Moving towards the poetry of advent in my heart...

A few months ago I was at a regional church celebration that I genuinely wanted to embrace - but couldn't.  Not only was the liturgy wooden and artistically uninteresting, but the homily was what my old mentor, Ray Swartzback, used to call a "box car sermon:" -  a collection of unrelated anecdotes or ideas strung together with only the slightest connection.  One of the unrelated ideas involved the alleged deception present in the story of the "cellist of Sarajevo."

For those unfamiliar with Steven Galloway's novel of the same name, it is a work of fiction using aspects of the life of a real person,  Vedran Smailović, to link together the experiences of people during the siege of Sarajevo.  For me it was a powerful reflection on both the banality of evil and the way good people are ground down by the quotidian realities
of living through hell.  (For more on the actual musician, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Vedran_Smailovi%C4%87) As the preacher prattled on about how wrong it was for the author to portray the cellist's story as true, I kept wondering:  hasn't this guy ever read any fiction?  I also asked myself:  does he understand metaphor or the way a work of art can play with the facts to point towards a deeper truth? 

Afterwards I kept thinking about the preacher's point (the only one I could remember) and the challenge of metaphorical thinking.  As I read the arguments on both sides of this novel - and appreciated the integrity of both - I discovered (small surprise) that I resonated most with the author.  He understood the paradox of telling this story - it is a modern morality tale - not a biography of the cellist.  You might find both sides helpful:

+ Steven Galloway's interview @ http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/the-larger-conversation-steven-galloway-talks-about-the-cellist-of-sarajevo/

+ Walter Trkla's chellenge @ http://www.swans.com/library/art15/wtrkla03.html

So why is this still gnawing at me?  Why haven't I let go of a boring worship gathering and an incomplete and rambling sermon?  God knows I've done it many times before!  My hunch is that it has something to do with preparing for Advent.  As I've written before, I believe poets (and artists) often get much closer to the human/holy truth than most reporters or technicians.  They help me ask why something matters and what I might do about it?  Advent calls me to nourish the asking - and waiting.  Joan Chittister puts it like this:

Life is not meant to be escaped, we learn, as the liturgical year moves from season to season, from feast to feast. It is mean to be penetrated, to be plumbed to its depths, to be tasted and savored and bring us to realize the God who created us in with us yet. Life, we come eventually to know, is an exercise in transformation, the mechanics of which take a lifetime of practice, of patience, of slow, slow growth... 

In the season of Advent, we are invited to step back from all that is frantic and controlling for a time: to develop within ourselves a taste for the spirit that does not die and will not slip through our fingers like melted snow... We all want something more (from life.) Advent asks the question, what is it for which you are spending your life? What is the star you are following now? And where is that star in its present radiance in your life leading you? Is it a place that is really comprehensive enough to equal the breadth of the human soul? (from The Liturgical Year: the spiraling adventure of the spiritual life)

So often my experience in public worship is that it is flat.  It is disconnected from the questions of life that lead to integrity, depth and hope.  The music is sentimental or else unsingable - wordy and preachy - without poetry.  The preaching is rarely thoughtful - it is almost an after thought quickly sketched on the way to this or that meeting - or else hurriedly outlined at midnight on Saturday.  The liturgists can't read - or are overly theatrical - the aesthetics of worship are ignored and the whole thing is an exercise in detached passivity.  (Ouch!) 

But there is nothing detached or passive about the Incarnation:  God has come to dwell and embrace us in our ordinary flesh.  The birth of Jesus - encountered in the liturgy - is intended to help come to understand "the Christ of faith who is still in us." (Chittister)

In the liturgical year, we come to realize, is the cry of the centuries to every new age neither to forget nor to forsake the vision of the first Christian age or the challenges of this one.... It is the life of Jesus that is the standard of the souls who call themselves Christian in every age, however seductive the errors of the age itself.

And so the liturgy - in beauty, metaphor, poetry and action - must lead us towards Jesus. Not an idea about Jesus, not a book report on the possibility of Jesus but to the Word become flesh within and among us.  Chittister concludes one chapter noting that "the continuing proclamation of the Scriptures, the centrality of the Gospels as the foundation of every liturgy and the ongoing reflection on those readings in homilies year after year do two things:  one of them is communal and the other personal."

First, the liturgical year reminds us as the church what kind of community we are meant to be. It convicts us as the church of the betrayal of those ideals when we are not a voice in the face of holocaust or not the protectors of its children.  Then we must all repent and begin again.

Second, the liturgical year implants within each of us individually the reprise of those moments that are the substance of the faith. It calls us to face the distance between the ideals we see in the life of Christ and the pale ghost of them we find in our own. It calls us to private and personal reflection on the place of Jesus in the daily exercise of our existence... for the liturgical year... is Jesus with us, for us and in us as we strive to make His life our own.

Enough rant on my part.  Last night, when I talked with our young confirmation guys, we got to one question, "What do you hope for?"  We had discussed what hope means - and what others in the world, including their parents, might hope for - and then I wondered what each of these young men might seek in hope.  After a bit of fidgeting and awkward silence, one boy said, "Nobody has ever asked me that before... it is going to take some time to really think about it."  The others agreed - and confirmation class ended. 

It is my deepest conviction that our public worship must help us ask ourselves - personally and as a community - what is it we truly hope for in this season?  Do our hopes conform to the life of Jesus?  Do our songs take us deep into the heart of the Spirit?  Do our prayers give us space for silence?  Do our homilies and sermons do more than waste time?  God, hope so...