Personal Worship

Oh, I'm a tired woman... but fairly productive too.

I made a good supper with salmon and onions and a side dish of Indian eggplant with mushrooms. Mighty tasty. 'Course then I had a hankering for molasses cookies and we whipped 'em up without a mixer. Cookies made by hand taste better. Weston wanted to stir the hardest part of the batter: the last cup of flour. He was a trooper.

Donovan and David helped too and we had them with milk, of course.

Weston's started writing our grocery lists. He starts with an image of the item then asks how to spell it. Yesterday with glee he added "Reece Puffs" cereal on his own, so Dave bought it. Such a highlight! I chuckled because I remember growing up it felt like we never got sugar cereals, and when we did my brother and I would gobble them up in one day! Enough of Wheaties, Cheerios, Grape Nuts and Raisen Bran... bring on the Golden Grahams! One Christmas I even gave him a box of Captain Crunch as a gift!

I'm very likely tired because I was up late. Some of us from the 'Bud went into Calgary last night to attend a "worship workshop" that ended up being a church service. Rosebud church paid for my ticket as I am on the "worship committee" which basically means I take turns leading the service and assign others to do the same. I also went on behalf of the education team of Rosebud School of the Arts because I teach a drama ministry class in the spring where we design chapel and church services for Rosebud. I went because my friend Shauna who I like very much and has a soft true heart encouraged me to go. And I went because I couldn't find a good enough reason not to. But I had trepidation.

I have enjoyed great freedom in how and when and why and if I worship. God and I have an understanding where we're honest with one another and try not to pretend. (This is a challenge for me and just comes naturally for God.) So, I've enjoyed carving out my own way to connect to God. I also participate in worship singing when I find myself in church, but it's not the most profound part of my relationship with God; that comes in the quiet place, in the innermost place when I name truth.

As far as singing, I don't have an issue about holding back; I sing out all the time for my own pleasure and encourage my students to do the same. So I find it strange to be challenged in a corporate setting to loosen up, break free and sing as an act of obedient worship. I had never thought of singing as an act of obedience. That feels way too limiting, even for the definition of worship, and it robs the joy and honesty right out of it. When someone keeps saying, "Come on!" it becomes peer pressure. Compulsion worship.

I knew I was accountable for putting myself into that situation so I tried to prepare myself beforehand to be gracious, but what I wasn't prepared for was a rock concert! The sound was so loud it reverberated in my chest and the lights were going crazy and the performers were boppin around-- I thought I was back in Vancouver watching U2 with 70,000 fans rather than in a hall at the University of Calgary. Strange... but then not so strange. They're allowed to do a rock concert if they want, the youth certainly seemed to connect (I guess.). What was maddening to me was after the first obnoxious song (with super loud drums and and a screaming electric guitar so that I couldn't hear the melody or the voices), they said it was NOT a concert but an opportunity for all of us to worship. The only rule was to sing out. "If you don't sing well, sing loud!"

...I don't think I need to say much more other than I was sad. I experienced bad art. It was trying to be good performance - good theatre, but it was not fully connected to deep personal truths, to pain and darkness. The singers were not all on their voice, not singing from their soul, they were editing and they were too busy selling something to genuinely get lost in it. And the songs were just a bit hard to follow if you didn't already know them. They weren't particularly musical.

Lots of people in the room didn't seem to mind at all.

I sat and disobeyed half the time. . I joined in singing for the sake of harmony and trying to appreciate the simple repetitive lyrics. I tried praying quietly... I considered leaving, -and then in one song I just tried something. I let my arms sing. I used my hands and upper body and moved to images in my mind from the lyrics and music and responded without voice. I danced. Privately and with my eyes closed. Nobody really knew in the darkness (except the poor lady I accidentally touched in front of me) but God did. I disobeyed the leader lady who wanted me to sing out as though I'd never done it honestly enough before and did my own thing in SILENCE. It was really all I had to give.

And then I was sad again.

My friend Morris made a decision long ago to go into theatre instead of the pulpit because there's more intention in the theatre. There's more attention to detail, more aspiration toward excellence, more commitment and more respect for the message. Usually. Designers, actors and technicians work for hundreds of hours to depict a story for a ticket paying public to sit in the dark and listen to. Everyone who participates understands the rules and they want to be transported.

I find all too often that when a church presumes to tell good story or ask people to loosen up and sing out in weekly worship (the way it takes weeks to prod a scared actor into freedom in my classroom), they're just goading me. I know they assume it's for my own good, but they've adopted this lie that it's easy to do and more noble because it's for God. Sigh.

Well, I saw a lot of people doing what they do at rock concerts - having a fine, kind of alone, time. I heard a religious leader get to assert things while the synthesizer kept a tone going. It's manipulation that works, it just didn't acknowledge it's manipulation. Bono does the same thing as he waxes political in his concert. But he doesn't pretend to tell you isn't a rock concert. It is, and the performers are rock stars. But at the U2 concert, suddenly 70,000 people were singing Amazing Grace without even being asked.

God is in my acting class when I'm challenging a student to risk being more honest. -When I'm asking them to trust me that sharing their genuine, unique soul is a life affirming, God honoring expression, and when it happens, it's truly glorious. No lights, no drums, no peer pressure, just raw glorious truth and art. Well, that's worship to me.