O Magnum Mysterium

Occasionally I am asked if I get nervous singing at church. The short answer is no, but the one ministerial task that trips me up from time to time is reading the name(s) of those for whom mass is being offered. When I have a name of unclear pronunciation I make something up and hope that the people sitting awkwardly near the gifts table don’t happen to be the entire extended family of the deceased, now even more distraught at having heard their family name butchered by the church singer.

Having mass said for someone is one of those peculiar Catholic customs that you hope doesn’t come up in mixed company. Since it usually involves a donation, on the surface it might look like a moneymaking scheme, reinforcing the misconception that Catholicism is pay-to-pray. There are as many reasons for requesting mass be said for someone as there are families and friends who have sent mass cards or gathered a memorial liturgies. There is grace in gathering together loved ones for worship, but there must be something more to it than that it makes us all feel nice to be in one place.

In the Eucharist we encounter Christ broken – could it be that that is some comfort in our own time of brokenness?

Death is such a great mystery that most of us avoid giving it much thought. It doesn't surprise me that we bring this mystery to the great mysterion, the Eucharist. I have found comfort in a faith that doesn’t avoid mystery but sanctifies it, insisting on frequent celebration of a ritual we can never understand. We celebrate that magnum mysterium, that God got down in the muck with us and suffered just like we do. When we hold someone in our heart during the sacrifice of mass we offer their memory and ourselves up to that great mystery of a Triune, loving God.

I am remembering today two loved ones who died a year ago, so what began as a prosaic reflection on mispronounced names and grandkids bringing up the gifts has turned into something more serious. How fortunate I feel to participate regularly in ritual that doesn’t depend on answers but revels in questions: How is it that our community is knit together by bread broken? Why does God continue to meet us- sinful, silly, distracted people that we are?

How could the horror of death become an instrument of our salvation?

Getting out of the way

A few years ago I sang with a musician who I really respect and who tells it like it is. At the end of my coaching he asked me “why do you sing like you think you’re worse than you are?”

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I just completed six days in an Institute for Arts and Worship. You would think, having spent nearly a week dealing with two of my favorite things that I would be writing prodigiously. Instead, I’ve found myself totally blocked. There are many new ideas bumping around in my head and not a lot of direction as to how to piece them all together.

One insight from the week that stuck with me was that there are many similarities between worship and art. Both require honesty, vulnerability, communication, and trust. Both are expressive and both can be a little bit radical.

There is a tendency to be fussy with our liturgical worship and prayer, dressing it up in inauthentic ways to feel as if we’ve prepared enough. I was relieved to hear John Bell, our keynote, announce that our worship should be free of gimmicks, as gimmickry is one of my biggest pet peeves in liturgical planning (and I’ve yet to find a diplomatic way to point it out when I see it). Much like in art, the nonsense we use to dress things up often ends up getting in the way of the Thing.

I, of all people, should know, master that I am of getting in the way. I have been working all month on Carmina Burana, a piece I find extremely difficult, and which, therefore, scares me to death. Practicing has been going well, but one movement was still giving me grief this week. I was singing scared, singing like I couldn’t do it, getting in my own way. Not only was I not making expressive art, I wasn’t even singing in tune. I dreaded going to the practice room, and my dread was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So after a week of being pushed and stretched a million ways through the workshops at this Institute, I decided to let it all hang out in the practice room, to decide what I wanted to say in this movement and just let it out. No thinking about technique or perfection or control. Lo and behold, it was pretty close to perfect.

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Why do we pray like we think we’re worse than we are? Are we afraid to let it all hang out, to cede control? Do we think that we won't be able to do it? Do we worry if we dig too deep to express ourselves most authentically that we’ll dig up something we – or God – can’t handle? We let our liturgies turn into variety shows – or morgues – rather than daring to be the Body of Christ gathered in prayer. If that gathering is not our goal, why bother?

Getting out of the way is challenging, especially when we are comfortable with our impediments. Fortunate are we that we don’t need self-conscious gimmicks or to become someone else in order to pray. All week I fought the good fight at this institute, listening to effusive enthusiasm from others about their prayer experiences in dance, improv, collage. My experiences were no doubt holy, but nothing to go home and write a poem about. I felt pressure to find my bliss in one of these less familiar prayer forms, and it was making me a little grumpy.

During our final worship together we sang one of the hymns that I know inside and out. I closed my eyes and sang my prayer with a confidence that I was offering my most honest worship. God met me there, when I was being most myself, rather than when I was trying on other guises. I trusted enough to sing and pray as I was, not believing I was worse (or better) than I am. I wasn’t in my own way, and as the singing ended I concluded just as the hymn did – lost in wonder, love, and praise.

All you holy men and women, pray for us.

Last weekend I sang the ordination of two new priests. Having only sung one ordination prior (7 years ago), if you had asked me about the rite, the only thing I would have remembered was that it includes a litany of saints.

For a jaded old church nerd like me, it takes something special to move me (for instance, it's rare that the Agnus Dei lights my fire). Certain liturgical elements, thanks to their rarity, catch my attention (I'm a sucker for a good Sequence) and a litany is one of them. This weekend we sang Becker's popular setting of the litany. As we invoked saint after saint, while the newest members of the presbyterate lay prostrate, I became unexpectedly emotional.

