AAL Brief: As crisis becomes the new normal, can the church, whose life has long been grounded in ritual, model a compelling liturgical lifestyle that moves us on from candlelit anger and despair into meaningful pathways of spiritual, social, and environmental revival?
Contextual Liturgy – a response from Amelia Koh-Butler
Accepting an
invitation to speak at the gathering of the Australian Academy of Liturgy is
such a privilege and one I have much been looking forward to. I was aware of
the last Conference being evacuated because of the threatening bushfires. Like
so much of Australia at the time, I was aware of dislocation and crisis. It was
not unusual for us to experience summer smoke haze, but the hell-fires burning
in every direction took things to new levels.
People were being
cut off from one another. People were isolated and afraid.
As liturgists we
know that presence matters. Trauma-informed readings of scripture are playing
catchup, for liturgists have long known that the traumas of life-changing-events
should all be marked by rites and rituals. We are, after all, the specialists
of hatches, matches and dispatches. During crises, we provide the non-anxious
presence and well-worn prayers when people wait for news or resolutions.
From before recorded
time,
the First Peoples (Nations) cared for this Land.
We praise the Creator for the beauty of this Land
and honour those who have offered themselves
in tending it.
We acknowledge the Elders and communities
who have told the sacred stories
and nurtured faithfulness to the Creator.
We ask God’s blessing on those who continue to work
for the healing and restoration of this Land
and Her Communities.
In these strange
times, I find myself teaching for two seminaries based in the USA: Northwind
Seminary (the new Methodist online seminary) and Neighborhood Seminary (the
local missions organization headed up by my dear friend, Elaine Heath). In the
late-night and early morning zoom conversations when I can meet with them, we
have discussed ethnographic research we have been undertaking about emerging
spiritual and liturgical practices.
Our reflections
through 2020 and 2021 were shaped by fires, floods, Black Lives Matter, an
American election… by themselves, these would have been worthy of study.
How do contexts of
crises, with their associated griefs, angers, frustrations and despairs, impact
on us? What rhythms and rituals hold us in a state of spiritual awareness and
nourishment?
As we talked through
crisis upon crisis and let our creative imaginations inspire one another, I
began to realise: my companions on the road are in different time zones, on
different continents and speak different languages. Yet, we light a candle, we
hold our hand up to bless one another, or to wave when we are muted. We make
contact in ways we could not have imagined when we were children… some
of my material today was developed in conversations with them and is echoed on
our blog pages.
This is my body,
given for you ...
On a scorching and smoking summer day
in Sydney in December 2019, my friend, Rev Mary Pearson, broke bread and passed
it to the half dozen of us standing around my husband’s bed. His body was
beyond receiving bread at that point, so we used a dropper to moisten his lips
from the cup of life. Did it comfort him? I don't know.
As the spirit leaves the body, there is
mystery and wonder and sadness and gratitude. They weave together in a story
that is ending and beginning at the same time. At such a time, body-mind-spirit
hold a strange little farewell dance. In final days or hours, when the spirit
seems ready to depart, the body can have a last brief blossoming. Time pauses,
making room for a different kind of moment. Some people call it Kairos.
For
many of us, deathbed ministry is a time we know as sacred. We might do a
session about it in Pastoral Practice at college, but nothing really prepares
us for the reality and the mystery. We talk about the cycles and rhythms of
life, but we do not plan the phone-call that always comes at the most
inconvenient of moments…. Please come. If we have been well-mentored, we might
have an accessible kit close-to-hand… a hand-cross, some oil for anointing, a
large-print card with some prayers and responses… a Bible with sticky tabs at particular
Psalms and passages of comfort… maybe even a hymnal.
These
days, I have Playlist of favourite hymns on my phone. I have playlists in
English, Chinese, Korean and Fijian… I just need to cue them up before entering
the room. When it is hard to talk, listening to sacred music together can be a
physical and spiritual comfort.
Having been a university chaplain, I am
a body donor. I carry a little card in my wallet stating that upon my death,
the university medical school should be contacted so that my body parts can be
used to help health professionals learn their craft – of keeping other bodies
going. When they have finished with my remains a cremation will occur and the
ashes will be boxed up for my kids to take to be scattered by elders on Adnyamathanha
country. Ikara (Wilpena Pound) is a sacred remote wilderness land in Northern
South Australia. My Adnyamathanha sisters and brothers are descendants of the
oldest known civilization on the earth… 60,000 years! The spot we have chosen
for the ashes is near the grasstrees, also known as medicine trees. They will
nourish the earth. It is the logical endgame for recycling. After all, our
bodies are made from the earth and to the earth our bodies will return.
