There are two ways that I look at designing a liturgy. One comes from the Unitarian Universalist symbol of the flame in the chalice: I ask myself, what is the fire? And what is the container? The bigger and more intense the fire, the stronger the container must be. The fire is emotion or ideas of intensity -- the container is custom or order. They need not be overly passionate -- a simple flower also needs a vase.
The other main pattern I use is a five-step sequence that I cadged from a wonderful book on the origins of the Christian mass. It’s called “The Shape of the Liturgy” by a man named Dix, who was Episcopalian. The five steps go this way:
The first and the last are the entry and exit change of consciousness that could be called “crossing the threshold” or limen.
The second and third are a sequence that I call “the dilation of the spirit.” In a traditional mass it is “the confession of sins” and “the promise of salvation.” These two parts are meant to make the worshipper face the very worst life has to offer and then the third points to transcendence. In most liturgies these are routine, quickly passed over, and of small dimensions. But they are the key to opening people’s minds and hearts for the fourth step.
The fourth part is learning, reconsidering, realigning, renewal, recommitment, and a new achievement of harmony and resolution. This is the heart of the matter of liturgical devotion.
Let’s go back to the “dilation of the spirit.” The worst things are loss of life, loss of loved ones, loss of the known world and also suffering. We tend to get stuck on our own suffering when we ought to be opening ourselves up to the suffering of all living beings. This is also an occasion for facing evil, our own and others’, naming it, and noting what destruction it wreaks. We should note that we KNOW what is wrong and do it anyway, as even Paul says he does. We must acknowledge that we are often helpless, but also pretend we are helpless when we’re not. My experience with religious liberals is that they tend to minimize suffering and evil. I suspect that the reason is that they do not believe in the part about salvation, which they think is limited to the benevolence of a God who is a person. Secretly they may think salvation comes from prosperity or education.
But it is not a matter of courting grace -- grace comes unbidden and sometimes unrecognized. The good of the world, the beauty, the blooming, the dawn and the Spring, come without any prompting or decision on the part of a God somewhere. They are a normal upwelling from life itself: our bodies heal, we find new love, the volunteers arrive to rebuild. Even death can be a blessing. Give up control, unclench, sleep to dream. The world renews itself. It’s not about “you” and what you deserve.
The fourth step is about practicalities: strategy, history, memory, saving things, discarding others, creating structures and institutions. When we are in a state of worship -- or play or art or all those things at once -- we can change our minds, have new insights, let things go. Then when the change of consciousness takes us back over the threshold to the real world, we will remember all this and -- hopefully -- use it.
So, suppose a liturgy for peace in Iraq.
Crossing the threshold:
Maybe some Iraqi music. Perhaps some readings from the Old Testament that are about Iraq before it was a country, simply a cradle of civilization: in fact, a cradle of OUR civilization -- many filters and transformations later. Maybe a muezzin’s call to worship, a reminder that the great monotheisms of the Middle East all came from Abraham.
Confessing our despair and horror:
Imagine you are a small town fireman who belonged to the National Guard, never dreaming that you would be standing in temperatures over a hundred degrees while wearing gear that weighs nearly a hundred pounds. Imagine you’re a woman driving a heavy truck in a convoy through the yellow light of desert and you know the sand is stealthily destroying the truck and if it breaks down, attack is likely. Imagine standing in a market when there is an explosion and a rain of body parts. Imagine your relative is among the dead. Imagine you are a soldier who cannot find all these bombs, who comes home, wakes from a dream, and discovers he is strangling his wife.
Assurance of Pardon:
Your family loves you. The country is approaching free elections with viable candidates. You make it home. Here is the soldier, safe and proud, with his spouse, strong, and his children, above average, his neighbors glad to see him or her back. The country rises up to say NO war. NO debt. No one grieves alone for we all recognize the sacrifices.
Spring slips across the prairie on the wings of tundra swans. The new calves come easily and thrive in dry weather. The pasque flowers, delicately lavendar and furry as kittens’ ears, bloom again in the grass as they have for millenia. Long after this war and a hundred others have come and gone, the pasque flowers will bloom on the east slope of the Rockies.
Then the sermon: the thinking, the changes, the rededications and so on. This is usually the responsibility of one person who is trusted by that congregation. There is no obligation to be grand or Biblical, but there is an obligation to be real and to address these specific people. Often the two-part considerations: crucible (containing main idea) and the flame (the burning passion) fit into this part usually composed of readings and a speech.
Crossing the threshold back to reality:
Sometimes the entrance is repeated in the exit. Other times the tone changes, maybe there’s an American song or hymn. Maybe everyone forms a circle and sings “Shalom” alternating with “Salaam.”
These structural patterns do not dictate content. I would argue that they are universal human responses to sensory prompts. The body of my thesis will give attention to how different cultures from various form of Christianity to Plains Indian ceremonies to New Guinea rituals draw on their ecology and cultural assumptions to follow these and other patterns. And I’ll throw in a few UU Leadership School experiments for free.
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