Different Can Be Good

I could see it in his eyes as he sat next to me last night.  We see each other at our kids' events, and here we were at the end of a swim meet we weren't even sure was going to happen a few hours earlier.  We talked about all the things everyone else is talking about:  the crowds at the grocery store, the run on toilet paper, the uncertainty of whether the kids would even be in school next week.  So, there it was in his expression, and in mine too, even as we joked:  uncertainty.

Over the last 48 hours, we have all been waking up to the reality that things are going to be different for a bit, that normalcy is quickly disappearing as fast as those rolls of toilet paper.  Work will look different.  School will be different.  Church will be different.  And this will be okay.  It really will.  This "different" will be a good thing for those around us.  It will slow the spread of this virus and allow us to indirectly extend care to those most at risk:  our health care workers, our elderly, our neighbors.  Sure, there will also be inconveniences with this different.

But, different truly can be good.  Let me give an example.

The first several times I attended a prayer service in St. Meinrad's church, it seemed like a weird different.  It was so different than any worship service I had ever been to before.  No one really spoke to me when I entered.  There were six or seven people sitting in solid wooden chairs, two on one side and the others across an open expanse of marble tile.  Each worshiper sat holding a small bulletin, a collection of prayers and psalms and music.  A few Benedictine monks were already in their stalls, a series of high-backed booths where the brothers gather five times a day for prayer.  Other monks began to gather and move to their seats as the bells on the church towers began to ring out.  Another monk handed me and the other visitors those small bulletins.  He didn't say anything, and I quietly nodded as I took my bulletin and went to my own chair.

Then, silence.  No one was doing anything or saying anything.  We were just sitting there briefly with our thoughts, my own racing through the morning's class and conversation.  Someone to my right cleared his throat.  The cavernous space collected the slight interruption.  And not long after that, someone tapped two quick hits on a wooden bowl.  Tap-tap.  

The monks rose for prayers, with one of them leading them into the midday hymn.  Slowly, though.  And mindfully.  The rest of our company joined in and sang forth words of remembrance and gratitude and praise.  We sat down and kept to the same steady pace as we moved into the psalms.  One monk began with the first line of Psalm 121, "I lift up my eyes to the hills ...," and then the rest of us would speak its truth and carry us to its end.  

The same thing for Psalm 122 and even 123.  We finished.  There was quiet.  Someone stood to read a word from the Gospels.  And we all stood to hear its word.  Then we sat.  More silence.  Silence for at least two minutes.  Maybe more.  And then we rose once more to finish with a prayer and a sung hymn.

Everything about it just seemed so strange.  So foreign.  I found myself curious, even a bit anxious, at what was happening, especially in those Mr. Bean-like moments when those around me prostrated or crossed themselves or knelt with the stool before them and I haphazardly tried to keep pace.  

But, in time, I came to receive for what it was.  Different.  But also good.  Different.  But also deeply meaningful.  

There's something wonderfully joyful about our own style of worship - complete with its embraces and eager greetings and mingling about during the passing of the peace.  But, there's also something deeply meaningful and even holy in this other style down at St. Meinrad.  There's a sense of reverence ... a reverence for the holiness around us ... in the space ... in God's presence in the moment ... even in the holiness of my neighbor sitting three chairs away who clears his throat or the elderly monk who enters shuffling in Birkenstocks on a walker.  Holy because we are pausing long enough to receive this incredibly powerful news:  God is in the midst of this world at all times, in all of its beauty and cavernous wonder and splendor gathered around us, but also in the frailty here, the weakness, the humanity.

These next few weeks will be marked by this type of different.  It will be true for us as we worship.  Our interactions will be less open, more reserved.  But that's quite alright.  In this season, new shoots will emerge as our world slows a bit.

Doug Harms posted a poem yesterday that I found to be extremely beautiful and helpful and also deeply resonant with my experience down at St. Meinrad.  I think it's a fruit the Lord can give us even in this different season, and - so - I share it with you.  It's about the Jewish idea of sabbath and how even this moment presents us with the chance to embrace the world around us ... in spite of ... or even as a result of ... the different we are journeying into together.  Enjoy it and may its word give us encouragement on this day that is traditionally the start of the Jewish sabbath, a time of holiness and the chance to treasure what God has given us:

Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love--
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

--Lynn Ungar 3/11/20