I came across this blog
this morning which featured an interview with one of my teachers from the
Living School for Action and Contemplation out of Albuquerque, Cynthia
Bourgeault. It is provocative and well worth your 10 minutes to read. I greatly benefited from studying under Cynthia’s guidance and so
this interview which lays out her spiritual journey was very helpful to me in
understanding where she – and I – are both coming from.
“A Whole Different Order of Holiness”
Cynthia’s seemingly natural ability to embrace the path of
silent meditation regularly displayed during my time at Living School suddenly
made sense as I read of her childhood as a Christian Scientist attending a
Quaker school. This was a very different background from my own, raised in a Methodist
Church in small town Central Florida. But there was one point where I felt our
stories converged.
Here she describes her first encounter with an Episcopal
Church:
I remember going into this church and
immediately having an intense sense of relief and mystery. There were stone
walls on the inside and the outside and the presence of something I recognized
as a whole different order of holiness.
Where Bourgeault was swept away by the architecture and ambience,
certainly aspects that always speak to me, it was her reference to “a whole
different order of holiness” that resonated with my own first experience of the
Episcopal Church.
Unlike her first encounter which occurred in the context of a parish
space being used for a concert, mine occurred in the context of Episcopal
worship. Moreover, where Bourgeault’s response was to the classic architecture
and ambience of an ancient church, aspects of this tradition that have always
spoken to me as well, mine occurred in a mountainside open air chapel alongside
what is now old US 64 between Franklin and Murphy, North Carolina. I had
accompanied a woman from our town who owned the cabin we were staying in alongside
the Rainbow River.
As I look back on that service, what I remember was the
power of the mists pushing up the sides of the Smoky Mountains around me as the
sun gradually lightened up the overcast morning. The mist was reflected by the
smoke of the thurible swung by a priest in beautiful vestments uttering
beautiful words. Periodically the people around me would respond with words
that they all seemed to know by heart.
At eight years of age, I knew, I simply knew, that this was
“a whole different order of holiness” than the whitewashed Methodist services I
had grown up knowing. There was a power in the symbols, in the mysteriousness
of the clouds outside the chapel and the clouds of incense billowing around me,
in the beautiful language and vestments that seemed so central to this expression
of the holy. It all spoke to me at one of the deepest levels that then 8-year-old
boy from Bushnell, Florida, had ever encountered. And I knew that day that my
life had changed.
I came home and told my Mother I was going to become an
Episcopalian. My parents had always encouraged us to go explore the world
beginning with its religions. And so she simply smiled and said, “OK, son.” And
14 years later, she would attend my confirmation into the church at St.
Margaret’s Episcopal, Inverness. In another 21 years from that service, she would attend my ordination to the Episcopal priesthood at Saint Christophers, San Lorenzo, CA.
A Sacred
Space That Holds You in its Arms
Bourgeault continued her discussion of the architecture and
ambience which spoke to her with this comment:
It’s one of the reasons I am desperately
opposed to churches being locked except when there’s a service. I think that
ninety-eight percent of the work of conversion takes place outside of services.
It’s in that private relationship between the person and the divine. That space
is mediated directly between the person and God.
I have long been struck by the fact that in many eastern religions, the
temple is rarely the site of communal worship and when it occurs it is on rare holidays
or commemorations. More often, the temple is the place where individuals come
to offer prayers, thanksgivings, and intercessions. Churches in Europe, while
often serving as tourist destinations, tend to remain open for prayer during
daylight hours and the glittering votive candles beneath shrines within the
churches speak to the devotion of those solitary daytime pilgrims.
Increasingly I find myself wrestling with my own needs for
community and communal worship at the same time I find most such worship loud,
wordy, overwhelming. In all of my life crises as a younger man, I inevitably
found myself in a church, sitting in a pew surrounded by the silence of a
nearly darkened interior. There was something comforting about that darkened
silence, much like the womb of a protective mother. There was a sense of
safety, an ability to let down my guard if ever so temporarily. It was,
indeed, a “space mediated directly between the person and God.”
Like Bourgeault, I strongly oppose the locking of churches.
I understand the risks that entails. I know there are vandals. I know homeless
people will sometimes seek them out for sleep. But a church which is only open
for services on a handful of days a week at most really speaks to the utility
of controlled performance, not the offered embrace of the holy.
