I could have expected it, actually: another holidays, another period of “enhanced liturgical activity” and there come immediately other “liturgical pieces”. There are so many and they vary so much this time that, beginning to write them down, I myself don’t know if I can combine them into some consistent whole. But I’ll do my best…
On this year’s first Sunday we attended a service in the former Dominican monastery in Erfurt (Germany). It was here at the beginning of the 14th century that the prior was the philosopher, preacher and mystic, Meister Eckhart. Today, already at home, going through his writings, I came across this sentence: Das Auge, in dem ich Gott sehe, das ist dasselbe Auge, darin mich Gott sieht; mein Auge und Gottes Auge, das ist ein Auge, ein Erkennen und eine Liebe … ( The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love …)
Who has read the first part of the “Liturgical Pieces” does probably understand at once that such an approach appeals to me. Also Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, whom I quoted then at great length, said something similar: “Your eyes are the eyes of the Holy One, therefore look with them like he does”.
But if we approach it in such a way, what does it mean for prayer and the liturgy?
We spent a few days in a monastery. Every morning we would waddle, sleepy, to the oratory (when you feel as if someone poured sand into your eyes, are these still God’s eyes? Well, either God
has really become man and knows what it means to be totally sleepy, or all that talk about his incarnation is not worth a damn. Moreover, if we believe certain people, the monastic life was not entirely unfamiliar to Jesus due to his connections with the Essenes) in order to say together with the monks the words which should be the first words of the day: “O Lord, open Thou my lips”. The same words, taken from Psalm 51, we can find not only at the beginning of each Evensong, but also in the
Amida
, which is the main element of services in the Jewish tradition. For someone who, like me, had a chance to get used to the idea that prayer is our daily “conversation with God”, there is something disturbing about these words. In order for a conversation to take place at least two people are needed. Here, however, at the very beginning of the conversation the two people merge with one another and eventually it is not clear who actually opens their lips to speak. Kushner writes:
Wouldn’t it make more sense to say something like, “Here I am God, ready to begin our conversation,” or “Permit me to introduce myself,” or “I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye on certain things,” something that would accentuate the dialogic nature of what will follow. For there to be a conversation, an intercession, there must be two discrete parties. It takes two to tango.
In much (but not all) of the Hebrew Bible and the prayerbook, God and people are separate, distinct, discrete, autonomous, independent, and apart from one another. God says this, we say that. God does this, we do that. God’s there, we’re here. The energy of the whole thing comes precisely from our being separate from one another. So why begin our personal prayers with a denial of that mutual autonomy and free will?
The psalm says, “God, would you please open my mouth.” I ley, who’s working my mouth anyway, me or God? Who’s praising God, me or God? What’s going on here?
And again: who has read the first part (perhaps there was even somebody who, encouraged by it, started to read Kushner’s books) won’t be surprised by the answer he immediately gives himself:
What’s going on here is another spiritual paradigm, one in which God and people are not only not distinct from one another, but are literally within one another. God is the ocean and we are the waves. In the words of the Hasidic maxim, “Alles is Gott,” “It’s all God.” My mouth is God’s mouth. My praises are God’s words. In Rabbi Kalnoymos Kalmish Shapira of Piesetzna’s words, “Not only does God hear our prayers, God prays them through us as well!”
The words of the Amida that will follow may sound like they come from me, but in truth they come from a higher source.
Source : Eyes Remade for Wonder , p. 171.
It is not an easily thing for me to open my mouth for prayer. The thought that this is completely pointless regularly crosses my mind. What’s the use? Isn’t it better to get to work first thing in the morning, to go through the mail, check if someone needs me, or, if I’m not in a hurry that given day, to listen for a while to some good music? Of course, when I turn on my laptop, I eventually come across one of the prayer sites, and there finally sound the words: “Lord, open Thou my lips”, but they very often are somewhat superficial and without conviction. What is interesting (some will probably say it’s rather horrible and should be condemned…), I have recently not even been feeling guilty because of this. I simply accept this as a part of my reality. I’m not a giant of prayer, and that’s it! That’s why, whenever I can, I visit the monasteries in order to let my self be carried by the waves of prayer, to join the other singing voices. And that is why I was that disappointed and angry when, on our way back from Werningshausen, we stopped in Dresden to finally see the rebuilt Frauenkirche , and it turned out we were only 15 minutes late for the noonday prayer. It would have been a beautiful end of our monastic week. But, unfortunately, we walked around the church making photos, and I felt, literally and metaphorically, separated from the praying community which had just gathered in it. “I want too!” echoed all the time in my head, and my anger and disappointment focused of course on Loukas, for whom, generally speaking, I wasn’t the best companion at the time. And still, it would have been enough to remember my last visit 10 years ago. The end of the reconstruction of the church was yet far away, but there was already a chapel in the crypt. When I arrived at Neumarkt, I didn’t realize I would be there for the beginning of a service. Fortunately, I managed to convince my companions, who would rather haved walked through Dresden’s beautiful old town, to stay at it. It was a true gift, but you can’t receive gifts everyday, and sometimes it so happens that we are late to pick them up…
How eagerly (not to say how compulsively, which would be perhaps closer to the truth ;-)) I am looking for the places of common prayer, both in the real life and the virtual reality, has in any case to do with the fact that I am truly lousy at praying, and I often think that, if I decide to do something as pointless as prayer, I need at least a few lunatics around me to make me feel better… From time to time there comes up this thought: my eyes are the eyes of God, my lips are his lips; and then for a moment it is unimportant what I myself think of prayer, the attitude I have to it, whether I see sense in it or not… God desires my lips (Alan Jones is right, faith is a love affair!), needs them, desires me, desires unity with me, and “my heart is truly restless until it rests in the Lord”. Yet this doesn’t happen often. Perhaps that is better, actually. Who would stand a life comprising only of “peak experiences”? Here we come across another aspect of the whole thing, probably the most difficult one, especially for someone who has been thought from his childhood to disregard the obligatory saying of prayers commended by the tradition: the discipline of prayer. I have many times heard and read that regular prayer, even if from time to time said without deeper conviction, is an indispensable spiritual exercise. But what is this exercise actually about, if not simply about developing a habit? I’ll come back for a moment to Kushner’s text:
Prayer may ultimately be an exercise for helping us let go of our egos, hopelessly anchored to this world where one person is discrete from another and from God, and soar to the heavens where we realize there is a holy One to all being and that we have been an expression of it all along. “God, open my lips so that my mouth may declare Your praise.”
