Liturgy and the thinning of the veil

I sat in a park near the Seattle zoo with my friend Wendy last week. I was still brimming with Scotland, cows, life on the road. She’d just returned from a long backpacking trip with her boyfriend in the North Cascades. They’d ended their hike at Holden Village, a former mining village, now Lutheran retreat  center where Wendy and I had spent some time together last spring.

“Do they still have morning and evening prayers? Did you attend at all? What did you think of them?”  

“They were alright, but I didn’t get much out of them.” Wendy, like myself, grew up in the evangelical Christian background. “They’re pretty different.”

“Let me guess, was it the liturgy?” Wendy’s nod reminded me of me, or rather, the me of the beginning of the summer.

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I struggled in the beginning of my time on Iona with following the words in the worship book. The concept of worship in the liturgical context is entirely different from my evangelical American construct. I used to think ‘worship’ was simply the singing of songs. But I understand it in a fuller way now: worship is the entire act. Singing, yes, but also reading prayers in unison with the body of people around me. Sitting in silence. Hearing the names of Iona community members read out loud in prayer. It’s passing a communion cup to my neighbor and hearing more prayers about crucial issues, like the riots across England. Worship is all of us.

I was uncomfortable, in the beginning, with liturgy, too. Like Wendy, I wrinkled my nose at the thought of it. This was a concept I also needed to relearn, and in fact, I brought it up in meal-time conversation frequently throughout the week.  I had childhood images burned into my brain of visiting my granny’s Catholic church in Miami as a kid. We’d stand up, sit down, shuffle through prayer books, kneel, and take communion (which I actually wasn’t allowed to take because I was both young and not Catholic). I recall always being a step or two behind everyone around me, the blush of embarrassment burning my cheeks. Where was God in all of that? The discomfort of the unfamiliar clung to me. I thought that reading nearly the entire church service from a book, back and forth between the congregation and the minister was uncreative and stuffy and left no room for the Holy Spirit to speak.

I brought this darkened, complicated view of liturgy to the worship services on Iona. But evening though the morning and evening worship services were optional—and initially uncomfortable, I attended every one.  Something about the green, well-worn covers on the worship books compelled me to keep returning.

Within a day or two, I got over my feeling of being a lost tourist in a big city, map spread wide open on the city streets, locals walking confidently all around me. Repetition brought familiarity and growing comfort. And as I stopped being worried about which page to turn to next in the green worship book, I actually paid attention to the words. Phrases, different ones each time, jumped out and spoke to me.  Phrases about the forgiving myself for the harm I do to both myself and the world. Prayers for people in the community. Calls to remember the God of creation as well as the God of people.  

Finally, by the end of the week, liturgical worship had become something I could lose myself in. Here’s what I mean: the words printed out in the green worship book were the framework on which the experience hung.  My physical participation kept my mind engaged enough to pay attention to the words. And even though the morning prayers were nearly the same every day, different words resounded each time.

Here’s what I learned: the beauty of liturgy is that everyone participates. We stand, we sit. Half reads, then the other half responds. We listen, we sing. The teacher in me gives a a great nod of respect to whoever came up with that idea hundreds of years ago, because I know that in order to keep the students engaged, you have to keep them involved.  And what I’d previously thought was stuffy and uncreative, allowed huge space for the Holy Spirit to breathe life into me.

I miss the rhythm of morning and evening prayers. I miss the communal reading of powerful words. Margit the song leader led us through so many new songs, many in three- or four-part harmony. To sit in the Iona Abbey, packed with people staying at both the MacLeod center and the Abbey, singing old hymns, new English ones, and African praise songs in harmony, felt as though the veil between heaven and earth momentarily blew open.  I learned that the high crosses on the island were erected in places where people had experienced the presence of God in palpable ways. If I could, I’d plant one in the middle of the transept of the abbey.