The assembly repeated "pray for us" as we called upon saints familiar (Mary & Joseph), arcane (Chrysogonus & Hippolytus) and particular to our Jesuit community (Ignatius & Francis). On other occasions I have sung litanies that put Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day and Pedro Arrupe alongside Linus, Cletus and Clement. Where do we get the confidence to call upon our heroes to petition God on our behalf?

Any Catholic concerned with public perception keeps all this saints hoo-ha quiet if they can. Maybe we hedge a bit, acknowledging that we admire these people, but leaving out the more radical part of our claim to the saints: we believe there is something so generous and holy about them that they will back up our prayers.

As we asked for prayers on Saturday, what really took my breath away was the list we had in front of us, one that only skims the surface of our wealth of heavenly intercessors. And even when we mumble our response, or can't hear the cantor, or let our eyes and minds wander, the saints are still on our side, welcoming us into their communion. What greater advocates can we have than the saints named and unnamed, living in love with God forever?

[Two notes on the litany - I tried to find a recording of the Becker setting to which to link, but I was unable to find one that wasn't either out of tune, goopily sentimental, or one singer overdubbing his own responses to the invocations. Also, after the ordination I said something flippant about not knowing why a piece of music that is mildly cheesy was so moving. Luckily I was with the Jesuits, one of whom had a characteristic reply enumerating all of the evidence for this being the superior setting of the litany. Typical]

In lieu of a sound clip, I will include a photo of myself and one of my favorite saints.

In defense of gratuitousness

I kicked off my summer vacation right, having lunch with a wonderful friend. She's someone with whom I can talk about things that really matter: fears and frustrations, hopes and goals. Both of us articulated writing as one of our summer goals, and the conversation turned to favorite tools (typewriter for her, pen and notebook for me), topics, and genres.

After a few minutes one of us (I don't remember who) was brave enough to say the P-word: Poetry. We both admitted there was something a little pretentious about writing poetry. I used to write quite a bit, and most of it was crap but some of it wasn't terrible. Now I write infrequently, only when I'm just bursting and the poetry nearly writes itself. There's not a lot of craft or discipline or even art to it. I rarely share what I write because it feels presumptuous to think that I could possibly have something worth saying and that I believe I have expressed it beautifully.

Presumptuous, pretentious...and gratuitous. Poetry is so unneccessary, so impractical. Why not write an essay or an article? But all creation is gratuitous - even ours. If it was good enough for our Divine Creator, it should be good enough for me.

Some volumes came from Amazon today. I had decided I couldn't go any longer without the Four Quartets on my nightstand. Skimming some of the new selections I was overwhelmed at how much they made me feel. Emotion may be gratuitous too, but it is also beautiful, beautiful enough that it is worth whatever creative labor or happy accident that inspires it.

I'll never be a T.S. Eliot, but I don't have to be. To say what I have to say and to participate in the divine creation are worthy goals. They may be gratuitous, but so are many holy things.

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business. - T. S. Eliot, from East Coker, Four Quartets

Wrapping beautiful presents

Sometime I imagine that I will wake up in the morning and magically be the sort of person who can wrap presents beautifully. I will keep a clean desk, I will keep a clean house. I will be able to wear clothes that fasten with ties without looking like I just escaped from being tied to a stake. I will speak softly and prudently and above all calmly, I won’t ever have to look back with chagrin at having run off at the mouth, I won’t rush into things without thinking or get spacy while trying to get things done. I will wrap beautiful presents.

None of this has happened yet. In a recent conversation with my mother we joked about the frequency with which I fall, and she took great pleasure in regaling me with stories from my toddler-hood of my life on the border of reckless and fearless (I remember the time you charged into the water in Rhode Island and the wave knocked you over, I remember the time you took a flying leap onto the sled and the sled didn’t move and you slammed your face into the snow…she takes a bit more joy in these stories than is seemly). That’s where I have always lived my life, on the edges of good taste and good sense, hoping that there is enough room for me to spaz out and not hit anything.

Discipline and control have always been my biggest challenges, and when the reserved and soft-spoken tell me they admire how I express myself, I tell them how I admire them, able to be calm, able to be quiet. I have to work hard at neatness of all kinds – in my house, in my communication, in my appearance, and in my demeanor.

I imagine I will wake up in the morning and all this will be easier. Instead, I wake up every morning with sheets all over the floor, leave my pajamas somewhere in the path between the bed and shower, drip water all over the bathroom, empty the coffee pot and don’t rinse it, slop cream cheese on a bagel while poppy seeds fly all over the kitchen, and leave my dishes in the sink for later. But I realized today that I wake up nearly every morning genuinely excited to take on the day , ready to take flying leap onto the sled or sprint into the crashing waves (or, as I did in another one of my mother’s favorite anecdotes, run into the first day of tumbling class shouting “Come on new friends, let’s go!”).

I imagine I will wake up in the morning and be able to wrap beautiful presents. Until that day, I won’t stop giving my big sloppy gifts. If I give in a warm and loving spirit, I trust that everyone will ignore the disheveled exterior to see that inside, there’s something they’re really going to like.