2019 feels like such a long time ago
now. Bushfires create thunderstorms. The storms bring lightening, igniting more
fires. The fire-storm cycles are noisy and terrifying. Air feels constantly
thick and heavy. Our normal humid Sydney summer had been dry beyond imagining…
to go outside was to battle breathing and dehydration. I remember, after months
of bushfires and instructions not to go outside, emerging into the great
outdoors of scorched earth. I can remember in my body.
During the earliest weeks of my
widowing, I did not want to be physically present to others. Physical absence
was too fresh and dominating, so I turned to chaplaining faculty and students
online. I became the ‘home contact person’ for a complementary medicine
exchange group who had gone to our sister university in China. Even though I am
half-Chinese, I am ashamed to say I did not even know where they were – some
place called Wuhan.
The group stayed an extra week to
assist their colleagues before being recalled by our Government to spend forty
days in off-shore quarantine. By the time they returned home in February 2020,
those of us who had been supporting them were preparing for potential SARS
outbreaks. As Multifaith Chaplain, I attended a Conference of health and
emergency workers. I was meant to be comforting people who were scaring me. At
that conference, we practiced protocols dictated by specialist epidemiology
nurses and infection control public health experts.
By the time public health orders were
introduced, I already had access to university data and projections. I was learning
to share information in new ways digitally and started designing ‘lockdown
life’ a few weeks before we started our community ‘stay-at-home health order’
restrictions. I organised for deliveries of ‘things I might need’ to tide me
through what I assumed could be 8-10 weeks of isolation. I made sure I had
plants to grow my own fresh greens and dry-goods to keep me fed. I was
well-stocked for my bodily needs.
I spent 120+ days in official
‘lockdown’ this year. During that period, the only bodily touch I experienced
was when I went to donate blood. (Blood donation is considered an exemption as
it is an essential service). My friends in Melbourne spent 267 days in
lockdowns between March 2020 and October 2021. Some of them were utterly
reliant on technology for human contact. Spending so much time physically
isolated from others has a mental health cost. In Australia, most of our
emergency departments were not full of COVID cases. They were full of suicide
attempts. Isolation from human contact is costly. It makes me wonder: in such
times, when people are experiencing social and communal crisis and trauma, what
is the response of missional liturgy? How can our prayers and sacraments, our
rites and poetry, become part of the work of healing and wholeness?
The term haptic refers to touch
and non-verbal communication and connection. In the last few months I have been
part of a conversation about haptic wondering, online sacraments and
spirituality. In February 2020, believing lockdowns were coming, I published a
‘Liturgy of empty hands’ for the World Methodist Council. It contained a Great
Prayer of Thanksgiving, based on our Communion/Eucharistic prayers. However, it
was written with the assumption that we would not be able to share bread
because we could not gather as a body. I have heard from many people around the
world about their experiences of sharing their common empty hands. However,
where I am, my community chose not to go in the same direction.
Since April 2020, my oversighting
church, the Uniting Church in Australia, authorized and encouraged Ministers to conduct online
Communion. I was more than a little challenged by the decision. The questions
and concerns were layered. Yet, today, I look forward to zoom communion.
Together, we hold up bread and juice and know the Body of Christ is supported
by both an online and unseen cloud of witnesses. Somehow I am comforted that
God’s imagination is still creating new things.
This is my body,
given for you ...
When we hold our bread up to the camera
and invite the community to bless one another’s bread from a distance, we are
performing a rite physically. We each feel the bread. We each see the people.
We each hear the words. We each sing of the holiness of God. We each offer a
blessing of peace in deaf-sign language. This we-eachness is part of my
body in isolation becoming part of the Body of Christ with others in mystery.
As the Canadian United Church of Christ puts it in their prayer of affirmation:
We are not alone.
We live in God’s world.
I continue to grapple with the question
of what is prioritized in online worship as I prepare for the mid-2022
gatherings of the World Methodist Council and World Federation of Methodist and
Uniting Church Women. Unlike the World Council of churches, we have decided to
hold both events online. With the social justice emphasis of the Wesleyan
tradition, it is not suprising that both sets of organisers have made this
stand. They are conscious of our most vulnerable member nations’ churches and
the problems of trying to gather when so few countries have access to vaccines,
especially when fourth waves of Delta and Omicron are impacting even those
countries with access to good health care.
