The Liturgical Tradition - Pt 2: Why I stayed

My decision to start attending a liturgical church was not by any means the end of my journey toward accepting the liturgical format as the best way to worship. That journey is still going on. But there was one thing that I and my friends - who were new to this whole thing - could agree on: it has something that our previous worship experiences had been lacking.

The easiest way to describe this would be to say that liturgy provides a skeleton for the flesh of the worship. If worship were dance, liturgy would be the music to which you dance.

Before, my experience with church - not to mention my 'personal worship', for lack of a better term - had always felt fairly amoebic. The church service may have had a program and order to it, but that order was inconsistent, intangible and (as far as I could tell) purposeless. The prayers, while not heretical or even banal, had a very 'inspirational' feeling to them, like you could almost hear the person offering the prayer searching for inspiration.

Maybe that's what it was: it felt like the whole point of the service was to inspire me. Many of the songs were of either the happy 'Jesus is my friend' variety, or of the 'I'm happy to be Christian' variety, and while both of those are true (more at some times than others) they are not always what should be said. They either assume I am in a mood in which I might not be, or they seem to attempt to get me into a certain mood. They came across as being patho-centric.

What I found with liturgy was a service that took nothing for granted about the state of the person entering into it. Instead, it invites you in and engages your mind, rather than your emotions. And the eventual result is that your emotions begin to follow. Lewis must have been Anglican.

Now, instead of a nebulous experience awaiting me, I have a structure waiting for me that invites me into the worship, and helps me to quiet my mind and calm my heart. Instead of a bright, 'friendly' auditorium, I enter a quiet (if I get there on time), holy place, where I am obviously not the most important person there and neither is the person at the front of the stage.

Now, instead of being invited to 'take a moment for silent reflection and repentance', I join those around me in asking God for His forgiveness, and as I repeat the words I am forced to remind myself that I am an evil person who needs repentance and forgiveness. It is a good message to hear in this age of affirmation.

Instead of sitting quietly and awarkwardly waiting for communion to start, half of the service is dedicated to reminding us what exactly communion is all about, and preparing for communion.

And when, at the end of mass, the celebrant exhorts us to "Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord," I can enthusiastically exclaim, "Thanks be to God!", knowing that my mind, heart and spirit have been nourished and refreshed, rather than feeling as though I have been watching a show for the past couple hours.

The Liturgical Tradition - Pt1: How I got hooked

For some time I have been wanting to consolidate some thoughts that have been rolling around in my head regarding church tradition, liturgy, and forms of worship. What follows is the first part of what I hope will become a series.

I was raised in the non-denominational church. Partially out of necessity (growing up overseas in a Muslim country means you take whatever you can get) but even when we moved back to TX, we started attending a non-denominational church. I think it was just habit by then. I'm not really sure.

My first experience with the liturgical tradition was after I moved out to CA. I wasn't really actively 'shopping' for a church, but I wasn't particularly thrilled with the one I was attending. I was basically riding Mom's coattails to a single parents group at a large NDC here. Occasionally I would go to the college group, but I didn't know anyone, and have never been great at making friends on my own initiative, so I would mostly stand in a corner and juggle until things got started, and then I would sit in the corner and more or less participate.

Anyway, my brother's girlfriend (at the time, now his wife) had been raised Episcopal, and during their semester in Oxford he had fallen in love with TLCs, so they had found a good, solid, orthodox Episcopal church in the area that they were attending, and one week he invited me to go with them, and I said yes.

The church was fairly small (seating about 150 people fully packed) and had stained glass windows and statues and crufixes, and all the bells and whistles (literally). I spent most of the service trying to figure out when to kneel, what page of the little black book we were on, and how to best pretend to sing along to the plainchant songs/prayers. I believe my overall impression at the end of the service was, "Well, that was interesting. I don't think I'll ever do that again." I had a few questions, but for the most part I didn't care enough to ask about most of what was going on. Besides, I prefer to appear to know what I'm doing at all times.

A few months later, my brother mentioned to me that the rector of the church was also a blackbelt in karate, and taught classes through the church for a free-will-donation fee. We decided that it would be a fun thing to do together, so we started going. Looking back, it strikes me that that first day in karate class was far more awkward than that first visit to a TLC - I still didn't really know much of what was going on, didn't know when to kneel or stand, and spent most of the time watching others out of the corners (or middles) of my eyes. Plus, I kept wanting to address the Sensei as "Dr. so-and-so" instead of "Fr. so-and-so", due to my previous sublimation in the academic world.

But after a couple of months going to the church twice a week for karate, and as I got more familiar with some of the people in the karate class who were also members of the church, and - most importantly - the cute girl I had a crush on started attending the church, I began to think more about giving liturgy another chance. So I hooked a ride with some friends and never looked back.