Liturgy

I attended a worship service last night at the Anglican Essentials conference in Ottawa. Though the music was nice, and the worship fervent, I found I couldn't connect at all with the modern liturgy. The liturgy seemed to be written by committee, by a group of people with out a sense of music or poetry.

My mom often saves up articles for me to read, and last time I visited, I got an envelope full. In it was an article by Margaret A. Doody entitled, "How shall we sing the Lord's song upon an alien soil? The new Episcopalian Liturgy" and it appeared in a book called "The State of Language" put out the the University of California Press.

My mom is a linguist, hence her interest, and she saved it for me because of my religious faith, though seems she saved this long before I became a big fan of liturgy.

Anyway, Doody writes: ". . . there is a tradition, a view of human nature older than Romanticism and quite alien to modern notions of sincerity, according to which outer actions and words spoken can create the feelings and move the desires. In the context of this idea, a liturgy makes perfect sense; it isn't necessary to find yourself in the right mood before going to church. The worshipper need not, and indeed should not, anxiously expect or keep a tally of the emotionraise as a result of his actions, for he is not waiting upon his own emotions, but serving God and accepting whateve in himself may be the consequence. The liturgy is simply there, public, accessible, and inescapable."

I'm about ready to roll around on my exercise ball for joy at that paragraph. Yes!
One of my friends who started going to my little cathedral with me says she loves the service because "It's all about God." She found other services "All about me, me, me, me, me."

And, lo and behold, how salutatory it is to enter in and make it all about God. Somehow the emotions come in line afterwards.