I have to admit, I have a kind of a problem with these “heavens”. As my Facebook status I quoted today a famous Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh: People usually consider walking on water or on thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth . Yet someone who had to do with the writings of Rabbi Lawrence for a longer time, knows that their author doesn’t have any inclination towards escapism. Kushner’s mysticism is a mysticism of everyday life, constant discovering how extraordinary the ordinary things are. The point is not to escape from the earth, but, walking on it and fulfilling everyday duties, to exercise seeing and realizing what St. Thomas Gospel says:
Yeshua says… I am the light shining upon all things. I am the sum of everything, for everything has come forth from me, and towards me everything unfolds. Split a piece of wood, and there I am. Pick up a stone and you will find me there. (logion 77)
And a little bit further on:
His students asked him, “On what day will the kingdom arrive?” “Its coming cannot be perceived from the outside,” he said. “You cannot say, ‘Look, it’s over there,’ or ‘No, here it is.’ The Father’s realm is spreading out across the face of the earth, and humanity is not able to perceive it.” (logion 113)
When I quote these words, which we know only in the Coptic translation, I cannot forget about the barbarian massacre of Coptic Christians in Alexandria a few day ago. And again there arises in me the same question I posed in the first part, one, that I unfortunately know for sure, I will pose many more times: How come: “it’s all God”? Truly “all”? Including all these most horrible, most perverse things we do to one another? Should we simply accept them?
I can’t counter with anything such news as this that came to us from Egypt several days ago. I can’t and I don’t want to! I won’t write about “God’s ordinances”, impossible to comprehend by the “limited human mind”. I don’t believe in God who “orders” something like that, or – as the “light” version of the same perverse teaching has it – only “allows it”. What is more, I think that once you believe in such a God, there is virtually no reason not to believe also that he requires of you to become an “instrument” to fulfill his malignant “ordinances” and raise your hand against someone who thinks, feels, believes or looks different than you. In this context and in this moment, I would like to quote the Jahreslosung – a random Biblical text drew out this years by the Moravian Brethren in Herrnhut: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good . (Romans 12:21). If I’m praying now for something concrete, it is among other things that these words shine in the hearts and mind of the Copts, especially those who desire revenge.
Overcome evil with good … In my thoughts I come back to the Dresden Frauenkirche , which I finally had chance to see it in its full beauty after it had been rebuilt. This sanctuary – a pearl of sacral Baroque – became a victim of the allies’ pointless cruelty and their desire of revenge. They launched a barbarian bombing raid on the defenseless city filled with refugees, a city which was an indispensable part of the world’s cultural heritage. The perpetrators have never been tried, since they were the winners of the war… For many years there has been a ruin in the heart of the city – a silent, yet how meaningful, witness of human cruelty. One of many on this earth… I have seen it many times, and, the truth be said, I have became used to that sight. The inhabitants of Dresden have not. All these years they have hoped that their “cathedral” can be rebuild, and it eventually happened: with help of many people from all around the world! Today the magnificent dome of the Frauenkirche is surmounted by a golden cross made by the son of a pilot who took part in the bombing, and in the altar there is a copy of the cross made of three nails found in the ruins of the Coventry Cathedral after it had been bombed by the Germans, a symbol of reconciliation between the most heavily afflicted former enemies. The Anglican clergy from the parish in Berlin celebrate there an Evensong once a month.
The church has been rebuilt with utmost care, but the reconstruction was not meant to remove the traces of what happened almost 70 years ago. You can see them everywhere. One of them
speaks to me in a special way. At the first glance you can’t see it, but when your eyes finally get used to the Baroque splendor, you start to notice the contrast of the crude bricks of the altar. They were left the way they were when the building was a ruin. The altar: the liturgical centre, a symbol of Christ’s Presence.
Split a piece of wood, and there I am. Pick up a stone and you will find me there
…Standing in front of the altar in
Frauenkirche
, I was thinking about the Incarnation again, about its price, actually. The price God pays to become a man. No, I don’t mean the price “paid for our sins”, or even the death on the cross. I mean the price of being human, which, sooner or later, everyone will know, the price of our
Sein-zum-Tode
(Being-toward-death). The price of being a part of creation. The price of entering this world, createdness, fragility, vulnerability. That’s what the Dresden altar told me about. And therefore, standing in front of it, I was praying: “Lord, open Thou my lips”, and when I lack words, accept my silence – to your glory – and make it a part of your silence. Was there any sense in it? For me, in that moment and in that place, there was…
