Holly Ordway

A Deeper Life of Worship: Why Liturgy Is Valuable

Holly Ordway — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:21:38 -0700

What is liturgy, and why is it valuable?

Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit...

“Liturgy” means a structure of worship, and every church has one, whether the people involved call it that or not. Every service has a structure: a characteristic ordering of the songs, Scripture readings, sermon, prayers, collection, and so on. In typical usage, though, “liturgy” is usually associated with particular traditions such as the Lutheran, Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox churches, which have structures for worship that include set prayers and responses for the participants.

For those who’ve never attended a liturgical church, think of it this way. Every Christian knows the Lord’s Prayer, and it’s often included in a worship service for the congregation to say together. Now imagine that the whole service is structured around a framework of prayers and responses like this, taken from Scripture or written by great saints of the church. That’s liturgical worship.

...and blessed be his kingdom, now and for ever.

My church tradition, Anglicanism, is a liturgical one. In the United States (as in many English churches as well!) we use the Book of Common Prayer. The Book of Common Prayer, or the BCP as it is affectionately known, is an Anglican prayer book that is readily available in any Christian bookstore or through Amazon. Created in 1500s England, it incorporates prayer from the very earliest Fathers of the Church, and prayers based on Holy Scripture, as well as prayers written by 16th century and later pastors. You can also find the contents of the BCP online here (in printable form) and also here at BCPonline.org. There’s even an iPad / iPhone app!

The Lord be with you...

The greatest benefit of a set liturgy is that it’s completely predictable. Every worship service will use the same words; and, with seasonal variations, the prayers will be the same as well. The Scripture lessons, Psalms, and sermon will change, but the structure remains the same. Why is this a benefit?

...and also with you...

First, because it creates an environment more suitable to genuine prayer. Whenever I visit a different church, I’m distracted by wondering what’s going to happen next, or what I’m supposed to do. In contrast, in a liturgical service, I know exactly what’s going to happen, and when: it frees me to pray during church!

...Let us pray.

Second, because it provides a structure for prayer that helps strengthen my spiritual life where I am weak - even when my weakness changes from week to week and year to year. My own prayers are always, inevitably, in danger of falling into a rut of my own habitual concerns. In contrast, the time-polished liturgy incorporates different kinds of prayer: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, intercession, petition. If I have been praying for the needs of my friends and family, I may be reminded by the Prayers of the People to also pray for the needs of my community, the nation, and the world. If I have avoided considering my own sins, the prayer of confession reminds me that I have indeed sinned in thought, word, and deed.

Lift up your hearts...

Third, the liturgy of the BCP is taken almost entirely from Scripture, with the various prayers and ‘collects’ (short summing-up prayers for the particular seasons and feast days) often written by great saints of the church, like Thomas Cranmer or St John Chrysostom. Thus, by speaking and hearing these words, week in and week out, I am given the gift of internalizing words, phrases, and images at a deep level, and making them my own.

...we lift them up unto the Lord.

Fourth, the repetitive nature of the liturgy is a rebuke and a correction to my own self-centeredness. It reminds me that worship is not about me - it’s about God. If I am tempted to say “It’s always the same... it can be a little boring...” then I’m viewing worship as a form of entertainment, with its purpose being to entertain or interest me. By having a repeated, consistent structure the liturgy reminds me that worship is about God the most holy Trinity, and only about me insofar as God has so graciously drawn me into Himself and invites me to share in the body and blood of His Son, in the eternal Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

Let us give thanks unto our Lord God...

Fifth, the liturgy is not emotionally laden. That is, these words and phrases and responses are not designed to key up the worshippers into feeling prayerful or Spirit-filled. That’s between the individual and God. It’s a great blessing to worship in a tradition in which one’s piety is not judged by how emotional one gets during worship (and it’s possible to judge oneself too harshly as well, even if other people aren’t judgmental!). When I’m feeling distracted, anxious, disconnected, tired... those are the times when I might not know how to pray, or might not have the motivation - but the liturgy takes me by the hand and leads me through prayer and worship nonetheless. When I’m feeling the powerful presence of the Spirit, and am rejoicing in God’s goodness and mercy, the liturgy channels that joy into praise and thanksgiving and love for God and my neighbor.

...It is meet and right so to do.

Liturgy should always be meaningful; it should also be as beautiful as we can make it. It can be adapted, and have new and fresh elements brought into it, but never just for the sake of change. Liturgical worship is also just one part of a larger life of prayer, one that includes extemporaneous, individual, unstructured personal prayer. I know that I have been deeply blessed by worshipping in the Anglican tradition, and by including liturgical prayer in my personal prayer life, through the Daily Office (morning and evening prayer). I encourage anyone who is interested in deepening their relationship with God to try morning or evening prayer using the Book of Common Prayer; here’s a link to a piece I wrote on praying the Daily Office.

Therefore, with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name; evermore praising thee, and saying: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts: Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Glory be to thee, O Lord most high.

Voyeurism and Violence: A Reflection on The Hunger Games

Holly Ordway — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 18:55:45 -0700

It’s not often that I find a film to be better than the book, but The Hunger Games is such a one. It’s an effective and engaging film in its own right, well worth seeing - and it confronts the viewer with important issues about our complex relationship with violence, voyeurism, and entertainment.

The Hunger Games, based on the book by Suzanne Collins, is set in a dystopian future in which North America is divided into twelve Districts under the control of the Capitol. Each year, every District must send two Tributes, a randomly chosen boy and girl between the ages of 12 and 18, to fight to the death in the Hunger Games as a reminder of the Capitol’s power and a warning against rebellion. The story follows a girl named Katniss, who volunteers to be one of District 12’s Tributes in place of her younger sister.

