As it is in heaven...

As simple and unplanned and unadorned as it was, our quiet ‘liturgy of the hallway’ last night felt, for me at least, about as close as one can get to the idea of our earthly liturgy as a foretaste of the heavenly liturgy.

It was about 3:00 am. Already our town’s tornado sirens had shrieked their warning several times, and for hours angry lightning had been shouting in the sky. On radar images, each new line of storms looked like yet another fiery arrow hurled across the Southland. Some of us had been up, and then back to bed, and then up again checking the latest updates. Finally the news reported a “rotation” headed toward downtown Cullman. It was time to awaken everyone and move to the safety of the 1st floor hallway.

The word passed through the monastery, Sisters quietly awakening other Sisters, and we made our way to the 1st floor in a procession as solemn as that of any solemn liturgy and a silence as grand as any Grand Silence of the night. Simultaneously sleepy and wakeful, groggy and alert, we sat along both sides of the hallway as if we were two sides of a choir. Once gathered, no instructions or organization was needed. Our Prioress simply began a prayer, and all followed naturally in recitation, our quiet, grave voices flowing through somber lips.

As I gazed up and down the row opposite me, my own voice in quiet recitation, it was a beautiful and touching sight - each Sister like a bead on a rosary, each Sister a prayer, each Sister a luminous mystery in a stormy night, each Sister occupied, or maybe pre-occupied, with thought, with prayer, with wordless waiting even as her words formed a timeless path through time.

As liturgy goes, in its quiet and unadorned simplicity and in the tension of waiting out a storm, it could hardly pass for heavenly – just a group of sleepy people gathered for protection from danger and reciting some prayers together. But in its genuine faith, its sure devotion, its spontaneous and natural turn to common prayer, and its utter trust, it did one of the things that liturgy does - it joins us to something beyond ourselves. A practical gathering for safety was more that that - it was an assembly of God’s people, the Body of Christ, offering prayer and praise and intercession, and asking that “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It lifted our earthbound efforts heavenward even as we prayed for the heavenly to be here on earth.

It seemed to me that the very spontaneity, the naturalness of our prayer, was part of its kinship with the liturgy of heaven. It was natural. Its what we do. We pray. We praise. We trust. We intercede. We adore. Like the saints in heaven. In that sense, our 3:00 am ‘liturgy of the hallway,’ in its simple and unadorned and quiet way, felt to me like a small foretaste of the heavenly liturgy…praising God’s name on earth, as it is in heaven.



Postscript: We were fine and safe from any damage here at the monastery. And while we were joined together in common prayer, I'm sure each Sister also held in her heart her own prayers and concerns and hopes. I’m sure many were thinking, like I was, of those in Tennessee who have lost so much in the fires, and those in danger elsewhere in the South last night, and all people everywhere who are in search of safety. We continue to hold in prayer those who have experienced so much loss in these recent days.

Hope whisperers

I am afraid of fire. Maybe it goes back to the time when I was five or six and my family and I, along with all our neighbors, were standing outside in our bathrobes in the middle of the night watching a nearby structure burn to the ground. Whatever the reason, I am skittish around fire and flame. So when I entered the monastery and was assigned to the sacristy, I found myself feeling some fear as day after day I worked with matches, lighters, candles, and wicks. Yes, I was afraid. And yet there was the necessity of my assigned work.

Somehow, over the years, at the intersection of fear and necessity, I developed a way with candles. Somehow I learned how to coax recalcitrant candles and how to tame ones that had become a bit overwrought. I don’t know how I do it or how I know what to do. I just take a candle and work with it. And somehow, the candle responds. Some in the monastery have called me “the candle whisperer.”

It happened again tonight. Two Sisters tried unsuccessfully to coax a shy candle into flame. I went up, looked at it, and stirred a bit in the wax. I tried again to light it, the wick caught, and the candle began burning steadily. “What did you do?” I was asked. “I don’t know,” I replied. Because somehow, at the intersection of fear and necessity, I had become a candle whisperer, and one can’t explain these things.

Today, many are afraid. No matter where in the world they are, perhaps they feel as if structures are burning down around them. Perhaps structures are burning down around them. They are unsure whether to hope, or how much to hope, or whether to let their hope snuff itself out like a wick that has collapsed in a puddle of wax, or whether to fan their hope into a steady flame that can light their way forward.

And yet, in the midst of fear and uncertain hope, there is still the necessity to keep working. No matter where in the world we are, there is the necessity to do one’s daily tasks with as much integrity, joy, compassion, and skill as one can bring to bear on the work God has called us to do, to walk with fidelity the path God has laid before us.

Perhaps somehow, at the intersection of fear and fidelity, a flame of hope can be lit. Perhaps by acknowledging fear, leaning into necessity, and being anchored in prayer, we can nurture hope both in ourselves and in others. Perhaps we can become hope whisperers – coaxing collapsing hope, trimming false hope, stirring a bit to let the spark catch the wick, and, with a steady flame and steadfast fidelity, light the path ahead.

Hunger

A hungry person does not inquire as to the recipe of the soup, nor does the thirsty person question the molecular composition of the water that slakes thirst. Rather the hungry know their hunger, the thirsty know their thirst. They gratefully receive what is offered – soup, bread, water, the sustenance of life...

Currently I am, and have been for a while, working toward a theology degree. My second, in fact. But my hunger is not for theology. It is for God. However study and information and ideas and analysis can sometimes cause one to forget one’s hunger. One begins asking about ingredients, and recipes, and things of the mind rather than the real spiritual hunger that leads us to God, and that draws us together around a hearth in a community of those who hunger.

The ingredients of the soup, the composition of the water can be a refuge for those who have forgotten their hunger, who no longer feel their thirst. Then the “recipes” – whether Christological, Eucharistic, Biblical, or other – can become recipes for criticism and comparison.

They can also distract us from our true hunger, and thus our true poverty. And yet our own emptiness is the birthplace of true knowledge, of true compassion, of true community.

I hope that in addition to sitting at the living room hearth with a book in hand, that I always sit even longer at the kitchen hearth - aware of my emptiness, receiving God's fullness, and sharing God's bounty with others - understanding that the 'recipe' is one I will never understand. Because true grace, true gift, is beyond understanding. My limited understanding, my words, cannot capture or contain the height and breadth of the Eternal Word. Nor can the understanding or words of the person next to me at the hearth. Our shared spiritual hunger brings us together to the hearth of blessing. May other, lesser, hungers not pull us apart.