On liturgy and ambiguity

I've been slowly working my way through Kathleen Norris' Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith.

Her book The Cloister Walk is one of my very favorite religious memoirs. Dakota: A Spiritual Geography offers engaging meditations on place, spirituality, and small-town life. I often carry my pocket copy of The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and Women's Work in my purse for re-reading. And I also really like her poems. So I expected to like this book -- and I do, though it's more like a collection of little bite-sized chocolates than it is a full literary meal. It lends itself to being read in bits and pieces, which is helpful, since that's the kind of time I've currently got!

Anyway, in the chapter called "Belief, Doubt, and Sacred Ambiguity," Norris says a lot of things that really resonate for me. Here's a taste of the story at that chapter's heart:

When I first stumbled upon the Benedictine abbey where I am now an oblate, I was surprised to find the monks so unconcerned with my weighty doubts and intellectual frustrations over Christianity. What interested them more was my desire to come to their worship, the liturgy of the hours. I was a bit disappointed -- I had thought that my doubts were spectacular obstacles to my faith and was confused but intrigued when an old monk blithely stated that doubt is merely the seed of faith, a sign that faith is alive and ready to grow. I am grateful now for his wisdom and grateful to the community for teaching me about the power of liturgy. They seemed to believe that if I just kept coming back to worship, kept coming home, things would eventually fall into place.

This passage charms me because it rings so true. I know a lot of people who might say, as Norris did, that doubts and intellectual frustrations distance them from religion; and I also know a lot of people who might respond, as the monks did, that doubt is no problem at all, and that the way to deal with doubt is to keep practicing. Regular prayer can effect subtle and thorough changes, but the only way to understand that is to take the leap of beginning to pray.

Later, Norris writes,

If I had to find one word to describe how belief came to take hold in me, it would be "repetition." Repetition as Kierkegaard understood it, as "the daily bread of life that satisfies with benediction." Repetition as in a hymn such as "Amazing Grace," or the ballade form, in poetry, where although the refrain is the same from stanza to stanza, it conveys something different each time it is repeated because of what is in the lines that have come in between.

The more I inhabit Jewish liturgy, the more I understand what Norris is talking about here. (Clearly this is true of liturgy qua liturgy, not merely hers or ours or anyone else's.) There's something in the repetition of words that invests both the words, and the silences between them, with new meaning. Later in this same passage, Norris notes that weekly church attendance came, in time, to shape the days between Sundays in much the way that a repeated poetic refrain shapes the feel of a poem. I know the feeling.

She tells the story of a seminary student arguing with an Orthodox theologian at Yale Divinity School. The student asked what to do when he couldn't affirm certain tenets of the Creed; the theologian responded, "Well, you just say it." The student, distressed by this answer, queried again, "How can I with integrity affirm a creed in which I do not believe?" And the theologian replied, "It's not your creed; it's our creed." In other words, these aren't your own words, written just for you and tailored to be something you can affirm easily. These are the words of our community. Simply saying them is important, and links us across both time and space; and saying them changes us, gradually; and it matters that we say them even if they don't perfectly fit what we think we believe.

Probably my favorite passage in the essay is this:

As a poet I am used to saying what I don't thoroughly comprehend. And once I realized that this was all it was -- that in worship, you are asked to say words you don't understand, or worse, words you presume to think you have mastered well enough to accept or reject -- I had a way through my impasse. I began to appreciate religious belief as a relationship, like a deep friendship, or a marriage, something that I could plunge into, not knowing exactly what I was doing or what would be demanded of me in the long run.

As a poet I am used to saying what I don't thoroughly comprehend -- isn't that the truth! And I love her insight here that liturgy and poetry intermingle in this way. Often, I think, liberal religious folks want to demand of our liturgy that it appeal to our minds, to our politics, to the ideas and values we hold dear -- and there's a lot to be said for that. But at the same time, it's worth remembering that liturgy isn't only, and isn't always, meant to express something timely and agreeable; it's also meant to connect us with our history, with other people, and with some of the deepest emotions we know how to feel. It's not always meant to be comfortable, or to be something to which we can assent intellectually.

Granted, great poetry isn't necessarily usable as liturgy; the two serve different needs, in the end. But I think there's common ground. We allow our poems to be associative, complicated, resonant in ways we don't necessarily understand; how might we be changed if we treated our liturgy likewise?

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On a related note, Eric Selinger at A Big Jewish Blog has announced a project called Siddur Kol Hevel: A Prayerbook for the Rest Of Us, and wants to hear what poems, quotations, and other snippets of text you would put in a siddur of your own:

What are your favorite, most inspiring, most unsettling passages? The ones you turn to, or that shaped you, for better or for worse? Ones you've stumbled across, and that haunt you--or tickle you, for that matter, with their sass and heterodoxy.

Drop him a comment and weigh in; I'm expecting interesting stuff.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, poetry.

Comments

[Erik]

Rachel,
There's something in the repetition of words that invests both the words, and the silences between them, with new meaning.

A very important point - thank you! As I said in my response to your "Worship Through Corporeality" post,

"Ritual repetition [has] the power to actualize the beliefs and worldview that the ritual encodes - not necessarily in some other-than-ordinary, magical sense, but quite prosaically, by imprinting that worldview into the participants’ own. Ritual operates at the symbolic level, largely bypassing the consciousness.

I think of it as analogous to training “muscle memory” as in martial arts or other sports, where specific actions are repeated to the point that they become reflexive and arise spontaneously when needed, much faster than would be possible if we had to stop and *think* about them. Over time, as we repeat an action or series of actions, associated reactions and emotional states become ingrained."