I’ve written elsewhere about the value of The Hunger Games for the Christian apologist (in the Christian Research Journal) so here I will focus on the way that the film (and by extension the book) challenges our ideas about contemporary culture and our media consumption.

“Bread and Circuses”

Panem, the name of the nation in which the story is set, is significant: it is the Latin word for bread, but in the context of the books and film, this is most definitely not a reference to Christ. Rather, it points to the Latin phrase panem et circenses, “bread and circuses,” from the writing of the 1^st century Roman author Juvenal. The phrase refers to the free grain and lavish public entertainment, most notably in the form of bloody gladiatorial games, supplied by the Roman government to pacify and distract the people.

The Hunger Games gives us “bread and circuses” for a technological age: the yearly slaughter of children is made into a media spectacle, shown live on television and hyped in every media outlet. The historical allusion is significant: in ancient Rome, ordinary people enjoyed seeing gladiators hack each other to death and Christians being torn apart by wild animals. It has happened; it could happen again.

How did Panem get to this point? That issue is not directly addressed in The Hunger Games, but the story offers a glimpse into how it might come to pass for us. In the world of The Hunger Games the characters live their lives, care for each other, and attempt to do what is right without any reference to or acknowledgement of a transcendent God. It is therefore a fairly accurate depiction of media pressure in the 21^st century to secularize the public square: increasingly, the public good must be defined and discussed in non-religious terms, and Christian art and music is ghettoized rather than forming part of common culture.

The film is clear in showing the consequences of that denial of transcendence. For instance, we see a propaganda clip shown at the District 12 Reaping, in which the Tributes are praised for their “self-sacrifice” and the victor is praised for the “honor” of triumphing in the Games. This manipulation of language is plausible enough: if virtue-language lacks grounding in the transcendent moral being of the living God, why not call the brutality of the Games ‘honor’ and random selection of victims “self-sacrifice”? The film does not allow us to accept this relativism: we see the expressions on the faces of the District 12 people watching the propaganda, and in their resolute lack of “patriotic” response we have all the answer we need. In reality, we know that there is neither honor nor self-sacrifice here: it is children killing children for the amusement of adults. The difference is that the characters in The Hunger Games have no way to articulate the reason that the Games are evil.

Voyeurism and Violence

One of the most significant elements of the Hunger Games series as a whole is its critique of violence as entertainment. I was surprised and pleased to see that this critique is made more effectively in the film than in the book.

In the first book, one of my concerns was that although it ultimately shows the futility and harm of the violence of the Games, the violence is presented in a graphic and disturbing manner, so that the reader is in a sense participating in the very voyeurism that the book is critiquing.

The film manages the difficult feat of both presenting the violence without glossing over it, and limiting the extent to which the viewer enjoys the violence. The fighting scenes are filmed with a shaky camera and very quick cuts, creating a feeling of tension, anxiety, and even nausea in the viewer. There is no doubt that the characters die, and die horribly: we are given short, effective glimpses that do not allow us to imagine otherwise: the grotesquely swollen face of a girl killed by tracker jacker wasps; an image of a bloody brick raised high about to strike a killing blow; drops of blood on Katniss’s hands (which, in a nicely Shakespearean moment, she frantically tries to scrub off); a bloody, raw burn patch on her leg. But in sharp contrast to the book, which describes many events in stomach-churning detail, the film refuses to let us linger on these images -- and therefore we never become acclimated to them.

Complicity?

Not only is violence handled more effectively in the film than in the book, but the critique of voyeurism in media is far more effective in the film as well.

For one thing, the film makes it clearer that the people of the Districts are complicit, even if reluctantly so, in the horrors of the Hunger Games. In the film, Gale has a significant line that is not in the book: before the Reaping, when he and Katniss are discussing their fears and the horror of the Games, he asks a simple question: what if no one watched?

Certainly, the people of the Districts are rounded up and forced to stand in the public square to watch the Reaping and the accompanying propaganda film; to that extent, their participation in the Games system is forced. However, as the film continues, we see intercut segments of the people of District 12 watching the Hunger Games on television in their own homes, presumably uncompelled. We are also shown a glimpse of Gale at that same moment: but rather than watching his friends fight for their lives on television, he is out in the woods by himself, looking at a landscape full of natural beauty.

Furthermore, the film, unlike the book, does not stay exclusively with Katniss’s point of view. The book is told in the first person, so once we get into the Hunger Games arena, we experience everything as Katniss does, becoming immersed in the kill-or-be-killed world of the Games.

However, the film frequently cuts back to show us the Gamemaker and his staff manipulating the events in the arena: starting a fire here, dropping in a monstrous dog there. We know these things are happening in the book; we see them happening in the film, and so we are constantly reminded that there is no good reason whatsoever that these children should be killing each other. It is not a regrettable struggle for survival; it is an entirely artificial situation created for the gratification of a well-fed and jaded audience in the Capitol.

That inter-cutting blurs the line between the Capitol audience and ourselves in the theater: we are rendered uncomfortably complicit as well.

Final Thoughts

Will viewers reflect on these issues? Perhaps, and perhaps not. But it is encouraging to see that a story that so directly and clearly challenges the sick state of our entertainment culture has been so eagerly received by such a wide audience. The Hunger Games does not present any real answers to our culture’s problems, but it confronts those problems and calls them to our attention: and that is something we desperately need. No one cares about answers to questions they have not asked; The Hunger Games may provoke some good questions.

The Vision of Literary Apologetics

Holly Ordway — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:00:03 -0800

Why is apologetics, the defense of the Christian faith, important?