So, how have churches
in different countries responded to questions of digital church or non-gathered
worship. I am in the process of coordinating a series of papers around the
theme of feasting and fasting. In August of last year worship and liturgy
coordinators from 15 countries met in a series of focus groups on zoom. We
heard stories of Nationalised worship services in the Czech Republic held on
radio, with people coming onto their balconies with bread and wine. We heard
stories of household and bubble churches. We heard stories of countless pastors
and priests leaving pastoral ministry because they were either ill from COVID
or were exhausted from the challenges of change, restrictions and
isolation.
In one zoom
session, I talked with a UMC Bishop in the southern states of the US. The
normally brash and authoritative leader was quiet and reflective. She had gone
from being Bishop for one large conference to 2 large conferences. During the
previous 3 months she had conducted the funerals of 15 of her Ministers, most
of whom had insisted on holding in-person services for Easter 2020 and paid the
price within weeks. She estimated that a large number of Parishes would close
and there would be a significant shortage of pastoral leaders for a long time
to come. This year, I have started teaching with both Elaine Heath’s
Neighborhood Seminary and the new online UMC Northwind Seminary. Both of these
institutions are developing courses and liturgical specializations for online
and non-physically-gathered worship.
I name these
things because, despite our lengthy lockdowns, or perhaps because of them, in
Australia we do not yet seem to have done as much serious work on alternative
long term forms of discipleship and worship.
Shall we start
to explore:
Bubble church?
Interactive
online communities?
Workplace
chaplaincies online
As a Chaplain
to Western Sydney University and the Westmead Crisis Health Response Team, I am
aware that these core community organisations are crying out for Chaplaincy and
welcoming pastoral, spiritually inclusive ministry. What are we doing when we
are spending our time and resources measuring square meterage within our
buildings when people beyond the church are desperate for spiritual comfort and
guidance?
Over the last
two years, people have asked for prayer:
- By the letterbox and at the Post Office
- On the bus
- At the railway station
- In the testing queue
- At the pharmacy
My congregation has written chalk prayers on footpaths, tied prayer ribbons to fences and organized encouragement banners to be hung off bridges. We have planted sunflowers across four suburbs as signs of hope. We have been learning about new ways to share photos and develop social media conversations. We have been working on learning how to make a website in four languages. We have been learning Auslan sign language for some responses to use on zoom.
We have to start using a different kind of liturgical imagination.
During our extended lockdown, we were
allowed to go outside for exercise (on our own or with one other socially
distanced person). I would sometimes find myself walking and enjoying the clean
air (no bushfires and no cars). I would experience a moment of delight or joy
and then be almost brought physically crashing down by a tsunami of grief,
making it difficult to breathe or keep standing. Apparently, this is quite
common. I don’t remember learning about it in seminary, but several other
widows and widowers (and my grief counsellor) have confirmed that it passes –
eventually. Their encouragement helps me keep faith. The experience confirms
for me the linking of body-mind-spirit. Sometimes my body recalls me to live as
one whose faith is in resurrection, but not as one who denies death. So, how
can we incorporate what we are learning about grief and loss and trauma as we
proclaim good news?
In August, we sent sunflower seeds to
members of our congregation. They planted them and we shared pictures with each
other to show how the plants shot up tall. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,
the glorious golden sunflowers become our outdoor flower arrangement.
35-38 Some skeptic is sure to ask,
“Show me how
resurrection works. Give me a diagram; draw me a picture. What does this
‘resurrection body’ look like?” If you look at this question closely, you
realize how absurd it is. There are no diagrams for this kind of thing. We do have
a parallel experience in gardening. You plant a “dead” seed; soon there is a
flourishing plant. There is no visual likeness between seed and plant. You
could never guess what a tomato would look like by looking at a tomato seed.
What we plant in the soil and what grows out of it don’t look anything alike.
The dead body that we bury in the ground and the resurrection body that comes
from it will be dramatically different.
1 Corinthians 15:36-38 - The Message
After periods of fallow or fasting, our
fields and bodies are cleansed and renewed. We are ready, not to go back to old
ways, but to start fresh. We hope we can integrate the wisdom of our discipline
and experience. We pray we can offer our bodies as a worthy and living
sacrifice of praise. As we emerge from solitary confinement Down Under, we are
planning to weave into our lives connection and diversity, beyond what was
previously sought or tolerated. While the earth remains, our experience of it
has changed. We have learnt to connect differently. We have learnt how to
inhabit our bodies with each other.
This is the Body of
Christ.
In the breaking, we
become the promise of resurrection.
[online Communion
liturgy, Eastwood, Sydney, 2021]
When my spirit is freed to go home, I
pray my body can continue to be good news for the student doctors who learn and
the patients they will treat. I pray the dust of my bones will nourish God’s
good earth.
How have our attitudes changed?
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