age, and the experiences of my spirit wander outside the boundaries of accepted and promulgated Christian orthodoxy, I wonder. And that’s what these pages are about, my wonderings. Call it “speculative theology.”
So as I sit in church on this Christmas Eve and wonder these days, I say to myself, “Now, Bowers, this is your chosen standing stone circle. So, what’s it about? What is going on here, at the describable level, or at the unknowable?” The answer comes quietly, muttered deep inside myself in mumblings incomprehensible and unrepeatable, but significant. I can almost hear the words, the ancient truths, but not quite. Not yet. But I keep listening. And anticipating.
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Palm Sunday, 2008—Sitting in Church
Palm Sunday has never been satisfying to me, as a liturgist or as a participant. It is such an odd perversion of the regular Sunday liturgy. We begin with that curious little blessing of palm branches which are then given to all without instruction what to do with them (the kids’s notion of sticking them in each others’s eyes might be the best suggestion). And then we sing a hymn, sometimes processing about inside, or outside, or from outside to inside (Stephen’s favorite) or watching others (the choir and crucifer, for instance) process around, all very messy and poorly organized. My sense and experience is that congregations don’t like this falderal. But then, that’s what I (as liturgist) have always intended, that they should be very discomforted by it. After all, it intends to capture just a smidgeon of what the disciples and bystanders might have felt, doesn’t it?
Back in our usual (translate “accustomed”) places, we go through some regular prayers and readings and such, standing and sitting (perhaps even kneeling), until we find ourselves sitting(!) in the middle of the Gospel reading, listening to the priest read (or having the Gospel read as a dramatic reading by members of the congregation) with all of us shouting “Crucify him, crucify him!” the whole Passion Story (and t-t-t-that, folks, is why we are wont to call this Passion Sunday, because we read the whole passion story in case some here won’t make it back before Easter morn). The preacher preaches, trying to make sense of this and linking all of Holy Week together. And from there on out it’s a regular Sunday Eucharist.
I’ve never felt it worked. But then in seminary and ever afterward no one taught us how to make it work, or what “work” might mean even in this context. What should this Palm Sunday liturgy do for us, or to us? We know that probably it’s all most will see of Holy Week until Easter morning (although this week is the very core of what it’s all about, not just Easter morning, but all of this week [yet few will participate on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday. And gawdforbid they might do anything about it on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Saturday], and then they’ll wonder why Easter turned out to be a let-down, not the whoop-tee-doo we want it to be.)
Holy Week tells the center and depth of the story, what Christianity is all about, how in Jesus’ self-sacrifice God’s redeeming of His people was worked out. This week is really the only liturgical work of the Christian year, and everything else is build-up or follow-up (or towards the end of Pentecost let-down). So this is it! How do we make it spiritually richer for people (assuming that they, like me, want it richer)?
And then I muse, “When you (Bowers, or anyone else still listening) have mastered all this (the Passion story, and the liturgy, and the Scriptures, and standard Christian theology, and all the exercises and stuff that goes with it), then do not give up, do not stop to rest a while. Do not think, “This is it, this is all I need.” Because this is only a beginning place, one foundation stone, one among several possibilities, on which to build our spiritual lives.” There are other foundation stones too: Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, naturalism. They all are reaching toward the same, toward the Eternal. And while we proclaim that ours is the best way, maybe even the only way, I’m not so sure there are not other ways, equally good, perhaps better ways, to discover the Eternal in our lives. But I am thinking that this stuff, by itself, will not do it!
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Gors Fawr
Near the beginning of my pilgrimage sabbatical in Wales I hired a guide to carry me from St. David’s at land’s end down to Tenby on the southern coast, and enroute to show me some of the more powerful ancient ruins strewn along the way. I was on my way to the Cistercian monastery on Caldey Island to write my second book, daily prayers written in the Celtic tradition (i.e., of Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica) with a brief, opening exposition of Celtic Christian spirituality to buttress and inform the readers of my daily prayers. Terry John was my guide that day, a native of the region, well-educated, who had taught in London most of his years, but was now retired back homeward. And being a native he had the credentials to ask questions of his native elders and peers, questions about ancient lore and beliefs and traditions. So he carried within him ancient lore that is nowhere in the books. He took me past a single standing stone that on a certain night each spring is painted white. No one in the community seemed to know, or, more likely, was willing to admit, who did that. Nor had anyone any idea (or was willing to admit) why that was done. It had always been. I asked him to take me to a circle of standing-stones among other things. I wanted to experience it more than see it. I’d seen others, but always when I’d been in groups. I wanted to have quiet time alone in a circle, to feel whatever might be felt there, to sense whatever might be sensed. He took me to Gors Fawr. It is a modest circle of seventy-three feet with sixteen local stones, none being more than thirty inches tall. I wandered among the stones. He told me facts about the stones and the circle. After some time I asked him, “What was this about? I know some people claim these circles were astrological observatories, others that they were the site of religious ceremonies. What do you think they were?” He was quiet for a few moments (as though considering whether I could be trusted with his answer), and then shared that he thought the circles were multi-purpose. That they served as a community gathering place, and certainly were constructed with astrological dimensions for agricultural purposes, and were possibly also market places, might have been used for ceremonials and religious rites, perhaps for political and civic and governance gatherings. He found it significant that the circles were often within sight of other circles, so they must have had some larger-than-community purposes as well. And that all made sense to me. I did feel something at that circle, particularly at one of the stones, but I’d be hard pressed to tell you what I felt, certainly not something I’m aware of feeling in everyday happenings and places.
So these days when I find myself in church I usually am asking myself, “Bowers, this is the circle of standing-stones you have chosen, and that seems to have chosen you. What’s it about? What’s going on here today? Why are these people and I gathered here? If this is our metaphor, our circle of standing stones, what is it saying? What is it pointing toward? To what unknowable and inexpressible reality is it trying to give voice? What am I listening for here?”
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The Liminal
I need to wonder aloud for a few minutes about the liminal. A Latin word, limen which we translate “threshold,” that member of the doorway which we step over as we go in and out the house, or maybe we linger on it as we briefly contemplate the day ahead. The ancient Celts considered thresholds to be sacred places, places where we are most likely to encounter the holy, the sacred, the spirit world, the LORD. Not just doorway thresholds, but all kinds of thresholds, places of transition, when we step from one place, one time, one life into another. All primitives who live close to nature know about limens and liminality. Where the water of a spring which has spent eons underground unseen in blinded blackness, suddenly gushes forth cool, clear, fresh into the light and air for drinking and giving life. Where the river courses along the bank carrying flotsam and boats. Where the mountain top touches the sky. When the day meets the night, and night the day. Where the forest touches the open plain. At equinox when the dark of night becomes longer than daylight. Where the wilderness meets civilization, or one country warily touches another. When drowsiness slips into sleep.