In one sense, Christianity needs no defense. God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, does not depend for His existence on our belief. However, many people who do not know the living God are separated from Him in part by intellectual obstacles. Removing those obstacles by showing that Christianity indeed makes sense on a rational level is an act of love and care for our neighbor. Defending the faith also builds up a strong foundation for believers. A securely built house has a solid, well-built foundation, so that the vagaries of wind and weather don’t damage it or cause distress to the inhabitants. It’s natural to have questions and doubts - think of the disciples, asking Jesus “increase our faith!” or the man who cries out “Lord, I believe: help my unbelief!” Apologetics helps strengthen the foundations by providing answers to questions and doubts, so that the Christian can grow stronger in his or her faith.

What about “literary apologetics”?

Literary apologetics is that mode of apologetics that functions through the use of the Imagination in stories, poetry, drama, and song. Imagination is a mode of knowing; it is the twin sister of Reason. Imagination that is not grounded in Reason can become what JRR Tolkien called “morbid fantasy,” unhealthy and unhelpful; conversely, Reason that is not supported by Imagination can become sterile, rigid, and unfruitful. Literature is particularly well suited to bring these two often-separated sisters together, so that Reason and Imagination can illuminate the path to truth.

Stories, poetry, and drama can help us to both comprehend the truth (with our intellect) and apprehend it (imaginatively and emotionally). As with rational argument, literature cannot in itself bring a person to know Christ, but it can open doors, challenge assumptions, and most importantly provide a glimpse of experienced truth. Stories invite readers to indeed “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8).

Literature can best fulfill this role when the author is committed both to expressing the truth and to creating a good story. The best literary apologists - CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, GK Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, and others, just to name those of the past century - did not set out to wrap a moral in a story, or explicitly to promote Christianity through their fiction writing. Rather, they believed fully and deeply, and sought to glorify God in all that they did - and so their stories show the truth, in deep and satisfying ways.

Today, we need a new generation of Christian writers who will do what those great writers did. We need well-informed, thinking Christians, who know their Scripture and theology, are committed to living out the Christian life in word and deed, and show forth that living truth in their work.

We need writers who will immerse themselves in the best writing of centuries past and learn from it, and be able to draw on that rich treasury of imagery to do new things.

We need writers who are willing and eager to view writing as a God-given calling, and to joyfully pursue the craft and art of it with dedication and hard work.

Fortunately, we do not have to start from scratch! We have the works of Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton, MacDonald, and others to study and learn from. Going further back, we have an absolute treasure chest of writers: Coleridge, Donne, Herbert, Hopkins, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, Dante, to name just a few.

We are not limited to the great writers of the past, however. We have people who even now are taking up the challenge of writing to draw people through the imagination to know Christ. In England, the poet and scholar Malcolm Guite (www.malcolmguite.com) is doing marvelous work with poetry. In my own blog, Hieropraxis (www.hieropraxis.com), I am attempting to cultivate an appreciation for literature and literary apologetics, as well as writing my own poetry.

To be an effective literary apologist means a commitment to the craft of writing, so that the great and glorious truth of our faith is presented to the world in the most beautiful, powerful, gripping, and transformative ways possible. It also means a commitment to community. Just as Lewis and Tolkien were part of the Inklings, commenting and critiquing each others’ work, so too the writers of today need the kind of community where “iron sharpens iron.”

One of the challenges of Christian writers is to find that kind of community - so part of the project of literary apologetics is to help provide the kind of context where new writers can grow. That’s why I’m delighted to be part of a new project as the Program Director of the Literary Apologetics Certificate Program from Athanatos Christian Ministry. I’ve been involved with ACM for several years as a conference speaker and sponsor of their writing contests: they are on the front lines of training writers and encouraging the reading of great works of Christian literature. This online program combines classes in theology and Scripture with specifically writing-related courses to help Christian writers share the good news of God in Christ in ways that are artistically powerful and effective, engaging readers through the work of the Imagination. (Classes start in February, and I will be teaching a class in “Wordsmithing” as well as co-teaching “Principles of Literary Apologetics.”)

I think we’re at the beginning of great things for literature in the service of God. My friends, let’s go further up and further in!

Reclaiming Story for Christ?

Holly Ordway — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 10:18:32 -0700

As I have written before, in our modern Western culture we suffer from a disconnect between Reason and Imagination. Story, when it is rightly used in the service of Truth, can help to connect these two necessary elements into a healthy, God-focused whole.

However, reclaiming Story for the cause of Truth means more than just slapping a Christian label on the idea of storytelling. We must be clear about what Story is and how it relates to Truth.

Portions of the Christian church have wholeheartedly affirmed a postmodern understanding of Story. In this view, Christians have a wonderful story, one that brings meaning and joy and purpose to those who accept it, but it is a story that makes no claims about objective reality and objective Truth.

This movement has been reacting against extremes in both the secular and Christian world. On one hand, these Christians are reacting against the harsh extreme of scientism, which has no room for human spiritual needs. On the other, they are also reacting against the extreme of cold literalism in the church, which strips Scripture of its beauty and reduces our relationship with the living God to a set of detailed doctrinal principles to affirm and a legalistic code of behavior to follow. The postmodern reaction against these extremes is not surprising, and indeed in many ways the postmodern Christians serve as a canary in the coal mine: the Reason / Imagination split can't be ignored as something in secular culture alone.

The postmodern view of Story can be very appealing at first, but it fails because it does not connect Story to Truth. If our narratives are generated and sustained by our communities, eventually differences in beliefs will fragment those communities down to the individual: my truth, my story. Either we will be trapped in the particular story we happen to be in, or we will shop around for a story we like better. Ultimately the postmodern Christian view of Story disintegrates, because it acknowledges no transcendent Author of the story, and offers no way to determine if a given story is true.

