Heavenly Rest

I just learned that the design of an Orthodox church sanctuary is intended to give worshippers a foretaste of heaven. The boxy shape signifies Noah’s ark, that image of salvation and protection that can carry the people of God through the vagaries of this world. The high dome represents the age to come when Jesus Christ will unite heaven and earth. All the shiny, ornate stuff shadows streets of gold and jeweled crowns. Incense: unbroken prayer and worship. And those icons that cover the walls, big-eyed golden people perched everywhere one looks? They are that great cloud of witnesses, the saints who have gone before, cheering us on as we run (or limp or crawl) our race amidst the sin, the competing voices, the temptations of this world! (Hebrews 12:1-3)

To my taste those gilded walls and icons, the ornate dividers and the high dome, the incense and candles, and the absence of seating (worshipers stand reverently through long services)—well, it has seemed heavy and foreign.

But consider. These spaces are built for worship. For that one day out of seven when we set aside the mundane and enter in some set-apart way into the Presence of God. Into a measure of heaven. That seventh day when we, along with the Creator God, rest and contemplate the goodness past and the better yet to come.

It then makes sense to me that the designers employed forms, materials, decoration, and elements of light and smell that allude to Biblical images of eternity, images of that coming day when the people of God will cease to strive, and will know permanent, undisturbed peace and joy.

It has been almost a year since I took the time to form into words suitable for this blog-space the images, experiences and ideas that capture me. I’ve done other things, intensely engaged in life and death and change. The biggest chunk of time (and heart and soul) has gone into preparation of two houses. The Spa for the Soul nestles on a Turkish hillside overlooking the Mediterranean. Fair Haven has been relocated from Abu Dhabi to the small farming community of Sequim, Washington.

Many skilled workers helped tear out, reorganize, and use all manner of earthy materials like stone, wood, and plaster to create beautiful spaces. More craftsmen built and carried in comfortable seating, big tables, luxurious bedding and rugs, and so many dishes and pots and pans. Paint. Art on the walls. Books. Gleaming clean floors and windows. Gardens pruned, groomed, planted and fertilized.

Spaces for solitude. Places for conversation. Ways to make music. Necessities for study and work. Materials to get messy and experiment. Some frippery for laughter and play.

As I consider Orthodox architecture and ornament, my heart brims over with surprised joy. A whisper: “That’s what you do, Jeri.” I pray and work toward spaces that represent the REST of God’s glorious seventh day, that celebrate the possibilities of His Presence among us. I work to provide a foretaste, shadowy and incomplete as it may be, of that for which we hope.

My personal evening of the sixth day gathers for these projects. As dusk deepens, I light the candles and lay the meal on the table. I lean into, I celebrate the coming time of sharing with whoever God will bring.

“They raised their voices in praise to the Lord and sang: ’He is good; His love endures forever.’ Then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud, and the priest could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God.” 2 Chronicles 5:13-14

Music to Dad's ears . . . remix

Something still niggled when I posted “Music” earlier this month. The piece was met with energetic amens from several over 45’s, and, I would guess, the silence of the offended.

The thing still out there for me was that, for all Dad’s affirmation of the church music of his early years, he did not find faith, and he left the church pretty much as soon as he left home. I grew up with the impression that for Dad the church represented harsh rules and rigidity.

Then I ran across Denis Haack’s recent essay “None Other Lamb None Other Name.” (Check out www.ransomfellowship.com.)

“I grew up around hymns and early learned to dislike them. It was the only music allowed in our fundamentalist home. I didn’t have a word for it when I was young, but I do remember the huge disconnect that existed between the lyrics we sang and the reality of our lives. The lyrics spoke of abounding joy, rich freedom, the sweetness of God’s presence, while our lives were solemn, judgmental, withdrawn, and regimented. The hymns we sang slowly ate away at my faith…,” he begins.

Denis struggled with the disjunct between words and life. With words he realized he could not sing with integrity. Though Denis did, in time, come to profound faith in Jesus, he says he says there is still Christian music that he cannot sing. He goes on, in his article, to celebrate and expound the beauty and truth of Christina Rossetti’s 1892 meditation on Revelation 5:6, “None Other Lamb.”

Last week I reminded Dad of what he had said about the beauty of the music of his boyhood. I noticed that, for all his love of it, he did not stay with the church, and asked him to share what that was about.

Dad explored my question in vignettes of memory. Being required, even as a young man on leave from military service, to be in church any time the door was open. The embarrassment of sitting in the midst of the congregation one Sunday evening when he knew he reeked of beer and could feel the disapproving glances of all seated nearby. The same 50 songs sung over and over. Dad spoke of visits from music leaders who worked long Sunday afternoons to teach the congregation to sing even more beautifully. “The music made the skin crawl up and down my spine--the sound was that amazing. But it was all about the sound. We never paid attention to the words.” He talked about how belonging to the church obligated his dad to patronize members’ businesses. Seventy years after the fact his shock and disillusionment still penetrated his voice as he told of two church members who cheated his dad, reminding me of a time in the US when church membership was tied to status and commercial interest. He spoke of his dad’s severity and fast, harsh punishments “though I know he always loved me.” And of his mom’s mental instability that often manifested in abuse. Of how she refused to acknowledge that I could be her granddaughter, and would not come anywhere near me.

