We have a new member at St. Martin's, a young man who found us because we are right up the hill from his alcohol-rehabilitation halfway house. He sort of hung around in the back at the early service for a few weeks, and would shyly ask me to sign the slip that attested he had indeed been in church that morning. After a few Sundays he opened up a little, telling me that when he had gone to church as a child, it had been very different worship from what he experienced with us - pentecostal, from what he described. He said something I loved - that he found "space" in our liturgy, space for his own prayer and meditation.
This past Sunday, a very different new member, a retired UCC minister who has been indulging his fondness for liturgical worship, said the same thing. He couldn't be more different from the young man in the first paragraph, in education, background and affluence, but he had the same response to our ancient sacramental rite. And then, just because preachers always talk in threes, I had another conversation with a young woman at one of our regular small group dinners who said she loved the Episcopal church because at worship, she could trust that the liturgy would support her own prayer and that she didn't have to "pay attention". That sounds like a bad thing, but I understood it to mean that she can let herself lean into the liturgy and let her prayer percolate more deeply. And that's a good thing.
And that made me think again about how much I wanted to go lean into the liturgy the Sunday morning after my Uncle Jack's funeral a few weeks ago in Tucson. I was spiritually hungry - feeling my own grief stirred up and having sat through the Eucharist at my uncle's Roman Catholic requiem mass (now - the subject of a whole other post, wondering whether this made my stern Scotch-Irish Presbyterian granny spin in her grave). So I found a church near the hotel and made my way to the 8am service.
It was not what I had expected - and some of that was lovely. The liturgy was thoughtful and well-prepared, and they had lots of music, including sung responses to the prayers of the people that I really enjoyed. The parish identified itself as progressive and had an impressive list of outreach connections and activity in the community. The liturgy was full of alternative material, which in general I think is a very good thing, but there was so much, that I lost the sense of being able to trust the liturgy to do the heavy lifting for me. I had to always be dipping my head back into the bulletin to make sure I was offering the correct responses. This began to be pretty aggravating as it carried on into the Eucharistic prayer itself.
I would expect that the church would say that they are trying to make their worship more accessible to newcomers, but I wondered why, if a bulletin is fully printed out, nonprayerbook material would be any more accessible. It was all very earnest and well meaning, but the barrage of different images, unfamiliar responses and reference to current events began to crowd out my own prayer.
The final blow was when I went forward to receive, and of course, by now I'm sure the rector had identified me as a visitor. Like I always do, when I have the opportunity to receive at another altar, I do what I was taught eons ago in confirmation class; I kneel, lift my hands up and keep my head down. The celebrant, longing to make a connection with me, almost bent double trying to make eye contact. I wanted to tell him to get out of the way (I know it sounds really snarky), that it wasn't about any personal moment between the two of us. I just wanted to be fed. I am ashamed to say I fled immediately afterwards, because I just couldn't bear being "welcomed".
The three comments I heard from three very different people in the weeks after my Tucson excursion have helped me put this all in perspective. Our liturgy really is an art form. I often tell people prior to weddings and funerals that my motto is "The Book of Common Prayer will never let you down; just don't get in its way." I do indeed love some of the alternative texts, and the Advent preface especially that was used in Tucson, was quite beautiful. I think it's important that we always be mindful of how easy our liturgy is for strangers to use, but perhaps we aren't always making things as easy as we think.
Worship doesn't just happen in the cerebral cortex - it comes from some deeper part of us that I think sometimes can only be accessed when our brains can empty out a little. It's what spoke to me when I was a clueless 14 year old and went to my first Episcopal service at boarding school - this space for something else to happen besides just processing a lot of words. I love having a liturgy that prays for me and with me, when I don't have the heart always to pray for myself.
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