What the Monks Can Teach Us About Worship

One of the raging debates in any church tends to be what the mission of the church should be. Are we there to care for the widows and orphans? To be a prophetic voice, speaking truth to the rulers of our empires? To form believers? To attract the unchurched?

Most of us can agree that one of the central missions of the church should be worship. And then we promptly tear ourselves into shreds arguing about the shape of that worship. How many readings? How long should the sermon be? Traditional music, rock, contemporary worship, or something else? How much quiet? How much time for announcements? Organ, guitar, or choir? Confession? Communion?

It's refreshing to go to a monastery, where these questions were settled centuries ago. From my limited experiences, the monks do not waste precious time second guessing worship practices that have worked for centuries.

Here are some things we might learn:

--We don't necessarily need a lengthy sermon. In fact, we might not need a sermon at all. The monks at Mepkin Abbey focus much more on scripture, song, and sacrament.

--We need more Scripture, not less. An average monastery sings its way through the Psalms every month, perhaps twice a month. The Psalms knit themselves into the memory--even a week-end stay shows that.

--A lovely floral arrangement can be made from stuff you find in your own garden--including dead leaves.

--We could do more to change up the worship space than just change the paraments. The monks at Mepkin Abbey create striking floral arrangements in huge vases and jars. During the month of November, they hang a framed print of John August Swanson's and light candles in front of it as they remember the saints who have come before us. Churches often do a good job of changing the worship space during the seasons of Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter. But why stop there?

--It doesn't hurt to bow. In fact, it helps.

--Practice makes perfect. I'm always surprised at how well these monks sing. But then it occurred to me that if you took anyone and had them sing through the same cycles throughout each day, month after month, year after year, they'd be able to sing beautifully too.

--The monks celebrate the Eucharist once a day. We need more sacrament, not less.

Of course, some of these practices are easier for monks, who live, worship and work at the same site. Still, they have much to teach us. And those of us who live and move primarily in the secular world have much to learn.

Meditation on This Week's Gospel

The Readings for Sunday, November 14, 2010:

First Reading: Malachi 4:1-2a

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Isaiah 65:17-25

Psalm: Psalm 98

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Isaiah 12 (Isaiah 12:2-6 NRSV)

Second Reading: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Gospel: Luke 21:5-19

Here we are, back to apocalyptic texts, a rather strange turn just before we launch into Advent (and just so you won't be surprised, those Advent texts can be on the apocalyptic side too). This week's Gospel is the type of text that many Christians use to support their assertion that we're living in the end times, that the rapture is near.

Keep in mind that the idea of rapture is fairly new; most scholars date it to the middle of the 19th century. But Christians have felt besieged since the beginning, and indeed, in many decades, they have been severely threatened. Lately, we’ve seen massacres during church services, both here and abroad. It’s a sobering reminder that we live in an unstable world, a world where true sanctuary is rare.

Perhaps the Gospel writer wants to remind us of the cost of following Jesus. Even those of us who won’t be massacred or martyred for our beliefs may find it hard to live openly as a Christian in this world. Many people assume that all religious people are kooks. The idea that a person could be an admirable believer is not one that we find reinforced in popular culture.

Perhaps the Gospel shows us the larger cost of existing in the world. Even if we're lucky enough to be born into a stable time period, to be part of a country with a stable government, if we're conscious, it's hard to escape the conclusion that it could all vanish at any moment. And even if we don't suffer on the grand (genocidal) scale, most of us will endure more loss than our younger selves would have believed could be survived.

Before we sink too deeply into depression, we need to remember that Jesus came to give us Good News. And that Good News is that we have each other, and we have a God who loves us, no matter what. If we devote our lives to that love, then we can survive all sorts of betrayal, loss, and persecution.

Back from Mepkin

I'm back from Mepkin Abbey--a very satisfying trip. I'm still waking in the night with the music of Mepkin in my mind. It's a bit like when I spend several days on my sister's sailboat, and it takes me days to get my land legs back. I'm always a bit sad when I stop feeling the swaying of the sea. Likewise, I'll miss hearing that plainsong in my head.

I'm planning a series of posts on what the monks can teach us. When I tell people that I'm off to a monastery, I get questions: "Aren't they Catholic and you Lutheran? Aren't they male? What can you, a married Lutheran woman, possibly gain from time in a monastery?"

I don't think I can answer that in one post, thus the series. I plan to begin on Thursday. But here are some short answers.

In our increasingly hectic lives, the one thing that often gets sacrificed is retreat time. Even some daily quiet time is often the first to go when our jobs/families/household duties demand more. Yet study after study shows us that we're actually more productive if we take some downtime. And retreat time can radically recalibrate us.

God didn't create us to be these harried, frantic creatures. We cannot minister to a broken world when we're so frazzled ourselves. We feel our jobs under threat, and so it's hard to say, "Hey, can I go on retreat?" Many of us, including me, have to use vacation time to go on retreat. But I find it renews me more than a traditional vacation (go to an exotic destination, go-go hurry-hurry to get all the activities and sights in).

It's also useful for me to discover how others are living their faith. Now I can't do everything the monks are doing. My life doesn't let me break 6-8 times a day for worship services that are at least a half hour long. But I can take shorter meditation/prayer breaks. I can use music at work to achieve that peaceful frame of mind. I can surround myself with art that will help me remember my purpose. I can remember that I need time away from screens.

As we move into the frantic time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's good to remember these ways to stay calm.

Off To Mepkin Abbey--Back to Blogging by November 10

I'm off to Mepkin Abbey. I'd like to say that I go there every year, but I don't. One year, Hurricane Wilma had closed the airport. Some years, I didn't make reservations early enough. But the years that I've gone, I've always been glad that I made the effort. It renews me in a way that few places do.