Such a view is deadly, for it saps all the urgency to find the truth about spiritual matters. If Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life only for those who find that particular faith flavor appealing, then Buddhism or transcendental meditation or indulging in unlimited sex is equally valid for those who prefer those alternatives. Why pay attention to the Gospel if it is just one story among many?

Even in ordinary life, Story without Truth fails to satisfy. When I hear a story of my friend's life, I expect it to be true, that is, corresponding to the way things actually are. When I read a poem, I expect it to show me something true about the world, to illuminate some aspect of my experiences, or help me appreciate real beauty better. When I read a novel, I expect it to make sense, for it to add to my enjoyment of the world, or help me understand things better, even if those things are sad or terrible (since we live in a fallen world, much of what is true is rather painful to hear). Even a story read for pure escapism needs to have some connection to truth in character, setting, or plot (not necessarily all three!). Surrealist fiction does not make for good beach reading; adventure and romance stories do, because they connect with things that we do recognize as true, namely that people can have adventures and do fall in love.

On a day to day basis, we flourish when the stories we tell about ourselves, including our inner narratives, are true. The self-esteem movement attempted to help children live better, happier lives by telling them stories about their own greatness. But such stories were fabricated: kids were praised even when there were no objective grounds for praise. As a result, we have an entire generation of young people who have been trained in narcissism and brought up to believe that what matters is how they feel - the story they tell about themselves - not their actual accomplishments or character.

Simply telling oneself a new story is appealing. Americans are constantly reinventing themselves. It is good to have the freedom to make a course correction in life, but it is burdensome to think that one’s identity is one’s own responsibility. As a woman who grew up with no knowledge of God, coming to Christ at age 31, I have a keen personal awareness of the utter failure of any attempt to create my own meaningful narrative. As a woman now in my late 30s living out the Christian life in modern American culture, I am all too aware of the pressure to define myself according to other stories: workplace success, or physical beauty, or social conformity. These are powerful alternate stories, and a Christian "story" that is simply one more feel-good option among many does not stand up as a viable alternative.

We must reclaim and redeem Story, for the church and for the world to which we minister in the name of Christ. If Imagination gives us Story without Truth, and Reason gives us Truth without Story, what we need is Christ who is Truth in Story, the living Word.

On Doing Good Work

Holly Ordway — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:01:01 -0700

What does it mean to be a working writer and teacher?

Work is a good thing – one of the best things in my life, I have found: to do good work, work that uses my mind and imagination and strength to the fullest. Writing is a great joy in this regard: seeing ideas take shape before me, discovering more fully what I really mean even as I write.

Work is a good thing, instituted by God before the Fall: Adam tended the garden (and thus did good work in the cultivation of beauty – something to aspire to). It was not work itself that fell to Adam and Eve as a curse upon their sin and expulsion from Eden, but toil – that aspect of work that is unfruitful, depressing, grinding, depleting.

In our fallen world, even good work has its elements of toil. (To take a light example, I joyfully work at writing an analytical piece, but I toil at managing its footnotes.) But I would also say that all toil can be redeemed as good work if the task at hand is done well, and done to the glory of God. I cannot say that I have always lived up to this; in fact, I have often failed to do so, and failed as well to recognize the good work implicit in the toil of others. But one blessing of work is that there is always more to do, and so each day’s work is a chance to do it right – today.

As a writer and a teacher, I must always remember that this is my work, and I am charged with doing it well and to the glory of God. My own joy in it is His gift; my dedication to doing the work well is but the recognition of that unearned, undeserved gift.

I am of New England stock, running back many generations: Yankee farmers and mill-workers, who sunk deep roots into the rocky, recalcitrant soil of Massachusetts, and made a living and raised their families on hard work. I went off to college, and then to graduate school, picking up on that strand of the family history that produced schoolteachers. Now I work with words and ideas, writing and teaching and lecturing, rather than picking apples or working a shift at a paper mill. I used to think that this separated me from my roots, but now I think this is true only in the sense that a branch is separate from the hidden tap-roots. I am in part who I am because of those Yankee farmers, and before them, the courageous immigrants who came on boats to Ellis Island (on my father’s side) and Plymouth Rock (on my mother’s side).

My own journey has in some ways been a returning, though I did not know it at the time: a return to the faith of my family roots, to my great-grandparents (Protestant on the one side, Roman Catholic on the other). Affirming my Christian faith in the Anglican tradition was a joy to me first because of my affection for the Anglican poets whose words drew me to know Christ, and then because of the richness and beauty and depth of meaning I found there; but it also takes me back further, from New England to the England of my ancestors.

And so now I begin to understand something about the nature of work – to see that in the English poetry I love, and in the farms and mills of Massachusetts where my family has its roots, there is something in common, some deep essential vision of doing the good work that has been placed before me. I pray that I may continue to live out that vision.

Why Story Matters

Holly Ordway — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:09:53 -0700

Why do stories matter?

Ultimately, because of who we are - made in the image of God. Human beings possess the twin faculties of Reason and Imagination, both God-given, both essential for a right relationship with the world (and for a right understanding of one’s place in the world).

However, something has gone badly wrong in our culture. In a slow process that began with the Enlightenment and has continued to the present day, these faculties of Reason and Imagination have been separated, to the detriment of both.

On the one hand, Reason has been given free rein, and the pursuit of knowledge using our God-given intellect has become scientism and materialism, the idea that only those things that can be empirically measured and logically figured out can be considered “true” or “real.” In the world of science, truth is held to be only that which is measurable and testable. Intangible things like emotions and spiritual truths are decidedly second-class citizens. After all, souls can’t be detected with an MRI, and love can’t be weighed and measured!

