Rector's Blog: Nourished by Ritual

Maybe it wasn’t cereal bowls for you. Maybe you can close your eyes and immediately picture the plates and flatware you used at the dinner table, or the glass you used for juice. What is it for you? Can you see it?

These things were not, in themselves, spectacular. They were simply there every day. They did not need to prove themselves as flawlessly designed. We don’t remember them for being particularly beautiful. We remember them because we used them over and over again for years. I can still remember placing the bowl on the coffee table in the family room then sliding down the couch onto the floor – because if I sat on the couch itself, the bowl would be too low. So I’d sit criss-cross on the floor and that blue bowl overstuffed with cereal and milk would be just below my chin, and that way I wouldn’t spill and maybe my mom wouldn’t notice I hadn’t used a placemat. I realize now I loved it there.

Insignificant all by itself, played out over a whole childhood, it becomes definitive. It shapes something within me. The memory of it tells me something about myself. It carries weight. This is how ritual works. You are being formed and transformed and you think you’re just eating breakfast.

I am not supposed to tell you that nothing significant happens during a worship service. Especially because I’m a priest, and especially because worship is so central to our identity in the Episcopal Church. What’s more, we say (and I believe) that Jesus shows up every single time we worship – that God is with us in a beautiful, miraculous, and practical way. In every Sunday service we share communion. In our tradition we believe that Christ is actually present in the communion meal. How could I call that insignificant?

Well, it is and it isn’t. It is insignificant in the sense that each week is not designed to blow your mind or make you clap and shout. It’s insignificant in that it’s literally created to happen over and over again, week after week, year after year, with roughly the same order of events and movements, beats and words. Some people drive by without noticing. Each week we work hard to make it beautiful and intentional and we give all of ourselves to it. And at the same time, each week we move forward under the impression that there is going to be a next week. This is especially helpful for me to remember when I mess up.

And at the same time, I am reminded of the words of Frederick Buechner, who once wrote, “all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

Some people find themselves crying as they sit in the pews. Sometimes they know why, and sometimes they don’t. Or they laugh at themselves, or at a corny joke in a sermon, or both. They hear a new song, an old song that hits them in a new way. They find themselves moved. Someone smiles at them, shakes hands. They get used to sitting in the same place, studying the fray on the binding of a hymnal or an otherwise nondescript mark on the column near them. The play of the sunlight bent through one bit of stained glass they keep noticing for no apparent reason but after so long it becomes their favorite window. Significance emerges. It is not manufactured. It has always been there waiting. This is ritual.

For me it really is communion, which we call the eucharist – meaning thanksgiving. As you know, I’m usually working during communion. But just the other day I got to sit in the back of the church and watch and listen as my friend and co-worker Melanie did the work. If I weren’t a priest I’d always be in the back row or the balcony. I grew up in the balcony – another ritual. Sometimes I hear every word, and sometimes I get distracted or introspective and whole stanzas have gone by. Sometimes I kneel, and sometimes I stand. Either way, this is where I want to be. Because before I know it, the usher is inviting me to join the line, and then I am walking up the aisle, surrounded by people and love, and then there I am near the altar. And again I kneel. And here the ritual is so unspectacular I can barely contain myself. I put my hands out and the priest drops some bread in them and tells me it’s Jesus, and then I eat it, and then the wine comes and that’s Jesus too, so I drink it and I cross myself and I stand up and walk away.

To show my empty hands, with nothing in them, nothing to give, to do so without fanfare or drama, and have the priest look at me and give me some bread and tell me the same thing she told the dozens of people before me – that this is God and God is for me and with me and I am never alone – to have her say it so plainly and then just move on, to eat the bread and drink the cup and get up and walk away as if nothing has happened just like it did last week and just like it will next week – to do this, it turns out, is the most magnificent grace. The mercy and power and love and presence of God in the nearly unnoticeable moment.

This ritual is nourishment. I have decided to come back week in and week out, to let the insignificance play out over my life. To let the significance emerge. It forms me and transforms me, and I’ll think I’m just going to church.

My morning routine has changed from when I was a child. These days a dog wakes me up, and I stumble downstairs to let her out. Instead of cereal, it’s a protein bar, and no blue bowl. I pull out my phone and play Wordle. I message my friend Andy and tell him my score. He messages me and tells me his. That’s how we say I love you every day. It’s all grace.