A modern UU in King Arthur's Chapel

After almost a full semester here at Austin Seminary, I still find myself going to chapel, and I still find myself trying to figure out what people get out of it. There's an awful lot of scripture reading, an awful lot of praying, a sermon that is more often than not a bible study lesson rather than a lesson in living, and hymns that more often than not lack much energy or ability to motivate - me, at least. So what keeps the Presbyterians doing it this way? Tradition, perhaps. Or maybe it really does move their Spirits in some way that it just doesn't move mine.

I find two things most remarkable about chapel worship here. First, there is a certain choreographed pageantry about it: worship leaders sit in certain places, stand in certain places for certain actions, and never ever interact with the congregation. People who never wear anything more dressy than a t-shirt to class will dress up tremendously for their days as chapel leader (it is my wicked fantasy, should I last that long at Austin Seminary, to give my Senior Sermon in bermuda shorts and a hawaiian shirt). And everything, everything, is done in an emotionally neutral manner, with only an occasional exception of humor or emotion during a sermon. 

Second, there is a fixed attachment to worship as centered around Sacraments. The Sacrament of "Proclaiming the Word" (reading and explaining texts from the Bible) takes up most of the service, with the tedious Sacrament of "The Lord's Supper" (or "Eucharist") taking up an equal space of time when it is celebrated. And they are so serious about this latter ritual that it can only be conducted by an authorized clergyperson at a time and place authorized by a governing body of some sort. Even so, there is an empty plate and empty chalice present on the "Lord's Table" for all worship services, just to show how central this ritual would be if it were being performed.

Which brings me to my second and perhaps even more sacrosanct fantasy: sticking a medium size candle in that chalice and lighting it at the beginning of a worship service sometime. Somehow I don't think I'd last very long after that, though...

"The Lord's Prayer" - my version

If I ever get to lead morning prayer in the Austin Seminary Chapel again, these are the words I think I might use:

Our Heavenly Parent,

blessed be your many names.

We forge your community,

we follow your will,

a Kingdom of Heaven right here

in our daily lives.

Heal today our broken-ness,

that we may help to heal  

the broken-ness that is around us

And fulfill our basic needs,

that we may better serve those

whose needs are not being met

Help us resist our selfishness,

and protect us from harm,

For you are the source of all blessing and power,

now and forever,

Amen

Prayer of Confession

My spiritual direction group this morning worked through an article on the (originally monastic) practice of solitude as a way to achieve spiritual integrity. The article built on the 4th-century Christian "desert fathers" and their conviction that mainstream society was "a shipwreck from which each [person] had to swim for his life." Our at-large society, and perhaps even the sub-communities we join within it, is a "dangerous network of domination and manipulation" that seems to inextricably require that we abandon our religious principles in order to participate. We "children of the light" are coopted to becom "conspirators with darkness." One solution, then, is not to participate: to swim for your life to a place where you can be, with other escapees, continually in touch with the spiritual center of your life. Monks call this practice "solitude."

The clincher for me, though, was the post-monastic idea that solitude of this sort is an attitude, a state of mind, not a physical location. It does not require being removed from the culture, just being apart from it. Imagine that! Imagine if we were to truly cultivate a life where in each moment we tried to act from a deeper place than the culturally-expected focus on the self: imagine acting in each moment from a deeply centered connection to the Spirit of Life and Love, the Ground of Being, the Word of Ultimate Truth...however you concieve of the spiritual reality known in western cultural shorthand as "God".

Imagine with me what that would look like. If our daily life were not dominated by what the article I read calls "main enemies of the spiritual life" (self-exaggerations such as Fear, Anger, and Greed that put our own concern so squarely in our focus-of-vision that we cannot see past it), but instead were punctuated by a continual series of attempts to connect to and act out of the deeper spiritual ground of our being...we would become the spiritual beings we were made to be. We would be like Christ, or the Buddha, or Gandhi, or ML King Jr. Insert your religious radical here.

We would react to each encounter with another not in terms of their expediency to us (I said I wanted chips, not fries!), or their obstacle-ness in our rush to make every meeting and deadline, or their potential to harm us...but rather we would see them each as an imago Dei, an image of God, a person containing the same Divine Spark we contain. Each person would be our teacher, and each person our pupil: the God in Me would seek to connect with the God in the Other. There would be no need to trot out that well-worn First Principle of "Inherent worth and dignity," for that worth would be manifest and obvious to us. If we could truly practice solitude-from-society in every moment of our lives, we would begin to create an alternate society, to form the Beloved Community right here in the midst of the world of selfish darkness.

As I was reading this, I realized that I have failed to live up to my religious principles here in the very beginning of my seminary journey. I have been letting fear and anger and greed dominate when I should be acting out of a true desire to know the pieces of Truth that my fellow Images of God have brought to me here, to offer me for my own deepening in faith. And so, I found myself composing in my head a very classic Christian piece: the following prayer of confession. And now that I've got that out, I feel so much more at peace. For now.

Great Spirit of Love and Life, from which every Blessing flows,
I confess that I have not loved your children with my whole being:
Out of fear of losing my own perspective,
I have shut out the perspectives of others;
Out of hurt that others had not considered my feelings,
I have allowed anger to fester in my heart;
Out of an experience of being singled out,
I have seen oppression and exclusion when they were not there;
Out of a desire to be fed the fruits of my own tradition,
I have been un-thankful for the food freely given me by others.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
that I may truly be in communion with your many and varied children here,
that I may truly learn the lessons of the perspective I have been given,
that I may be a vessel for your healing love and grace,
and that I may be of greater service to you and your creations.
Amen