November 4, 2013

Liturgy as Essay

I recently read a speech by playwright Tony Kushner given to other writers, about how and why people write. One of the things he said was this: “We write to negotiate our own relationships with momentariness and permanence, to speak with the dead, to bring them back to life, or try to, and of course we always fail to bring them back, and we call that failure art.” This sentiment, in some ways, applies to our efforts in the church as well.

Yesterday was All Saints Sunday. At my church we brought photos of our loved ones and lit candles for those we have loved and lost. At churches around the county people celebrated the souls of the dead and all the ways they have touched us and continue to do so.

These liturgies are also an attempt, like writing is for Tony Kushner (and for me), to negotiate our own impermanence, to speak with the dead (and with God) and to bring them into our lives and hearts. There’s a sense in which they fail, in which our liturgy and our prayers are imperfect things, attempts that get us closer to God and to the truth but can never quit reach it. Perhaps that imperfection imbues our liturgies with a certain beauty. Those imperfections certainly mean they are human creations, with missed cues and misspellings and off-key voices.

One definition of the word essay is “an effort to perform or accomplish something.” I personally love the word, and love writing essays, those attempts at understanding, at taking memories and experiences and bits of the world and making something out of them. 

On this All Saints Sunday and every Sunday and every day that we pray, may we see our liturgies and prayers also as imperfect attempts, essays, to get at something that is just beyond our grasp, something that can give us hope and healing and help us love better, even in our imperfect understanding.