I meet some friends who live nearby, and we enter into the rhythms of the place: lots of walking, lots of silence, some catching up when we're not being silent, services at regular intervals, vegetarian food, and reading and writing at various intensity levels. It's always hard to return to the harshness of regular life, but alas, for many reasons (I'm married, I'm female, I'm Lutheran not Catholic, I have a mortgage), I am not free to join the monks permanently. Still, I'll take periodic renewal as a good substitute for the daily renewal I imagine that I'd experience if I lived there.

I'll be back to regular blogging by November 10.

Meditation on This Week's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, November 7, 2010:

First Reading: Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18

Psalm: Psalm 149

Second Reading: Ephesians 1:11-23

Gospel: Luke 6:20-31

Today we celebrate All Saints Day. It's a strange time of year for us Lutherans. We celebrate Reformation Day, we celebrate Halloween, we celebrate All Saints Day. Those of us who are English majors might even remember the November 2 All Souls Day, the day on which Gawain departed to find the Green Knight. All Souls Day used to be as widely celebrated as All Saints Day. All Saints celebrates all the saints which have gone before us; All Souls celebrates the lives of those who have died in the past year (and since Gawain leaves on All Souls Day, a medieval audience would realize the significance and know that he was heading towards certain doom). On top of this, we have the Gospel reading about the actions of Jesus which most frightened and disgusted some of his contemporaries.

Think about his actions and your current life: what would make you feel most threatened. Jesus healed the sick, and most of us would be OK with that, especially if we're the sick people. We tend not to worry too much about technique or qualifications, if we feel better. Someone showed me a cold remedy and said, "I always feel better within a day of taking it. Of course, it's probably just a placebo effect and not real medicine." I said, "Who cares? As long as you're not coughing." What is the difference after all, between a placebo effect and real healing? Most of us just want to feel better.

Do we feel threatened by Jesus forgiving sins? Probably not. We've had two thousand years to get used to the idea, after all. But if one of our contemporaries started traveling around, telling people their sins are forgiven--well, that's a different matter. Even if they make these pronouncements in the name of Jesus, we might feel queasy.

The action of Jesus that really seems to send people of all sorts into orbits of anger is his habit of eating with the outcasts of society. Most of us are prone to that discomfort. If you don't believe me, bring a homeless person to church and coffee afterwards. See what happens. Take a shabbily dressed person to a nice restaurant. See what happens. Suggest that your church operate a soup kitchen or turn into a homeless shelter at night. See what happens.

Here's the Good News. Jesus saw the value in all of us. Jesus especially saw the value in the least of us. When you're feeling like a total loser, keep that in mind. If Jesus was part of your church, you'd be the first one invited to the table.

That's the good news about All Saints Day, All Souls Day, and Reformation Day. We tend to forget that all the saints that came before us were flesh and blood humans (including Jesus). We think of people like Martin Luther as perfect people who had no faults who launched a revolution. In fact, you could make the argument that many revolutions are launched precisely because of people's faults: they're bullheaded, so they're not likely to make nice and be quiet and ignore injustice. They're hopelessly naive and idealistic, so they stick to their views of how people of faith should live--and they expect the rest of us to conform to their visions. They refuse to bow to authority because they answer to a higher power--and so, they translate the Bible into native languages, fund colleges, rescue people in danger, insist on soup kitchens, write poems, and build affordable housing.

The world changes (for the better and the worse) because of the visions of perfectly ordinary people--and because their faith moves them into actions that support that vision. If we're lucky, those people are working towards the same vision of the inclusive Kingdom that Jesus came to show us.

Poems in Praise of the Immune System

Now as October's cool breezes submit to serious cold fronts in the upper 48, it seems a good time to post a poem in praise of our immune systems. It's based on a true story, and it was recently published in The Healing Muse.

Some years ago, my Indian friend came to our quilting group. She said, "I saw the Dalai Lama at Whole Foods."

Of course, it took some convincing, and some of us were never convinced. But really, who else could it have been? We see many a strange costume down here in South Florida, but it's rare to see a bald, Asian, older man with a winning grin dressed in saffron robes down here. And the Dalai Lama was in town. I didn't find it inconceivable that she would see him.

It fired my imagination, in fact, as you can see below. Just for fun, I've also posted a different version of the poem. A few years ago, I was experimenting with form, and I transformed the poem into a sonnet. I honestly can't decide which I prefer. You'll notice that in the sonnet I made the speaker a Christian, which my Indian friend is not. What can I say? There aren't a lot of English words that make a true rhyme with the word immune.


Immunities


She sees the Dalai Lama at Whole
Foods Market. He compares
brands of vitamin C.
She observes his weary
face, his rumpled
robes and finds a strange
comfort in the realization that even the holiest
among us has need
now and then of an immune system boost.
“Namaste,” she whispers,
as she reaches
for a can of soy protein.


Immunities


She sees the Dalai Lama
at Whole Foods Market. He compares
bottles of vitamin C; she thinks of his life’s trauma,
and wonders how he dares

to do something so normal as grocery shopping.
She knows what the mystics would say:
after enlightenment, continued laundry and wood chopping.
It is for such acceptance she would pray.

She thinks of this holy man and his immune
system which needs a boost.
She thinks of her own religion, a god triune,
and of her children, like chicks in a roost.

“Namaste,” she whispers and reaches for soy.
She thinks of the world, and prays for its joy.

The Feast of All Saints

I'm one of the featured bloggers over at www.livinglutheran.com. My posting has lots of ways to celebrate this feast day.

Those of you who have been reading here awhile and have excellent memories might remember it from last year. But I was pleased with it and thought it worth rereading and reposting.

Enjoy!