can be found in the realist claim that unless all buy into the usefulness of community health through community wealth, that system doesn’t work as intended.
+ While not simply an apology or a dismissal, there is practical experience that any system is only as successful as the least faithful member.
+ The difficulty of community health through community wealth may be a reality, it is worth remembering that there is utility (usefulness) in focusing on community wealth, or at least realizing that some of our personal wealth is better served in our communities and not in our pockets.

Reflections
* There is a certain oddity of and in community. A community can be supportive and burden-sharing. But that community can be that “ever-present” and empower a sacrifice-of-self response to the detriment of the individual. A community can be more resilient and allow for redemption of individuals. But that same community can breed jealousy if allowed to go off on its own devices.

* Reflection about Dixieland jazz: Norris posits that it “seemed the most Benedictine, the most communal of ventures. Each individual in the band is recognized as such and is required to play a solo, but not to improvise so much that the others are left out. The band begins and ends together.” Like, everyone goes where they are led but no one wanders off.

* Basil the Great’s rule includes private and communal prayer; manual work; care for the needy; contemplation; and action.

* Much of Basil’s rule of life tries to remind us that God has given abundantly to all the basic needs of life… to be shared in common to all. Not that we should amass private wealth but fund community vitality.

** If we allow it, our connection to God runs deep. If we feel that connection and the intrinsic love of that connection, we can weather life and each other.

Wondering aloud; how do we make our worship more inclusive and how we honor the outsider in our midst in worship?

Norris offers this reflection about the St. John’s monastery in Minnesota, “they [the monks at St. John’s] always invite a person from outside the monastic community to do the first reading at their Sunday Mass. This person also carries the great book of scriptures into the sanctuary and leads the liturgical procession.”

How do churches and individuals do this in our worship? It is one thing to intentionally include outsiders who have chosen to be part of the community to have a leadership role. It is another thing to foist that on a newcomer, while inclusive the newcomer may not be comfortable engaging in worship under those constraints. Yet, our worship communities should be places where people are encouraged to step outside themselves and be led by the Spirit in worship.

As I read about the process of worship and community life with the monastics and in my practice, I am struck by the almost methodical practice of worship and liturgy. It isn’t a stretch, especially in a community where the liturgy has been relatively unchanged for over 40 years, that liturgy can become rote and worship simple recitation. One question I have answered, and one that I ask of others, is do we treat worship with an appropriate level of awe? I think awe and stuffiness are different things. One can be filled with awe and reverent without being cold and nearly dead. Norris asked in her book, “How do we worship when we consider ‘that only Christ could have brought all of us together… doing such absurd but necessary things.’” If we can answer or respond to that reflection, we may be able to return to awe-inspired worship.

Norris also offers an image of the Liturgy of the Word as prayer. “As we participate in the Liturgy of the Word, we pray scripture with, and for, the people assembled, and the words go out to them, touching them in ways only God can imagine.” How might we turn our liturgy, especially the Liturgy of the Word into a prayer, and thus create a place where our worship is prayer?

Our life as people who live on the borderline of society (that is Christians), is one where we experience tension – the tension between the call of aloneness and silence and the need of community because it is in community that we see the obvious need to “pray without ceasing.” The contemporary Christian life is one where the measure of our faith is less from within and more from outside – the best judge of living a life centered on Christ may be one who watches us and how we act, not what we proclaim.

For reflection: Amma Syneletica (a 4^th century monastic) offered this observation “… it is impossible for us to be surrounded by worldly honor and at the same time bear heavenly fruit.” Is this the case in your experience? How can we order our lives to live at this intersection without losing our profession of faith?

Exile, Homeland, and Negative Capability

By Eavan Boland in Object Lessons

Exile, like memory, may be a place of hope and delusion. But there are rules of light there and principles of darkness… the expatriate is in search of a country, the exile in search of a self.

By John Keats

Negative capability… [is being] capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable searching after fact and reason.

* The dichotomy of life, at least in our formative years, can be summed up by Norris’ observation, “[children] described as ‘good students’ will inevitably write acceptable but unexceptional poems and stories.”

            – Often, we applaud those who fit in our box of measurable standards and processes, while marginalizing those who view things differently or at least from an unorthodox perspective.

            – What creates knowledge, understanding, and community is the encouragement to be creative and practice creative things. Because in creativity people find a country and a self. As described by Boland above.

            – In an environment that embraces creativity people can find their true voice and unleash their God-given talents.

Question for reflection

How is it that the things we most treasure when we’re young are exactly the things we come to spurn as teenagers and young adults?

Gail Ramshaw is quoted, “…theology is prose, but liturgy is poetry…” It is ironic that the function of liturgy is not practice but is metaphor and simile; by being immersed in something which is known but not understood except in comparison.

Our Christian worship should give rise to theological reflection and not the other way around.

A well-functioning community needs to remember that unity is unrestrained by uniformity. What examples are there? The community remembers the eccentric for generations through oral history.

Anglican bishop John V. Taylor said, “imagination and faith are the same thing, giving substance and reality to the unseen.

Observation: the harder we try to make our faith “fit” or place boundaries on faith, we create a community that has exiles. God is simple but resides in our messy relationship with God.

“…in the deep silence…”

φωτισμός – (photismos) come to light

The following observations are on Kathleen Norris’ reflections on All Saints and All Souls Days and the Feast of Gertrude the Great. All of which fall in early November.

Observations

1. Norris reflects, “we pray for the ‘faithfully departed,’ but out of habit I add ‘and the unfaithful,’ or, as one of the eucharistic prayers puts it, ‘those whose faith is known to you alone,’ those whose stories are a messy, long departure.

* “…those whose faith is known to you alone…” a phrase which we don’t hear very often in church with the advent of the 1979 Prayer Book, but the phrase serves as a reminder. God is the sole judge of a person’s faith; not even the person in question can judge their faithfulness or unfaithfulness.
* God alone sets the standard for faith, and because God knows all about us from the beginning, God knows the depth of our faith. We are unable to be objective on ourselves, or more importantly, of others.

2. A monk offered this observation from Catholic Church history, “church history for a long time was a largely cosmetic process, which, if you were remarkably stupid, could be edifying.”

Ironically, “the Liturgy of the Hours is, at root, a symbolic act, an emulation of and a joining with the choirs in heaven who sing the praise of God unceasingly.”

* On the one hand, our practice is often judged as superficial or of little consequence, especially from the outside world. Sadly, once the symbolic action at the root of our profession becomes rote it might become superficial.
* Often, naysayers claim that the practice of the faith can be viewed as a for of “if I believe it enough, or if I say it enough, it will happen and be real.” The difficulty is that some have let the ritual become rote so much that our faith can have an almost magical aura.
* While or faith can be rooted in symbolism, e.g., the Liturgy of the Hours is symbolic of our joining with the choirs in heaven, the symbolism should not be the end, rather it should be the way we return to our roots.
* Part of the myth of Christianity is that faith is (or can be) one size fits all. Yet, the practiced reality is “one size fits none” with regard to our faith. Not that there aren’t practices that are good examples, but that faith grows and transforms with practice.

Bottom line: only God is an objective judge of faith and practice.