This adulation of Reason without the counterbalance of Imagination leads to an inevitable diminishment of the vision of what it means to be human. Our culture is showing many signs of this part of the Reason / Imagination divide. For instance, in a culture that embraces “scientific” ways of thinking, it becomes difficult to justify spending any extra time or money in promoting the arts, or making buildings beautiful.

In older cities like Boston or Philadelphia, the public buildings from the 18th or 19th centuries – the town hall, the courthouse, the banks – have elegant, inspiring architecture. Contrast that to your local 20th century Department of Motor Vehicles.

More seriously, the fact that the human soul cannot be weighed, measured, or detected with scientific instruments has led to a creeping tendency to define human beings by what they can do, not by their innate dignity as men and women made in the image of God. The elderly and disabled, who cannot define themselves in terms of what they can accomplish, can very easily be considered a burden on society.

Narrowing the definition of truth to what Reason alone can determine makes it possible for people to design functional buildings that depress the soul, and for people to talk about the suitability of ending one’s life simply because one is old and tired.

With the use of Reason alone, it is too easy to make categorical distinctions; a person can be a statistic, not recognized as one of the human beings that the scientist or bureaucrat interacts with on a daily basis. It is Imagination that would reveal the truth: the true connection between the imago Dei, the image of God in human beings, and each individual, unique human being.

Yet in the broader culture, unchecked Imagination goes its own route to error. Ungrounded and undisciplined, a de-Christianized Imagination has not led to more beauty, but to less. When less is left to the imagination, storytelling becomes shallow and limited. In order to get some sort of response, art, literature, music, and film move toward the breaking of standards for the sake of destruction, and the rejection of limits of any kind.

Sexuality and violence, ever more of it, and ever more corrosive, become the norm for entertainment. In movies, we have gone from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho to the gore-fest of Saw III, with the same trend appearing in books. The popular young-adult series The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, is full of graphic depictions of violent injuries and gruesome death. The high level of sexuality in books and film, including books for younger readers, has become so much the norm that one of the things that makes the Harry Potter series distinctive is its refreshing lack of explicit sexuality and its depiction of chaste dating behavior – in other words, J.K. Rowling is notable for holding to standards that were normal up to a few decades ago.

Criticism of these trends is muzzled, however, because all of these excesses are claimed to be for the sake of art or fun, with no “meaning” behind them whatsoever. “It’s just a book” or “It’s just a movie” are the most common retorts to any expressed concern about the ideas and behavior being presented (and implicitly promoted) in the media.

We need to recover the connection between Imagination and Truth. Without the recognition that our values are objectively grounded in the living God, and that our flourishing as whole human beings depends on a right relationship with Him, the imaginative impulse will lead us to destruction as surely as unchecked Reason.

But we are all storytellers, and the human need for story pops up wherever we look, even where we would not expect to find Story at all.

In the realm of unchecked Reason, skeptics tell just-so stories to explain every aspect of our lives in terms of biology and evolution.

In the realm of unchecked Imagination, celebrity culture allows people to participate in drama, and to have heroes and villains (if only for a fleeting moment).

Even when we’re completely wrong about the way the world works, with our lives completely out of touch with the living God, we are drawn to narrative, imagery, characters – story. Such is the power of storytelling. Rightly used, Story can help re-connect Reason and Imagination – and in so doing, help re-orient us toward Truth.

Pushing Back Against the World

Holly Ordway — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 11:54:36 -0700

Christians are called to be in the world, but not of it. I think that we often acknowledge this as true (perhaps even by putting a NotW sticker on our cars) but fail to recognize how hard it is to follow Jesus as Lord without caving in to the world’s way of thinking and doing… and thus slowly caving in to the world’s way of being.

The obvious examples are ones like sexual behavior, or greed, and so I’m not going to discuss those. Instead, I want to look at a more subtle pressure from the world: on our prayer lives.

Because of my writing, speaking, and study, over the past five years I’ve had the opportunity to pray and worship in a variety of settings, in different Christian traditions and with different styles of prayer: liturgical and structured, or extemporaneous; charismatic, or very low-key; low church, high church; with a pastor, with a priest, or with fellow lay people; in a beautiful church building, gathered in a community center, in a living room, or sitting on lawn chairs outdoors.

I’ve learned a great deal about prayer from all of this.

I’ve been pushed out of my comfort zone.

I’ve helped push other people out of their comfort zones.

And here’s something of what I’ve learned.

People who have a living, vibrant relationship with the Triune God are people who have living, vibrant prayer lives. People who truly know Jesus and are committed to following him on the way of the Cross pray in a different way than those who are just tagging along with Jesus without a radical commitment to following him.

Style of prayer is absolutely irrelevant to the level of seriousness. Depending on a person’s personality and circumstances, the best way to interact with God in prayer might be through praying the Daily Office using the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, or having a daily quiet time; it might be through blasting praise songs or walking in silence. What matters is taking Jesus seriously; taking the work of prayer seriously; immersing oneself in Holy Scripture and taking God’s Word seriously; this is what cuts across the lines of church tradition and personal preferences.

I repeated “taking it seriously” for a reason. Because another thing I’ve learned from seeing all these different prayer styles and worship traditions is this: no matter what style of prayer you use, the world will still press in and try to distract you from the work of prayer.

Here’s what the world says – at least a few of the whispers I’ve heard, and had to deal with:

1. Prayer’s a good thing, but in moderation. If you pray too often or too intensely, you’re a Jesus freak.

2. Prayer’s a good backup plan. Sure, pray if you want to about your issues, but God helps those who help themselves. You have to take action yourself.