I am grateful for being a part of a parish which keeps its
doors open at least during weekly operating hours. I love the interior of that
parish with its pitched roof which cracks and pops, the light which enters the
skylight and paints a swath across the interior, moving from section to section
as the day goes on. I love the smell of candles and incense.
Even the empty seats speak to me of persons who once
attended this parish but have now gone on to the next phase of life. Sometimes
I feel their presence next to me and my heart warms with their memory. But in
every case, the silent, empty church with its history of worship which has ingrained it with a palpable sense of the holy speaks to me at levels that
words or constructed ideas simply cannot reach.
The Sacrament That Draws Us
One final comment in the interview spoke to me that merits
discussion:
My own experience is that the five or six years
of feeding from the Eucharistic body was what gradually created the strength in
me to be able to be ready to say yes, I am willing to self identify as a
Christian on this path. At any point I along the way I could have tipped in the
opposite direction… In my own empirical experience Eucharist precedes baptism.
The change comes from the centre of your being where Christ transforms you from
the inside out to enable you to embrace baptism as the acknowledgement of your
choice that is a witness to the world given you by the grace of God.
I have always felt that something very powerful occurs
during the Eucharist. The symbolic power of the presence of Jesus and his
followers over 2000 years is always overwhelming, regardless of which side of
the altar rail I find myself. Sometimes I can palpably sense the presence of that "cloud of witnesses" with us, standing all around us at that altar. The privilege of offering “the
gifts of God for the people of God” as a priest is one of my life’s greatest
joys.
With that said, the notion of “closed communion” is
oxymoronic. Communion either is occurring or it isn’t. And if it is, “the
people of God” to whom "the gifts of God" are being offered includes everyone present, no exceptions. The eucharistic sacrament
is not the property of an institutional church to guard and to dole out to only
those it deems deserving. The sacrament does not require a login and a password
limiting access only to members of the tribe in good standing. On a good day, the church is the
means by which “the gifts of God” come to be received by “the people of God.” All
of them. No exceptions (because, ultimately, there are no other kinds of
people).
 |
| Baptism of nephew Cary Savage, 1999, Ocala, FL |
Baptism, on the other hand, when properly understood, is a
rite of initiation into community. It’s why we Anglicans baptize our babies.
While many tend to see this rite through the lens of sin (sin-based theologies
always reveal themselves to be ultimately about controlling, not embracing,
others), the language of our rite reveals its purpose:
“Will you who witness these vows do all in your
power to support these persons in their life in Christ? We will!”
This “life in Christ” takes place within the context of a
community. Baptism is a rite of initiation into the community and the faith
tradition from which it comes.
But an attendee’s interest in that community and the faith
tradition from which it comes often precedes the rite which formalizes that
connection. For those who are not cradle Episcopalians, there is a curiosity
that brought them there. In some cases, the attendee has no idea why they are
there, they just felt an impulse to come.
John Wesley, whose Methodist movement within Anglicanism practiced
open communion, often spoke of communion as a “converting sacrament.” Wesley
rightly recognized that when people are welcomed and encouraged to participate
in the central rite of a worshipping community, they come to feel a part of it
and many eventually seek formal recognition of that membership through baptism.
On many mornings when I serve the 8 AM service, the sea of
gray in the pews reminds me that our existence as a parish – indeed, as a
tradition – is not guaranteed. It is important to practice open door theology
and not just preach it from our pulpits. That’s the pragmatic reason for open
communion.
More importantly, it is consistent with the ever flowing heart
of the Divine into our world and the church’s calling to be “the means of grace”
to all of G-d’s children. Practicing radical hospitality starting with our sacramental
communal meal reveals that Divine heart. At that point, the worship itself
becomes one of the “gifts of God for the people of God.”
I am grateful this day for the opportunity to have studied
at the feet of this wise teacher and for the reflections her thought continues
to produce this day. And I am grateful for the time, space and silence this day
to reflect upon them.
Deo Gratias.
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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life is not worth
living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is
not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
For what does G-d require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?
(Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)
Do not be daunted by the enormity
of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are
not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami
Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston 2019
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1 comment:
I was at a Bible study this morning, not as a leader, trying to explain why OT Law vs NT law was not really the most important discussion when trying to get to the heart of what moves me. What a relief to read this blog.
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