A Liturgical Stone?

When the ChristChurch blog was separate from the website, it was easier to mix my personal  reflections with items of particular interest to the church. Now the new website and blog are one and the same. And I need to make sure that the parish blog features the parish. So I’m dusting off an old blog, where I will post thoughts and reflections that I hope you will find interesting and helpful.

But why “Like A Liturgical Stone?” Elsewhere, I’ve described myself as an Episcopal priest with one foot in the 4^th century and the other in the 21^st. In some ways, I consider myself quite traditional, in other ways more progressive. I’ll let my friends decide in what ways I’m one or the other.

As I was thinking of a new title for the blog, I thought of the classic proverb, “Arolling stone gathers no moss.” Originally, it was a metaphor for someone who could never root themselves in anything solid or lasting. In modern times, the meaning has for many been turned on its head. The moss which once symbolized stability is now equated with stagnation. And to be rolling is to be open to new ideas and experiences.

As I look back on my life, there has been one steady rock, particularly in the last 15 years – liturgy, the life of worship not just on Sunday but every day, the pattern of the Holy Eucharist on Sundays and morning and evening prayer during the week. The tradition of fixed prayer based on the Psalms and reading of scripture is ancient in the best way. The Jewish people have done it for thousands of years. Christians have done it as long as there have been Christians.

That tradition has changed me over the years, slowly but surely. It has made me less defensive, more able to see all sides of contentious issues, more reflective, and more at peace. It is the Rock that I cling to, day after day.

But the liturgical life is also a cycle that begins every year on the first Sunday of Advent. Year after year, we retell the story of God’s love story with the human race, culminating in Jesus Christ. And every year, we hopefully learn something new about God’s love for us in the changing world. It is always the same love, but the telling of it changes as the world changes and God figures out a new way to say, “I love you.” Any relationship must be grounded in something constant, but must also change as the people in the relationship change.

And so the liturgical stone slowly rolls, day after day, year after year, century after century. Let’s roll.