3. Prayer is about getting what you need. (And you know best what you need, of course.) It doesn’t have anything to do with shaping who you are.

4. Prayer is about spiritual things, so pray for general “blessings” but don’t bother God with specifics. (Note that between 3 and 4, the world can effectively shut down a Christian’s prayer life by converting it to a vague wish-list.)

5. Prayer is a little embarrassing. It’s ok to ‘forget’ to pray before a meal (especially in a restaurant) and the proper etiquette is to keep it short and general.

6. Prayer is strictly personal. Taking seriously the idea of God actually listening and responding – much less the idea of acting on guidance from prayer… hmm, that’s Jesus freak time again.

Notice a common thread in all these little whispers. The Enemy doesn’t try to say “Don’t pray.” (That would be too obvious – as Christians we know we’re supposed to pray.) Instead, he tries to moderate, mute, constrain our prayer so that our conduit to the Holy Spirit becomes a narrow trickle rather than a overflowing well of life-giving water.

The way we act affects what we believe. Lex orandi, lex credendi – the law of prayer is the law of belief. If we fall into the habit of acting as if prayer were an optional extra in the Christian life, then it won’t be surprising if we find ourselves believing that Jesus is an optional extra in our worldly life. Nice to have for comfort, but that’s it. Radical call to holiness? Thanks but no thanks, right?

I spent two weeks in Massachusetts this summer volunteering for the C.S. Lewis Foundation at the site of the future C.S. Lewis College. For two weeks, 24/7, I was around people who love the Lord in an exuberant, no-holds-barred way, and are passionate about beauty and truth, and about doing everything to the glory of God.

One iconic moment for me was when I was walking back from lunch with Kevin and Eric, two of my new friends. Kevin commented that he had a really horrible headache that was interfering with his writing. I said something sympathetic. Then it suddenly occurred to me that it would be good to lay hands on him and pray for healing.

For a moment, something in me resisted: that seemed excessive. A little embarrassing. Better to just shelve the impulse to pray in public, and say a little prayer on my own, later.

Then I recognized the temptation: not to reject prayer entirely, but to minimize it, to not take it seriously—to say to God, “Sure, I hear Your call to pray for my brother in Christ, but I’m going to do it in my own time, and in my own way. Because it’s really about me.”

No!

I turned to my friend Kevin and said, “Hey, can I pray for you?” He said, “That would be great!” So he sat down on a stone wall outside the dormitory, and Eric and I laid hands on Kevin’s shoulders, and I prayed for his health and for a blessing on the work he needed to do. And then Kevin thanked me, and went up to his room. Remaining behind for a moment, Eric turned to me and said, “You were obedient to the Lord, in doing that. Well done.”

Those words, from someone with a deep connection to the Lord, stuck with me In the face of all the world’s pressure to minimize, contain, and sterilize our relationship to the true and living God, prayer is a precious way to push back.

Every moment of conscious, deliberate prayer is an act of profound obedience. It doesn’t matter how we feel at that moment – whether it’s a joyful moment of connection to God, or fighting against a sense of futility – He is there, and hears us, and responds. In ways that run deeper than we can imagine.

Christ's Love and the Blessing of Holy Saturday

Holly Ordway — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 21:06:35 -0700

Saturday in Holy Week – in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, it seems like just a placeholder. Why then does the Church call it Holy?

On the Friday we call Good, our Lord laid down his life for us; went to the Cross in love, and there took on all the weight of the world’s sin, and death too, all for us. He died. His heart was pierced by the centurion’s spear, and blood and water poured out. His lifeless body was taken down, covered in blood and sweat, cradled in his mother’s arms, and then, hastily, wrapped up and placed in the tomb.

And there in the tomb he lay.

Jesus had done his work on the Cross – redeeming the world that God had made and called good, but that we had broken; calling all humanity to him, his arms outstretched on the Cross to draw all to himself. In six days, God made all of creation; on the seventh day He rested. And the Son, having done his work on the Cross, rested too.

Jesus came to fulfill the law in his own person, and so he did; to the last. In the tomb, on Holy Saturday, he rested – kept the perfect Sabbath rest, kept the Sabbath as no one ever did or ever could except the Son of God himself. For the Son kept the Sabbath in the perfect rest of death; utter passivity, complete helplessness, resting with absolute and complete trust in his Father who would raise him on the third day.

And so our Lord is with us to the very end of all things.

A couple of years ago, my priest gave me a book of meditations on the theme of prayer and pain. One of the passages that moved me deeply asked the question: do you see yourself as a feather floating in the air, or a stone at the bottom of a pool? My immediate connection was to the stone – a pebble, lying at the bottom of the well. And as I meditated on that image, I realized that I did not have to stay there; that Christ could, and did, reach down into that pool and draw me out, into the light. It was a good image, a helpful one, a reminder that there is no place so dark that my Savior cannot find me.

And yet it was only this Lent that I realized that my understanding of Christ’s love was far short of the reality. For if I imagine myself as that stone in the pool, and Christ reaching in for me, he is still “out there” apart from me, a great distance between us.

This Holy Week, I have been reading Malcolm Guite’s Sonnets on the Stations of the Cross, and quite unexpectedly there I found the image that brought home far more vividly the reality of Christ’s love for me.

In Sonnet IX, meditating on Jesus’ third fall as he carries the cross, Guite writes of the darkest and deepest fall of all, the fall into depression, where “there seems no rising and no will / To rise, or breathe or bear your own heart beat.” In that dark place, where there is no strength to hope – where there is not even strength enough to desire strength to carry on – despair is right there, deadly and desirable at the same time: “And you could almost wish for that defeat”...

