After worship, the chancel was cleared -- pulpit and lectern pushed to the side; communion table and piano rolled to the corner; chairs stacked away. No words would be read or proclaimed in this space for a time; no rituals enacted or songs sun aloud. For the next several days our worship expressions would be footsteps -- silently contributed, one in front of the other, following the circuits of the canvas labyrinth unrolled across the hardwood expanse.
Contributed, but to whom I'm not at all sure. The walking is an act of devotion, to be sure, and so God is surely recipient. But it is just as certainly an act of centering, of quieting, of more consciously "being," and so perhaps the footsteps are equally offered as a profound and encircling gift to self.
Who can say what thoughts arise along the courses and amidst the turns? Who can say what clarities emerge and what insights surface or what prayers are raised or what emotions freed? Who can say what "good" the walking finally does?
Certainly not me. I can only say that I, too, self-consciously slip off my shoes, step in through the entrance, and lose myself among the coming and the going, the stretching and the twisting in a way that is finally finding.
And I leave wishing that all the worship that occupies this floor could somehow be this good.
Contributed, but to whom I'm not at all sure. The walking is an act of devotion, to be sure, and so God is surely recipient. But it is just as certainly an act of centering, of quieting, of more consciously "being," and so perhaps the footsteps are equally offered as a profound and encircling gift to self.
Who can say what thoughts arise along the courses and amidst the turns? Who can say what clarities emerge and what insights surface or what prayers are raised or what emotions freed? Who can say what "good" the walking finally does?
Certainly not me. I can only say that I, too, self-consciously slip off my shoes, step in through the entrance, and lose myself among the coming and the going, the stretching and the twisting in a way that is finally finding.
And I leave wishing that all the worship that occupies this floor could somehow be this good.
No comments:
Post a Comment