A.......! It's Still Lent!

[note to the reader: the virtue of Christian charity has temporarily left me due to the vices of annoyance and criticism, otherwise known as liturgical wrath]

Today I went to the Tri-Wizard Tournament, which is of course a worship gathering of the three theological colleges wherein we compete to see who can be most creative with the order of service while still maintaining a semblance of tradition and decorum.

Today’s theme was “When in Our Music God is Glorified: a celebration in music and praise.” The idea was great, actually: that there would be a service crafted around the singing of hymns all centered around the theme presented in the first hymn, whose refrains were sprinkled throughout the order of service as a structuring meditational aid, bringing you always back to the main message. A+ for actually crafting a service that looks like what it intends to celebrate.

Unfortunately, the first hymn was “When in Our Music God is Glorified,” whose refrain is “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”…during Lent. I’m not sure if I was the only person who didn’t sing those words, since of course this word is supposed to disappear from the liturgy, since it’s Lent. In the pre-Vatican II rite, the omission of the word actually began on Septuagesima; do we have to go shortening that liturgical period even more by ignoring it entirely?

Because this was the first – the central – hymn, the whole order of service was sprinkled with reflection phrases saying “Hallelujah!,” which I admit sort-of ruined the mood for me.

Music is important to me. Liturgy is important to me. I feel like I’ve been horribly betrayed on both counts here. Ironically, the third verse of the song reads, “So has the church in liturgy and song, in faith and love, through centuries of wrong, borne witness to the truth in every tongue.” Um, hello? What exactly do liturgy and song witness to if not the birth, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, each in their own season, following an ever-flowing rhythm? Today’s service feels something like being betrayed by Harry Potter – as if something so loyal and good were broken, leaving a trail of broken pieces that make it difficult to recapture that pure magic again.

The refrain of the closing hymn, “Go to the World,” reads, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” So the whole worship service, expressing our praise through song, is framed and filled with liturgically improper worship and praise. Wow. Nothing this total has ever happened to me before. Oh sure, sometimes people add “Alleluia” to the closing blessing during Lent (which also happened today, and which already pisses me off enough), but an entire service? Wow.

I admit that, during the blessing, I actually rolled my eyes. This probably makes me a bad Christian, since that’s not exactly worshipful, but I couldn’t help it. I think I may not actually have been in a frame of mind for any of the service to count as prayer. What with the disposition of the heart being important and all.

After the service, people actually clapped for the organist! Dear Lord, why would anyone clap after prayer? I’ve never seen anyone break into applause after evening prayer. This is probably because a) you were all praying together so you’re congratulating yourselves, which is weird, and b) because laudatory applause directed at a musician makes the whole thing seem like a show, put on either for you or for God Himself. Prayer is not a show. Nor is it to be congratulated. The ‘well done, good and faithful servant’ belongs to God alone to give. Prayer resides in the heart and, though expressed in music, liturgical gesture and word, is not composed of them.

After the clapping, I confess that I started to laugh. Couldn’t help myself, and actually it took a while for the feeling to subside. I still kind of feel it right now. My levity makes me feel strangely joyful about it all…perhaps my heartfelt mirth counts as prayer?

Or is my sin of pride / intolerance / wrath / annoyance / and criticism in dire need of repentance and reconciliation?

Only the great Tri-Wizard Cup can decide.

Flower Power

The January issue of Awake! (a Jehovah’s Witness magazine) uses the orchid as an example of Divine creation: surely such a flower testifies to the fact that God created the world, since it is clearly intelligently designed!

Well…what does intelligent design mean, anyway? Does it mean that God sat up in heaven drawing blueprints of flowers and then scattered the perfect little seeds? I dunno. If He did, then He must not have created everything at once: if all creation were simultaneous, we’d run into a little problem I like to call ‘the dinosaurs.’

So, every once in awhile God makes something new and then plunks it down on the earth fully developed. This causes a few problems, too. Among other things, it begs the question of why no one’s ever caught God with His hand in the cookie jar (so to speak).

