“We’ve been robbed!” I heard myself say amidst practice this morning, followed closely by the telling sign of tears. I find myself at the start of a new-old practice path, with familiar and unfamiliar invitation. Here we go…
Every day at 11 a.m.—or at least as many days during the Monday-Friday week as I can muster—I find myself shaping and being shaped by a new liturgical practice of morning prayer, this time replete with sung prayers, chanted Psalms, chanted Gospel text (given by the Daily Lectionary (www.dailylectionary.org), and of course, contemplative silence(s). I call it “old” because my path has woven into and out of liturgical practice like this before—Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, Celtic origins and derivations of the same, more. But this one is “new” too. It’s new to me, but older than the BCP. Byzantine, actually, though with contemporary breath. I also find that I am strangely companioned in this practice, though I’ve only seen the faces of a potential few of those who share in it. How can this be, you ask?
Well, I meandered my way to a respite-ritual-fix this past Sunday morning in San Francisco, overwhelmed by the academic onslaught on my contemplative path that is the American Academy of Religion meeting. I both thrive and shrivel in this yearly professional outing. I reconnect with old and new friends, sharing my excitement (and receiving theirs) about new accomplishments, old work in new books, new work in possible books to come. But this profession also distracts from what my work is about, who I am becoming amidst multiple covenantal companionships. For example, I steeped with a fellow contemplative over lunch the second day, easing into shared mind habits and being nourished in more than body. The jarring re-entry into conference space reminded me how shriveled it can be, I can be, when I’m not mindful of these distractions, their ultimate illusion. So I planned to attend an early morning Eucharist on the third day, to remind myself of my Center and retrieve a sense of perspective amidst the fire-hydrant-rush of information and conversation.
Two public buses later, and a short walk toward uncertain destination, I found the entrance to St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal church on De Haro Street. I knew it was a distinctive congregation, mostly because my guild society had visited it the first day (when I could not attend) and raved about the experience. Even so, I was not remotely prepared for the wave of symbolic overwhelm that accompanied the simple desire to be at the Lord’s table that morning. The rotunda where the Eucharist table ultimately rests marks the center of a roundabout icon-dance of saints going on in circles on the ceiling. Familiar faces of Catholic saints are complemented with less familiar faces from all over the world, then familiar faces but those without Christian association or confession. Malcom X, for instance. I looked to the right where the chairs for worship were placed and saw an immediately recognizable wall-to-ceiling size icon of the soul’s marriage to Christ, the “bride of Christ” meeting her bridegroom, overseen or officiated by Wisdom’s embrace, shown behind and all around them. As I wandered back to the rotunda, I was startled to see a tiger on one side, then a wolf on the other. Multiple signposts of my own path, all of them, all around me. I struggled to take it in, choosing instead to take a picture with my cell phone and then spend time editing it to be “just so.”
Several of the community greeted me, introducing themselves and preparing the spaces for the morning’s liturgy. One expressed his anxiety that “the rain might mean we’re the only ones today.” Another flurried about, preparing and gathering all that needed to be prepared and gathered. 8:30 arrived and the liturgy began. The rhythm of sung prayer, silent spaces, liturgy as familiar—as “the people’s work”—unfolded, with lectio divina and shared Words abounding. The movement to the table was then introduced: a stately congregational rumba-line to a familiar hymn, hand on shoulder, step by step. We circled the table in preparation, in prayer, in praise. We wound up as a circle, several of us from various walks of life, including an infant, a toddler, and a (quiet) friendly dog. The bread was slightly sweet, of good crumb. The wine was an Anglican-esque white-sherry. The tears ran freely for me, finding myself strangely at home, a stranger and one soon to depart again, back...home?
“Do you have responsibilities afterward?” I asked one of the women I had met before the liturgy. “Yes,” she said, “But a couple minutes…” We sat in a couple chairs off to the side, and I attempted to communicate both my sense of incredible Invitation and a boundedness that meant I knew not how to accept it. I belong in Ohio, it’s been made clear to me. At least for the foreseeable future. But I recognized my Home in that space, with paperless music, with bread at the center. She heard and listened, listened and heard. “Of course you must pray with us our Morning Prayer,” she said, retrieving one of the prayer books from behind the preacher’s seat. She offered me a book, its accompaniment of musical-liturgical offerings, and walked me through the basics, “starting with Week 3,” she said, “in a rather Aztecian cycle of 15-weeks of Psalm-singing we do.” Every morning at 8 a.m., Monday through Friday, they gather for morning prayer. So, that’s 11 a.m., Eastern Standard Time. I’ve begun a new-old practice of morning prayer, 11 a.m., Monday-Friday, or at least as many days asI can muster.
Now I know the history of my practice-life well enough to know this will be for its time, perhaps into unforeseen purposes, but for now, I’m enlivened and delighted in a way I’ve not been for a long, long time. The difference? Chanting. And sensing a strange-companionship along the way. I’m also surprised to have found such resonance within my own tradition. It’s been so long since I felt I was at the Well within my own circles, my own tradition, that I dare not trust it, believe it…or so it feels for now.
So, chanting? My mind says “What’s the big deal? You’ve known about oral-aural music for over a decade now. You’ve written a book about it, for heaven’s sake.” But I’ve increasingly wrestled with how to read my own Scriptures, mostly because they seem so abused, so often, that I hesitate to join my efforts into the abuse. I can only take about 1-2 sentences at a time when most of my communities require whole chunks, pericopes we call them, in which historical legitimacy or validity may be argued. I’ve been choking for years on that much Word, eaten that quickly. And the Psalms in particular. They are simply too vivid to read quickly, within liturgy or for my own sustenance.
Except when they are sung, I’m learning. I’ve sung three days’ worth of Psalms, learning the chant-style of this practice community, and the Psalms are going in. I feel them. I sense them. I don’t understand them but I am nourished by them. Three days. Only three days and I found myself weeping this morning, encountering my own scripture for the first time in a long time. It’s like it was an old friend, finally finding the window my soul had been scraping at for years.
Which brings us to where I began, with “We’ve been robbed!” How could I not have received this, known this, until now? I felt a wave of rage at Protestant resistance to “those old Catholic ways,” which of course are not Catholic but catholic, Orthodox, ancient of days. The rage toned down to anger, a sense of being halved but now expanding toward wholeness. Finally space was made for words to become conscious: we’ve been robbed. An ancient practice with wisdom unto its own offers itself to an egghead Presbyterian, choking amidst historical-critical methods, yearning for deepened, oxygenated air to sustain the rather solitary journey sustained nonetheless in intensely intimate companionship across communities, histories.
Because there’s a strange sense of companionship here too. It comes with my phone-alarm at 11 a.m., which I suspect will remain even when my schedule prevents me from attending to practice every time I hear the alarm. Knowing that a community gathers in that space, moving toward that rotunda with a baptismal font near by, knowing that I’ve been invited in across space but within time to be a part of the dancing friends. How very strange and wonderful that is. How very strange and wonderful this is. How marvelously fortunate and blessed we are to be "we," "us."
The loss of this practice means its finding beckons all the more strongly…so we return once again to where we began. Home, loss of home, Home again. Always a beginner but shaped in a recognizable way as it unfolds.
Stolen treasure no longer. Just treasure. Just.