Almost.

For it turns out that Jesus is not reaching down to help us from a place outside of our pain. He is here beside us. Beside me.

He knows what it is to be helpless, for he lay helpless in the tomb, that Holy Saturday. He knows what it is to trust entirely and absolutely to another, for so he trusted himself to the Father. He has been there; he knows the way.

In that place of loneliness, I find that I am not alone; there is no need to wait for him to reach out, for he is already here with me. I may have no strength to reach up, no will to cry out, but I do not need to, for

...in the cold hell where you freeze

You find your God beside you on his knees.

-----

Read the whole sonnet sequence on Malcolm Guite’s blog. And you can listen to his reading of Sonnet IX here.

Shadow and Light: Thoughts on Route to Easter

Holly Ordway — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:49:31 -0700

Five long weeks of Lent, and yet one more, as we move through Holy Week toward the events of Easter. Why observe Lent? And why so long, when it seems so very long, these five weeks and more of a bare, unadorned church, of the disciplines of self-denial and self-examination?

Lent is indeed too long – too long for me to go on my own strength and resources. It is long enough for me to feel the initial enthusiasm of self-discipline, and past it, the weakness of failure. Lent is long enough for me to see my own weakness. Long enough to say, What’s the point? Why keep struggling on?

Lent cuts through our too-quick assurances of peace and joy; forces us to recognize that the pain of the world, and our own pain, cannot be salved by a cheery Bible verse or a hearty exhortation to rejoice. The brokenness of our world and the needs of the human heart run deeper than that.

When the shadow is upon me, promises of blessing and joy seem unreal, as if seen through a haze or muted by distance. When the future is unknown and uncertain, words of hopeful encouragement seem nothing but trashy trinkets; in the shadow, diamonds’ luster is dulled, and seems rather the cheap glitter of rhinestones. I cannot do, or be, all that I feel called to; I am incomplete, broken. What then?

Lent is long enough to remember Our Lord falling as he carried the Cross, and getting up again, and continuing on his way. Yes, on the way toward the Resurrection, but first, on his way to Golgotha, and a terrible death on the Cross.

Lent points toward Easter, but it takes us on a journey first. We begin with Ash Wednesday, and then journey through the wilderness, day after day, just as our Lord spent those forty days in the desert being tempted of Satan. And Lent brings us to the doorstep of Easter – Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, all steps leading up to Sunday.

First, Maundy Thursday; “Maundy” from the Latin “Mandatum,” meaning “command”- a reference to Jesus’ words at the institution of the Eucharist: “Do this in remembrance of me.” The entrance to Easter, Maundy Thursday reminds us that we are called to obedience. And called to obedience first – before we have the reminder of joy, on the day before Good Friday, a reminder that the way of Christ is the way of the Cross.

What does our Lord command us to do? He tells us, makes it simple for us: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” Our Lord calls us to love others as he loves us: desiring the good of the other above our own good.

Lent is long enough to try to love others as Christ loves us. Long enough for me to convince myself for a little while that yes I can do it, that indeed I do love others with that unconditional and self-sacrificing love. To convince myself that indeed I am putting all my hopes into God’s hands with simple trust, and that I love Him and have confidence that He will provide for me.

Lent is long enough to break that too. I find that what I thought was self-sacrificing love still has its jealousies, its envies, its fears, so that even that which is good and true is wrapped round with the disreputable tatters of self-will. Even when I think I have put all in God’s hands, I find that I am clinging still. Lent is, in short, long enough for me to fail, and to recognize my failure; to be emptied out.

I do not like being emptied out.

It is, nonetheless, necessary.

Mary tells us, in that great song of praise called the Magnificat, that God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.

To be filled, we must first be made empty, empty of all the things that we try to substitute for God’s grace.

Easter promises that we will be filled with that grace.

God’s grace; the renewal of our hopes by participation in the one, eternal sacrifice on the Cross, and the renewal of our life by participation in the eternal risen life of our Lord.

Without God’s grace, interrupting our world with the shock of the Incarnation and the scandal of the Cross, there would be no end to Lenten sorrow.

Without the glory of the Son’s self-offering on the Cross, his offering to the Father that is definitively accepted in the Resurrection, and without the gift of being drawn up, through the Son’s humanity, into that perfect sacrifice, there would be nothing but the ashes with which we began Lent: from dust we came, and to dust we shall return.

Lent is like a cleansing rain that, though it brings with it dark clouds and a chill downpour, refreshes the dry and cracked earth, making it ready for the new life and new growth of Easter. And this is the gift of Lent: we know it is but a season. Even as I reflect on the darkness of the season, the recollection of the Cross cuts through the shadow, and, dimly, a gleam of that uncreated light shines through.

The Spiritual Discipline of Liturgical Prayer

Holly Ordway — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:57:41 -0700

In 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Paul gives us a bracing challenge: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Pray without ceasing! How is that even possible?

There are many ways to approach the idea of constant prayer, but one way that Anglicans all over the world have used fruitfully is to pray what is known as the "Daily Office" for Morning and/or Evening Prayer.

The Daily Office is a liturgical style of prayer, meaning that there is a set structure for the prayer service.The Daily Office is structured around Scripture readings, in a framework of traditional written prayers (most of which draw specifically on Bible verses for their language), with “space” built in for extemporaneous, personal prayer. The Anglican / Episcopalian liturgy for Morning Prayer or for Evening Prayer has a number of different options, so by making choices about what to include and what to skip, each individual can personalize the Daily Office to fit different preferences and amounts of time, from 15 minutes to... however long you want to pray!

