This is a series of posts in which I hope to unpack thoughts and provoke practices around pattern-based worship. In so doing I want to examine notions such as patterns: natures way, western music’s journey of civilisation, and postmodern liturgy. And as an introduction, introduce the idea of sacred time.
At all times people have recognised that while we very often spend our waking hours struggling to survive, there are times when we transcend this and discover a deeper connection with the Divine. This connection may be experienced as God, as a oneness with all things, or simply a oneness with another. Certainly being or falling “in love” takes us away from our struggles or at least makes them bearable.
We all experience such times as inspiring, hopeful, and joyful, very often changing us (at least temporarily) from individuals trapped on a treadmill of obligations, to empowered humans. Many have called these transcendent times Sacred, in contrast to “normal” time which may be called Profane.
In this time of a heightened awareness of the dualisms of our western culture, we may reject the construct of the sacred and the profane as perpetuating unhealthy dichotomies. This suspicion is nowhere more evident than in our religious lives, which for many do not serve us by uniting the parts of our lives but rather create ever more entrenched categories, for example, the church vs. the world, religious vs. secular, or saint vs. sinner. These are by no means limited to the religious “sphere” either; we also experience the everyday divides of work vs. play, or us vs. them for example.
The Celts (who existed at the edges of the Roman Empire) saw this not so much in terms of time but place, calling locations which were steeped in the numinous (the unseen, mysterious presence of the ground of our being) the “thin places”. So we might say there are thin times, when the fabric of mundanity permits us to glimpse our ineffable underlying realities, which many of us call God.
Engaging the duality (as opposed to the dualism) of sacred vs. profane time can be helpful, if we bear in mind our tendency to compartmentalise. In fact, as far as questions of worship are concerned, it is vital that we grasp the distinction. Our confusion as to where the boundary between sacred vs. profane might lie leads to distortions and misunderstandings concerning what worship is or can become.
I write not as one with answers, but rather as one on a quest to explore, and driven by an intuition that there is more to worship than what is currently on offer. It is driven by a call to create new forms which honour the Creator and involve honest deconstructing of what is not working, reconnection with what has always worked, and an imaginative rebuilding of what lies ahead as we engage the unfolding future from a sacred perspective.
Marius Brand said
I think I have mentioned to you on occasion, that one of the best models I have found of understanding the “thin places” or liminal spaces, is the idea of the “transitional sphere” found in object relations psychology. It is the space between objectivity and subjectivity where creativity and imagination are harnessed to give symbolic expression to our subjective experiences of objective reality.
There is also the idea of “transitional objects”, like the security blanket or teddy bear that a child uses to represent the temporarily absent mother, and maintain security and meaning in the face of existential anxiety.
In the arts and especially in religion transitional objects are created and used to signify that deeper feeling of connection that cannot otherwise be described or expressed.
That seems to me get at the heart of liturgy, as not so much the “work of the people”, but rather the “play of the people” as we creatively and imaginatively symbolize our experiences of a subjectively present but objectively absent Ultimate Being.
Nic Paton said
Love the insights, Marius.
Aah: so there is a liminal space between work and play, where we are focussed and motivated but exploring and detached at the same time? I’m especially interested in how musical and dramatic work is decribed as play.
Are you suggesting that WE project thin spaces, and that they do not exist outside of our projections?
Marius Brand said
I would rather say that ‘play’ is the activity of the liminal space – but play can be focussed, motivated and exploratory. Music, drama, art – and indeed the spiritual disciplines themselves – are all forms of play in which we move not just between subjectivity and objectivity, but ultimately transcend them (and we call that the experience of union with God).
The problem with dualistic, Western modernism is that it turned play (as, ideally, an integrated activity of thinking, feeling and willing) into work (rational and objective). That made liturgy dry, rigid and lifeless. Postmodernity can help us reclaim true play, but I think the danger does exist that we can swing back to a premodern, pure subjective-experiencing type of liturgy akin to animism (like some forms of Charismatic worship).
I would be interested to hear from Gavin where he thinks shamanism fits in?
As for the thin spaces being a projection – is not all of what we call reality a projection??
Andrew said
Nic,
I see we are heading deep down into this mine….let’s hope we find some jewels.
It seems, to start with, I need to ask the question: Who or what are we worshipping or drawing close too?
I sometimes wonder if worship and sacred times are simply moments of recognising God in the events that constitute my life as opposed to objectifying the name of God.
Now, I can purposefully place icons and rituals in my path to create a sensation of closeness to the divine, but isn’t this, in reality, only creating a projection of my own subjective understanding of such a sensation and experience. Maybe it all masturbation!!