Another intelligent design theory is the ever-popular Deism: God created the ‘stuff’ of everything and then sat back and let it evolve all by itself. The Clockmaker God, Newton’s God. This is a bit problematic, too. For one thing, there’s the question of whether He actually knew what all this stuff was going to turn into or was shooting in the dark. For another, it’s a bit odd that a hands-off God would do things like Divine Revelation and Redemption: shouldn’t everything just evolve to a perfect end all by itself?

The idea that God upholds creation by – oh, I don’t know – thinking the laws of physics is not particularly comforting. As it turns out, things like the speed of light haven’t always been constant. And if God, like, sneezes and loses concentration, will we all wake up with wings? (that would explain the angels)

Creationism and intelligent design are so mind-boggling that I’m tempted to ignore them altogether. The only problem is that I believe both that evolution is true and that the world is not the product of complete chance. Oh, I can believe that specific subspecies of orchids are totally random, since that doesn’t really change their ‘orchid-ness,’ or that the entire type of flower was just one possible outcome. The fact that they’re so delicate and complicated and beautiful, however, I think could only be true in a universe where God carefully watched over things as they took their own course, making sure that they could become what they are.

It’s the same with humans: why can’t we be both descended from apes and the special creations of God? A soul can’t be evolved because it’s supernatural, and only the natural can evolve. Nor can it be separated from the natural body and remain what it is – that’s why the final resurrection is embodied, so that the human person exists in wholeness. God wants us to be able to smell the flowers and see their beauty, not just to be able to contemplate them as intellectual objects from within some disembodied existence.

God created each and every one of us as human persons, knitting us together in our mothers’ wombs. But we also belong to this world. Anyway, it’s like everything that makes us not-apes – and everything that makes us apes – was able to happen because God nurtured and helped and made it possible, knowing what it is that He had created the world and everything in it to become. After all, aren’t our lives a mixture of precisely these two things: the self-direction of free will coming from inner growth, and the help of God that makes our actualization – our becoming who we are – possible? Our lives a collaboration between us and God in a world where we do not stand alone.

Lousy Smarch Weather

'Spring Break' (also known as reading week) came to an abrupt end with today's return to normal activities. Since I have no classes, the main effect on my life is that now my doctor's appointments start again, and I can look forward to spending an hour-and-a-half a week, give or take, exploring the ways in which various experiments are making me sick.

More depressing than thrilling, I think.

What I realized during Spring Break is that I am desperately lonely. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. Just plain lonely, perhaps. This business of 'recovery' tends to be quite solitary: following an exercise program, sticking to a food plan that makes it difficult to eat what I want (plus, it's Lent; double bummer), a daily schedule that seems to take forever to get through because I'm always tired...all conducive to the lifestyle of a hermit.

If only refined sugar was still my real friend. *dejected sigh*

At least now I can get back to daily prayer. Which of course brings up the feeling of isolation inherent in spending the bulk of my social time with a group to which I don't really belong. I could just be feeling that way because the properties of my current treatment include depression, or it could be true. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because the reality I'm stuck living in is the one generated by my brain. It complicates things that I'm often tired enough that I can't interact meaningfully with other people anyway. I feel like this isolates me even more, but it's something I can't break free of. If only people would talk to me anyways! If only the world was made of rainbows and butterflies! If only alarm clocks were made out of chocolate!...except in Lent.

I did get to hang out with one of my best friends last week though, and that was great! I am lucky that I have this kind of friends: the ones that love me back, that I know would hug me if I asked, who are full of joy and sunshine and happiness! I love you, and you're all totally amazing and awesome and probably the reason I'm still here (you know who you are)! Survival is easier when you don't have to do it alone.

I just don't get to see my friends very often, because they have lives. Hence the loneliness.

Well, winter sometimes has barren frigid blizzards that then shape up into snowmen and impressive ice sculptures.

And sometimes summer has bees.