Some Christians hesitate to pray using a liturgy, because they fear that it is the "mindless repetition" that Jesus warned us about, or that using the same structure repeatedly will cause them to be less thoughtful in prayer. Certainly we should always be mindful of falling into patterns of prayer that are just going through the motions, but that can happen with extemporaneous or "from the heart" prayer just as easily (if not more so! for it's all too easy for me at least to fall into the same round of petitions time and again.) Remember that Our Lord himself gave us a liturgy: when the disciples said "Teach us to pray!" he gave them, not generalized instructions, but a specific prayer: "Our Father..."

Devoting a portion of our prayer time to structured, liturgical prayer can be a beautiful discipline that helps us to lift up our hearts to God in a deeper, richer way.

The benefits of praying the Daily Office are fourfold.

First, it helps deepen and expand one’s prayer. It is easy to fall into just doing one type of prayer, usually petitionary or intercessory. The Daily Office liturgies lead us through all five main types of prayer: adoration, contrition, intercession, petition, and thanksgiving.

Second, it helps us internalize God’s Word. Many of the recurring prayers and canticles come directly from the Bible. By praying these every single day, the words of Scripture become engraved on our hearts and minds.

Third, it immerses us in the Word. If you read both Morning and Evening Prayer, every day you will read two or more Psalms plus a reading from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament, and one from the Gospel. What’s more, the Scripture selections go in order, so if you read the Daily Office every day, you will find yourself reading through entire books of the Bible in a disciplined way. Thus, we hear all of God’s word, not just our favorite passages.

Finally, praying the Daily Office is a discipline. Committing to praying the Morning or Evening Office means praying regardless of whether you really “feel like it” or not. It is a discipline because our choice to be obedient to Jesus, who tells us to pray, takes precedence over our transitory emotions. It teaches us to turn to God in prayer every day, not just the days when we feel pious or when we feel needy, and challenges us to confront our misplaced priorities. It is far too easy to make time with God something other than #1 on my priority list. If I am “too busy” or “too tired” to pray on a daily basis, that means I am putting something else higher than time with Him.

That said, praying the Daily Office is not about “getting it right” or racking up X number of prayer times per week, but rather about making a commitment to spend time in prayer with God on a daily basis. Committing to the discipline of Morning or Evening Prayer is not valuable in itself... its value is entirely and completely that it points us toward a deeper connection with Our Lord.

I began doing Evening Prayer during Lent in 2008, on the recommendation of my spiritual director. I found that it so enriched my prayer life that I made it an ongoing practice. In the summer of 2009, with the encouragement of one of our senior pastors, I added Morning Prayer, and once again found that this discipline helped deepen my relationship with Christ. What was initially a challenging commitment very quickly became a cherished part of my daily walk with Christ. I can feel a real difference in every aspect of my life when I start and finish the day with prayer. For one thing, I find myself more readily turning to God in prayer at various times during the day, not just during my scheduled prayer time!

Last year I went through a period of some months... probably half a year, really... in which I felt stuck in spiritual dryness. I did NOT feel like praying, and when I tried to pray "from the heart" I found I had nothing to say. During that time, the discipline of praying the Daily Office helped me immensely. The basic habit of getting down on my knees to pray once or twice a day, and of reading a Psalm and a Scripture passage once or twice a day, was so ingrained that I kept doing it. I had no expectations about feeling the presence of God or having a "rewarding" prayer experience; I just prayed. And as I look back on those months, from the perspective of having emerged from that time of dryness into a new and more fruitful spring, I firmly believe that God was doing His work in my heart and mind in those very moments of prayer in which, not wanting to pray, I did anyway, and in which I let the words of the written prayers speak for me.

By now, I hope you are at least a little bit intrigued by this spiritual discipline!

But wait... HOW do you pray the Daily Office?!? It’s easy. Let me walk you through it!

In order to read the Daily Office, you will need two things:

1. Your Bible.

2. The Book of Common Prayer.

The Book of Common Prayer is an Anglican prayer book that is readily available in any Christian bookstore or through Amazon. Created in 1500s England, it incorporates prayer from the very earliest Fathers of the Church, and prayers based on Holy Scripture, as well as prayers written by 16th century and later pastors. You can also find the contents of the BCP online here (in printable form) and also here at BCPonline.org.

The BCP contains the liturgy, the basic “structure” of the Office. The prayers are the same for every day. Note: feel free to shorten the Office by leaving out some parts of it. Keep it simple, and you’re more likely to do it!

Interleaved into the structure of the Daily Office are the Readings: one or more Psalms and one or more Scripture lessons. These readings will change for each day. You can find the readings for each day listed in the back of the BCP, under the title of Daily Office Lectionary. (Or click the appropriate link at the BCPonline.org version.) The Lectionary contains an entry for each day that tells you what the reading is for that day.

The Readings are arranged by the liturgical calendar. Sunday is the start of each week. For instance, as I write this, we are in the week of Last Epiphany (that is, the last week before Lent). We are in Year One right now (we alternate between Year One and Year Two, with the Christian year starting in Advent).

I recommend starting with the online version, to get the feel for it!

Although the Daily Office seems complicated at first, it gets easier very quickly. It is well worth the time it takes to get into the habit... and Lent is a wonderful opportunity to step forward into a deeper, more faithful prayer life. During this concentrated 40-day period, the mindful practice of spiritual disciplines like Morning or Evening Prayer can help us to grow in love and obedience to our Lord. Over our lifetimes, even a very small step taken during Lent can add up to significant spiritual growth and a deeper maturity in the faith.

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”