January 19, 2015
Please Pray With Me
I visited a liturgical church
and the large print bulletin was a whopping 22 pages in length. With the
exception of the sermon and announcements, everything was scripted and written out
— prayers, responsive readings, and songs. The words of the prayers had meaning,
but for me they seemed to lack the same spiritual depth that comes when I bow
my head, close my eyes and listen to a corporate prayer. “Come, let us bow down
in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; for he is our
God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care” (Psalm
95:6-7 NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----The mind is an interesting mix of information and emotion. It’s nature as such arises as much from the physical constructs of the brain as it does from the particulars of the stimulus reaching it. We will cry or laugh with movies as if living them ourselves, because their stories enter the mind through more the sensational/emotional stimuli of pictures and sounds of things to which we personally relate. Even speakers can close to automatically touch the imagination through good animated presentation. But reading is first a very intellectual endeavor. Though you may not perceive it this way when reading a captivating novel, the mind must first make sense of the assemblages of squiggles on the paper before the meaning they squiggle ever wells up into the same imaginative centers movies seem to reach automatically. But the poor printed page, no matter how great is the author, must rely upon the reader’s imaginative efforts and ability to come to life.
-----No wonder liturgy seems lifeless. But it isn’t completely dead. My guess is that it merely relies much more on the readers’ effort to bring its information to his own imagination for animating the print. It’s odd why people would go to all this effort while also encountering the reality that most folks won‘t make such effort, or at least can’t do it well. I can see an array of possible reasons, but I can also see a corresponding array of nullifications.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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