The DtK Book Club: A Meaningful Liturgy

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] am still loving this chapter. I find myself wishing that my church recited the Creed — or a creed for that matter, though, of course, not just any would do — and then alternately oh so thankful {again} for our weekly Communion.

This was a chapter in which I thought his view of tradition was very balanced. Of course, it helps that I agreed with him!

What I love most about tradition is the sense that we are not alone in history. I love that it connects us to the past. I love that people before us prayed this prayer or sang this song. I love that it reminds me that we are not the first generation to face these problems, and we likely won’t be the last. The Church has already faced it, and already survived. This sense that she needs to “change or die” is nonsensical when we realize that the Church is what is unchanging and the rest of the clamor is the fad. Since when does a 2000+ year old institution need to accommodate a fad?

But I digress.

Here are some of my favorite quotes in regard to the Creed:

We are heirs to a tradition, indebted to those who have handed on the faith across the generations. Like many of the practices of Christian worship, the Creed comes to us from an ancient world, and yet it is on our lips as a contemporary confession. (p. 191)

Christian worship constitutes us as a people of memory. {p. 191}

The communal recitation of the Creed conditions us to recognize the role of tradition in our construal of the world. {p. 191}

I also appreciated some of his thoughts on prayer:

[P]rayer…is a practice that makes us a people who refuse to settle for appearances. Or, to put it otherwise, it makes us a people who always see that there’s more going on that meets the eye. {p. 193}

I couldn’t help but think that this was true in two ways. First, as Christians, we do not believe in a closed system. God’s intervention is always factored into things. But we also refuse to settle for how things are — isn’t that really the nature of supplication? We cry out to God, asking Him to make things different than they are. We can imagine things being some other way, and so we ask Him, if it be His will, to make it so. Or, to change us into agreement with Him. Either way, something — or someone — is changed.

This, I think, fits more than Bible study:

[W]hen we acquire the habit of praying for illumination…we are training ourselves in a stance of reception and dependence, an epistemic humility. This position recognizes that in order to see things for what they really are — to understand the world as ordered to the Creator — we are dependent on a teacher outside of ourselves. {p. 194}

Overall, I love this chapter! How about you?