Possibly, it is true that “God is in all and all is in God”. Therefore, I will only see energy, activity, movement… the work/survival and the play/pleasure…. the events.
The dualisms and divides tend to isolate God to a subjective view of an object as oppose the metaphysical which is beyond understanding, even with the help of science and deconstruction.
As a Christian, I see the incarnation as demonstration of God alive in man.
Now, how do I grasp something from this event to glean something of the Divine?
Nic Paton said
You ask dangerous questions, my friend!
The part that makes most sense is “the incarnation as demonstration of God alive in man”, that is a worthy mantra.
I’m fascinated by your “event” theology : its active. And the purposeful placing of icons – the duty / privelage to sacrelise.
Ta.
Post-antidisestablishmentarianist Nemesis Against Emergent Gevaar said
This gathering is illegal under future legislation not yet passed. Due to the fact that this conversation is legal only in terms of a false present-future dualism, I hereby request in all probability to desist in further discussion as per the definition of such in the Manifesto of the Emergent Gevaar.
Yours monally,
Wat “Kyk Jy!” Watkins.
Nic Paton said
Wat Kyk Jy, I have to congratulate you in your connecting the future to the present – whenever I try doing this it comes out all stringy. AND it stains.
Your permission to desist is heartily ratified. Go back to your monad, and start over.
annewhitaker said
Hi Nic and other readers
the most helpful book I have ever read on this vitally important topic is Mircea Eliade’s “The Sacred and the Profane”.For a useful summary – prior to acquiring the book which no reflective person’s library should lack! – check out this link:
http://www.bytrent.demon.co.uk/eliadesp01.html
Best wishes
Anne Whitaker
Scotland
Nic Paton said
Hi there Anne
Thanks for keeping up. Have you visited Iona at all, if so does it come over as a “thin place”?
I have Eliade’s Shamanism, and I’d love to understand what he means by sacred and profane, so thanks for that summary. I’ll read and we can take it further.
Further posts will move into more musical and “worship” territory…
Oh and forgive my friends, they suffer from a malady known as “the right brain”.
annewhitaker said
Hi Nic
I feel fortunate to have easy access to the Scottish Highlands and Islands where ‘thin places’ are many – I have several sacred spaces found on trekks into the wild where on occasion I have felt in very profound relation to the numinous. But as you know you cannot summon these experiences – and at times they come, most unexpectedly, through doors opened by pain. My husband had a profound experience of being ‘called’ on Iona – during a particularily difficult time – which proved life-changing for him. And I had a mystical experience in my twenties which has sustained me ever since in tough times.
And I do forgive your friends. We’d be a bit lop-sided running on only one hemisphere!
Anne
nic paton said
Ann I’ve started to read “Mircea Eliade: The Sacred & The Profane 1 Sacred Space (Summary)” and its very very profound, so thanks for that. I am buying the book asap!
These are my most resonant points:
1) non-religious modern man lives in ‘a desacralised cosmos’
2) for them , the cosmos is uniformly neutral, but for religious man it is experienced as non-homogeneous.
Something I wrote recently is this; “The filmmaker Godfrey Reggio warns us of “Technology as the new Terra Firma – (having) replaced the Earth as the comprehensive host of our life”. McLuhan would have approved: “Technology is that which separates us from our environment.” This is a frightening prospect, for our environment is our Source… Unless, of course, you hold to the dualistic belief in the innate worthlessness of “the world”, and the transcendent goodness of its opposite, “heaven”.”
3) The major differentiation of space for religious man was that between cosmos and chaos.
I have never thought of it this way, but it so well expresses the way I see things.
annewhitaker said
Hi Nic
glad to have put you on a track that is helpful. I am currently re-reading The Sacred and the Profane, and share your concern – which you may recall Robert Pirzig raised away back in the 70s in ‘Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance’ – re the dangers of handing over control of our lives to objects and processes in the context of technology which we can neither make with our own hands, nor understand. He understood the alienation from our Source which arises from doing this but couldn’t even have imagined then just how far this process of alienation would go.
Personally, I need a sense of connection with the sacred in order to feel whole, and I think all humans at some level – even Prof Dawkins, who protests too much! – need this. Nature provides a sense of connection, but so also does participating in shared religious ritual with one’s fellow human beings.
That is why, eventually after years of tramping the Scottish hills and solitary communion by the sea, I eventually began going to church again. But I am an old Druid at heart – they believed that ‘all gods are One’ and in fact welcomed the early Christians who colonised the British Isles: not a courtesy which the early Christians returned, one might add!
You might be interested in reading my article “Sea as Church” which explores connections between solitary experience of Nature, and collective experience of Church – as might some of your readers. Here is the link:
http://anne-whitaker.com/category/sea-as-church/.
Best wishes Anne