The deepest, truest purpose of religious ritual is to foster relationship, both between the individual worshipper and the Divine, and between the members of the religious community.

[Lorianne]

Heh. Amazing Grace has been sitting on my nightstand for months. I appreciate it if I read it in little pieces: a chapter every week or so, or less. If I try to "make progress" through the book, though, I find myself feeling too "full" of God-talk. Apparently I have a remarkably low tolerance. :-)

I loved Dakota and had mixed feelings about The Cloister Walk. Again, this has more to do with my low tolerance for God-talk: what I loved about Dakota is the way that place, community, and routine were imbued with spiritual meaning without the book being explicitly "about" religion. In Dakota, I felt Norris truly heeded Emily Dickinson's advice to "tell all the truth, but tell it slant." In Cloister Walk, Norris came out and said the things she'd implied in Dakota...and I for one was sorry to have names attached to mysteries.

This isn't a flaw with her book: it's my own idiosyncracy as a reader/lover of mysteries. It's impossible, of course, to talk about God-stuff without using God-talk. I guess that's why ultimately I love silence so...and Dakota captured the silent space that resonates so roundly in the midwestern flatlands.

[Fr Chris]

Great post, Rachel. I particularly like Norris' points about the Office. It's sad, I think, that only a small minority of Christians pray it. The Sunday refrain is not so interesting or transformative if there hasn't been a poem going on all week!

If you haven't already heard it, the Speaking of Faith interview with Jaroslav Pelikan, of blessed memory, on creeds is fantastic:

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/pelikan/index.shtml

Definitely worth the hour.

[alto artist]

So interesting, thank you. I'm reminded of what the Jewish people said when asked to accept God's law: "Naaseh v'nishmah," we will do first and then attempt to understand. That's how I often feel when praying words I don't understand: I will say them, and trust they will make sense when I'm ready to hear their meaning.

--aa.

[Rachel]

Erik -- Thanks for your response, and for reminding me of some of what you said when I posted earlier this spring on avodah be-gashmiut, worship through corporeality. I like your muscle memory analogy (which reminds me of my sensei, almost ten years ago when I used to study a martial art; one of the things I appreciated about him as a teacher was his emphasis on karate not as a mode of self-defense per se, but as a practice with perfection of one's character as its aim...)

Lorianne -- I'm kind of relieved to hear that you're working your way through this book in bits and pieces, too! I hear you about feeling vaguely allergic to some of the religious language; I feel strongly that way about Anne Lamott's recent work. (Do you read her?) And I agree that Dakota is probably Norris' most sublime book; my soft spot for The Cloister Walk probably has a lot to do with where I was at in my own journey when I first read it...

Chris -- I've long thought the Daily Office was a beautiful notion. I'm a big fan of daily prayer, in general, regardless of its religious idiom. As you say, and as Norris so wisely noted, the refrain of weekly services is a very different thing, seen against the backdrop of daily practice.

I haven't yet listened to the Speaking of Faith interview, but I will absolutely add that to my to-listen list; thank you for the link!

[kgs]

This is gorgeous and true. It reminds me of why (though I share my faith life with my partner, a UCC pastor) I am an Episcopalian at heart. No matter how close or far I am to God, the ritual keeps me ever limber for the leap of faith.

[Lorianne]

I love the phrase "vaguely allergic to some of the religious language"! To be fair, my "reaction" isn't limited to Christian God-talk: I have the same response to Zen & Buddhist texts that seem too theoretical or other-worldly instead of talking about how to live right now, right here. Leave the clouds & flowers for heaven, I say: what should I do while my feet are on dirty ground?

I've not read any Anne Lamott, although I have several of her books on my shelves, waiting. I am also "allergic" to books about writing--maybe I don't like being told what I "should" do?--so I've been hesistant to start any of them. I did some months ago listen to an audio version of a talk Lamott gave about writing, and what I liked best about it was how messed up, un-together, and ultimately human she sounded. I don't seem to be at all allergic to human frailty, having so much of it myself. :-)

[Schneider]

It's not a knock, but, with respect to the title of this post, I am not sure 'ambiguity' is the word you are looking for. There is plenty of ambiguity in liturgy, even when one affirms it wholeheartedly: is a particular phrase meant, for instance, to be taken literally or as a metaphor? 'Resurrection of the dead,' indeed.

That having been said, thank you very much for this post. I will definitely have occasion to use what I have learned from it.

[Ben]

In other words, these aren't your own words, written just for you... These are the words of our community. Simply saying them is important, and links us across both time and space; and saying them changes us, gradually; and it matters that we say them even if they don't perfectly fit what we think we believe.

This resonates with me a lot, because it's something I've been struggling with lately in my own davenen. I'm uncomfortable with the particularness of some of the Hebrew liturgy, because it seems to imply that the channels other than my Jewish heritage through which I've received spiritual sustenance don't count. And, while I want to be open to those "subtle and thorough changes", sometimes I don't want the plain meaning or traditional interpretation of a text to get into my heart after all — can I say ahava raba every day without coming to believe that Jewish wisdom is categorically more of an expression of divine love than non-Jewish wisdom?

A month ago I had some experiences which impressed upon me the universality of divine wisdom, and for a week or two I stopped saying ahava raba. Now, I feel deeply drawn to return to the ancient words, and I wonder what's changed. Maybe that universalist impulse faded... but maybe it got integrated, so that I'm ready for those words to enfold both a universal and a particular meaning, not because I have both of those meanings in mind when i say them, but because both are active principles in my life.