Otherings. Peopling. and I add to it; liturgying.
I woke with a disgruntled-ness in me. This is fine, I know what I can do to move it on and through to a higher, kinder mental state.
I woke at 1am. This isn’t altogether odd, albeit early even for me, but I was excited by the idea of what this extra early would offer me today.
David Whyte says anger is the purest form of care. If I let this be true, I then must ask myself now, what is calling for my care? What is it, as he goes on to divest, that this anger is illuminating of my belonging, and protection?
And why, I ask myself, if anger can be this kind of blessed wakefulness to circumstance, do I feel tenderly vulnerable?
I chose to attend Vigils. This is the first Liturgy of the Hours held at 3:15am.
Like the sun soon rising Vigils practices through the of rise body and voice to welcome the day, bringing grace into our heart and calling to mind the who behind existence.
The trouble in all this for me was noted above: I woke disgruntled. I made myself go to Vigil rather than asking my body and spirit what would best serve.
I’d forgotten that: 1) Vigil is one of the longest Liturgies, running until 4am. 2) The service is marked by a call and response reading of biblical verse between the monks. 3) there are two readings within this format.
Why the big deal? It’s not as if I were doing something wildly different and this was a disruption; and after all I’d chosen to attend.
The big deal-what turned up the volume on my disgruntled-was surprisingly one of the things I come here for; routine. The trouble is that sometimes routine can become rote, and this service style drove that idea further into me like a wedge through wood. The reading and responses could’ve been prerecorded for all the life they contained, and the very words themselves grated on my soul.
The notion of original sin has long been one that didn’t feel right. That the first reading was from Judges, and the second from a more modern interpretation of Catholic thinking, did everything to hit the wedge hard and split me further.
Who still believes, if they bother to believe in a god at all, that this god could create or stick his creations, in original sin? In the way these readings interpreted it you would think we should all be wallowing in self pity, every moment stretched face down on the floor begging god to forgive us.
As if this were a thing….
The God I believe in wants nothing more than relationship. To commune and share in the communion of one to another if not one to him/her alone. Sin is not a thing, if there is a thing, it is disconnection from the communion. But to call it sin, and to built this grandiose narrative around its originality in humanity makes my skin crawl.
Is that the snake now, creeping up my leg?
Many are convinced that rituals and “practices” like a contemplative Eucharist, the rosary, processions and pilgrimages, repetitive chants, genuflections and prostrations, singing, and silence have operated as a kind of body-based rewiring. Such practices allow us to know Reality mystically and contemplatively from a unitive consciousness. But, over time, as these practices turned into repetitive obligations, they degenerated; and most people came to understand them magically as divinely required transactions. These practices often froze people in their first infantile understanding of those rituals, and transactions ended up substituting for transformations.
Mindless repetition of any practice, with no clear goal or purification of intention, can in fact keep us quite unconscious—unless the practices keep breaking us into new insight, desire, compassion, and an ever-larger notion of God and ourselves. If spirituality does not support very real growth in both inner and outer freedom, it is not authentic spirituality.
richard rohr
It rankles me and I don’t even consider myself a Catholic anymore. Not even a Christian in terms of saying it out loud and letting the listener define it. There is no defining a personal relationship with anyone, let alone God, by the person themself and certainly by anyone outside. Personal is personal. To give it words or definition is to do a smarmy job of shining a light where there are so many surfaces that only one or two are able to be illuminated. It is not the whole picture.
I know this community of monks and others like it around the world hold value and worth in the world. I know their purpose is believed in and held in reverence and thought to be making a difference.
Well I say so anyway; but for reals, do I believe it?
Is the rigidity of service, and old (ancient!) traditions held fast to like breathing, really the way anymore? Where is the refreshing wind of spirit blowing in?
I find the spirit in the world I inhabit when I am aligned to my truth. Now what this looks like varies day by day and by whom I am with but all in all, there is not life of God in anything that is rote repetition or somnambulant attendance to routine.
Now that I have torn down the facade of this amazing place called the Abbey of Gethsemani, I build them back up.
It is one of my top places to be. I consider it, as I do my son’s home in Denver, somewhat my parents home in Seattle, and my own home in Lexington, to be just that; home. I can come here, as I do the other places considered home, and be fully myself. I can be in whatever energy and spirit and know that I am held, I am present, and I have value.
The beauty of the landscape and the integrity of the structures here give me peace. Like my castle, they have stood a very long time, and will continue to stand yet more. Their solidity is part of their beauty. And the integrity of the land on which they sit and the way in which it is put to use is worth noting. While I don’t agree with the gift shop trade and inflated prices to make a profit therein, I understand the necessity of it in our time. For, back to my original argument, when the church does not move beyond notions of sin and human wrongness, humans are not going to come around all that much. We do not need reminding of our own inhumanity by the church; we have the news reels and our own voices in our heads to feed us this. What we need from the church is a long warm embrace-but we are not allowed that anymore thanks to the fuck ups of this same church-
When this can happen, when the church can become a place of smiles and community, of joy and flexibility, of conversation and contemplation together and alone, then maybe, the gift shop will go out of business because the sales they intake are replaced by the souls who come along to decide this is a place they want to call home, and to care for it. No longer to just buy a fruitcake and feel they’ve done their penance, we would be living our truth and light, not counting dollars as if ablutions from this sin thing.…
I’ll wake up more positive tomorrow….