Practice for the Times We Really Need It
Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash
I love the liturgy.
I recent years and months,
I have forgotten just how much I love the liturgy.
I have forgotten how much
It is in my bones
And in my heart,
How much it feeds
My spirit,
My mind,
And my body.
I have forgotten how much
I need its rhythms,
And its familiarity,
Its predictability
And its certainty –
Like the comfort of an old friend.
Part of this forgetfulness
Is because
I currently live in a place
Where I do not have access
To good, liturgical worship.
I have grown accustomed to its absence.
And I have forgotten,
In part out of necessity,
How much I love it,
And how much I need it.
That is,
However,
Until the recently.
In the past few weeks.
I have often found myself
Unmoored,
Unsettled,
Off balance,
Unsure.
Destabilized.
It’s not surprising.
Change does that.
Change,
By its very nature,
Releases us from what has been.
It means that what was,
Is no longer.
It often puts one
In a position
Where they are,
Quite frankly,
Easily toppled –
If not physically,
Then certainly in spirit.
During these past few weeks,
If truth be told,
I have felt
Rather toppled.
In some ways,
I have felt
A bit like the weebles of old.
Weebles were a toy of my childhood –
Little egg-shaped creatures
That would wobble,
But they could not be toppled!
Their ad was a little jingle,
Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down!
For my generation,
That became a metaphor
Of resilience:
A weeble could get knocked all over the place,
And still, it would pop back up.
I think that my whole life,
I’ve tried to be somewhat of a weeble.
Come what may,
Get back up.
Keep going.
Be resilient.
There’s a whole lot to think about
In that reality,
And that will be for a different reflection.
For today,
However,
I don’t feel much like a weeble.
It’s not so easy to bounce back up
With the massive societal changes
That are swirling all around.
It’s not so easy
To get up,
Keep going,
And be resilient
When it seems that so much is shifting –
And unraveling at exponential speed.
In an effort to regain some balance –
And admittedly some control –
Over what seems uncontrollable,
I have found myself
Consuming as much news
As I possibly can.
I have found myself
Thinking that
If only I can stay on top of what is happening,
Then I will be able to figure out
In this moment –
What my own sense of vocation is
To meet this present time.
That has not been helpful.
That has contributed to my unsettledness.
That has nearly toppled me.
And then a few days ago,
I believe the Holy Spirit gave me a gift.
The Holy Spirit brought to mind the words
Of a trusted friend and mentor.
Rev. Dr. Fred Niedner
Used to teach worship classes at Valparaiso University.
These classes
Would often include people
Who were not familiar in any way
With a liturgical rhythm
Or order
Or practice.
Inevitably,
In Fred’s classes,
Someone would ask,
“Why do you do the same thing all the time?
Doesn’t it get boring?”
And Fred would knowingly respond,
“We do the liturgy over and over again
Because it is practice or the times we really need it.”
Practice for the times we really need it.
Practice.
For the times.
We really need it.
Now is that time.
Now,
I really need it.
As my spouse and I
Were wondering
What we can do
To not feel so untethered,
To regain some semblance of balance,
And certainty,
We decided
That every evening,
As much as possible,
We would fill our dining room table
With every candle with have
And read Compline, Night Prayer.
We would rest in its time-honored rhythm.
We would find solace
In the words
That transcend time and space.
We would be nourished
By the Scripture
And songs
And prayers
And silence
That have nourished
Countless before us,
And will,
Most certainly nourish
Countless after us.
And in these nighttime moments,
After the sun has set,
And darkness covers
Our corner of the world,
We have sensed
In an old-new way,
That God does indeed guard through the night.
God burns anew in us
A living flame,
And blows through us
A cleansing wind,
And wells up within us
A fountain of living water.
And it is good
And right
And holy
And beautiful.
When we extinguish the candles each night,
The chaos of the world
Has not suddenly been stilled,
But there is
A quiet,
Enfolding peace that
Hovers in the air
With the dissipating smoke of the candles,
And we rest
In the assurance
That God.
Holds.
It all.
In this new-found rhythm
In this season of change,
Practice
Has taken on a new meaning.
Now is the time
To practice
What we have long-practiced.
Because,
Now is the time
We need it.
Certainly,
We have always needed
What these ancient prayers offer,
But now we need that offering
In a profoundly heightened way,
And the practice itself
Does not disappoint.
Even when I don’t feel like
Lighting the candles,
And reading the prayers,
And being drawn into the music,
This ancient practice
Shows up
With all of its mystical holiness
And feeds me
With the Word of God
And the songs of the saints
And the prayers of the faithful –
And with that food,
Comes a sense of
Restoration –
A severing from what doesn’t matter,
And
A tethering to what does matter,
A reclamation of balance
And a certainty
That
God
Is indeed
Still
God,
And a reminder
That the same God who moved over the chaos
At the dawn of time
Will move over this chaos,
Too.
The liturgy may not work for you.
Compline may not work for you.
But I imagine
That there is something
In your life
That you have practiced
For the times you really need it
That you can draw on
In this season
To nourish you,
To sustain you,
To re-tether you
To the certainty of
God’s
Unfailing
Presence
Of love
In your life
And in the life
Of the world.
Whatever that practice is,
Perhaps,
Like me,
Now is the time
That you really need it.