“I remember when Elvis Presley first was famous. For about 10 years your mom and I wouldn’t listen to him. The morality, the suggestive way he moved. But a day came when we started enjoying it.” Yet, says Dad, “when the church copied Elvis,” when worship music began to take on his style, “well, why would the church imitate someone like him?”

“In the end,” said Dad, “I could never make sense of faith. I still can’t. I’ve given it a lot of thought over the years, but I just can’t.”

Dear friends enjoy a 46-year “mixed marriage.” He is English, of Anglican stock; she is Irish from a Baptist family. Today, she experiences Anglican liturgy and sacramental practice as powerful, life-giving worship; while he, who grew up with it, finds it dry, mindless repetition. Dad recalls the music as beautiful, the words as irrelevant, and the community as legalistic, with a few who would even exploit the others. Childhood experiences and lasting impressions. Who knows what the faith of the adults of so long ago actually meant in their lives?

I still think we need to ask what message the medium communicates, or even what it reveals. But we must always look over and beyond form to the underlying reality. Is there integrity of faith and love that makes the words—and all the rhythms and body language—an expression of something powerful because it is indeed worked out in transformed, grace-filled, faithful lives?

Music to Dad's ears...

My dad is not a churchgoer. Oh, he’s been to church. He grew up in southern parts in the old Church of Christ. He has his reasons for moving away. But he still pokes his head in the door from time to time.

The last time I was in a church with Dad happened in the months after Mom died. I think he hoped to find something to meet the emptiness of his brand-new unwanted life. It wasn’t a good experience. He couldn’t hear the sermon, and the regulars ignored us.

Dad told me that the worst part of that church was the music. I wasn’t surprised, and I jumped to my own conclusions about why. “Too modern. Too loud. Unfamiliar songs and tempos. He is unable to receive the new ways.”

Another lesson in listening. Dad elaborated, and the shallowness of my assumptions was exposed.

The denomination Dad grew up in was one that kept musical instruments out of worship. I don’t know the theology behind it, but I’m familiar with the concept. I would have thought that contributed to a somber, stoic, dare-I-say boring atmosphere.

“The music is sloppy!” Dad told me. “The congregation doesn’t know how to sing! Even the people up front don’t sing well.” I learned that when Dad was a boy, everyone in the congregation was involved in the music. Though they didn’t use them in church, many played instruments and read music. They practiced as they went about their everydays. They learned harmony and descant. They broke into spontaneous song alone and together. They mastered all the words. “The congregation was like a choir, and the singing was beautiful. It was an offering, like we cared about how it sounded to God.”

I often think about what Dad said when I’m in church. The fashion today is for the “worship team” to belt into amplifiers so loud I can’t hear the person next to me, much less the community of faith. When I look around I see that many don’t bother to sing. Maybe it seems pointless when you can’t hear your own voice. Hymnals have vanished so we can’t learn parts and harmony, or memorize words. Rich older hymns are sung at dirge-like pace.

How we express Christian community—or fail to—is a topic that fascinates me. Dad gave me this beautiful image of the community of faith at worship together, each important, each making a unique contribution. No one just a face in a crowd—or perhaps everyone was. No stage personalities.

I never was part of what Dad describes, but I miss the days before amplifiers. I recall worship leaders who delighted in encouraging the congregation to lift harmony and joyful noise, who suggested descants and harmonies, and invited us to blend our voices by listening to the people around us. No trance-like closed eyes, no one voice overshadowing all others.I remember learning, in church at the side of my more-musical friend, how to read music. Grappling to get it, working on it on my own. I remember other things, too. Occasional liturgy, praying the Lord’s prayer as a body, reciting the Apostles’ Creed, sharing prayer requests and being free to make an announcement or share a bit of good news. Has church become a spectator sport? “Sit. Stand. Watch me worship. Listen to me talk.” And what of passers-by outside the building? Do they hear corporate worship, or a single (and not-so-good) miked singer or lecturer?

So, I ask my 55-year-old self, is there something transcendent here, and worth pondering? Is there really a message in the medium, or is this a matter of taste and changing times?

The church at the crossroads...

This Saturday 15 people with gather in our Abu Dhabi home for silent retreat. They come from England, Peru, Japan, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, the US, India, Singapore, Australia, China, Iraq and Jamaica. To think of the prayers that will rise from that global gathering of men and women--Lord, we lay for You a banqueting table, and rejoice in confident assurance that You will nourish us!

(For more on home at the crossroads, see my original post.)