The Difference Between Then and Now

Mike asked me to unpack what I meant by the shift I described in the last post. It happens that another correspondent, Frazer, sent me two quotations from Doris Grumbach. She describes how I used to feel:

From Doris Grumbach's The Presence of Absence: On Prayers and an Epiphany (1998)

I hope you will understand and excuse my absence.  My respect and affection for you as my rector is very great.  My sympathy for you is even greater: a charismatic, loving man whose spiritual life must be severely tried, almost consumed by your duties as a church CEO, a leader, somewhat like a stage manager, responsible for the determination of the liturgy for an ever growing congregation, responsible for fidelity to the rubrics.  Perforce, you are a sincere believer in the often onerous role you have been trained for and ordained to. (p. 7)

And further on:

... due to my advancing age and crotchety disposition, I found myself unduly distracted by the programmed motion during the service.  The stirrings of the congregation, the riffling of pages and booklets and hymnals, the sounds of kneeling, standing and sitting, the perambulations ofthe assistants and the celebrants on the altar and the offering-collectors up and down the aisles, the progress of well-intentioned but unskilled lectors to and from the podium, the ushered parade to the altar to receive communion--I had not been able to find a way to blot out the constant bustle.  True, it was all in obedience to official rules of conduct, but for me it left no place to pray in silence, or listen, or wait for a sense of God.  "Be still, then, and know that I am God' is the familiar injunction in Psalm 46:11, but in church there was no stillness, no time in which to know Him.

A minor matter: most disturbing to me were the built-in interruptions to the liturgy itself.  Priests and Rectors most often prefer to make all their announcements of coming events--dinners and meetings, lectures and committee gatherings, parish suppers, and much else--in the middle of the service.  Having broken into the rhythm of the liturgy for these practical matters, some community-spirited pastors then inquire if anyone in the congregation has an announcement to make. Once, I recall, a full ten minutes at the center of the rite was occupied by items of social action and plans for the winter rummage sale.

. . .

So, the flow of prayer is usually halted in order to inform the congregations of the potluck supper next Tuesday.  God, if he has been summoned in the first moments of the liturgy, is put on hold.

I used to notice all these things too, as you, Gentle Readers, all know from past posts on this blog. But the insight that I had last Sunday was that I no longer am involved enough, or care enough, even to complain. Instead, going to church has become almost dystopian, as I describe in my new book. Even though the architecture of the cathedral is far more agreeable than a fast-food shop, and even though the music is glorious, the experience is the same:

"Recall the experience of eating in a fast-food joint. The interior is made of molded plastic in nursery colors. It is designed to make you feel as if you had entered a badly made television cartoon. (Life no longer imitates art: it imitates cartoons.) The lines on the floor guide customers like cattle, gently toward the slaughter. As you shuffle along, your steps unconsciously take up the rhythm of the background thump and hiss of the broadcast noise. There is a rising sense of isolation, unease, claustrophobia, incipient panic, and wild weeping. The only possible way to alleviate this extreme anxiety is to consume. You reach the counter: "A triple Vacuity, a medium Frozen Scream, and a large order of Lies, please." You are then provided with a blasphemous parody of what a meal should be. The hard plastic stall provided as a place to sit and eat mimics special chairs for children such as potty chairs; it pretends to offer a haven while in reality it assaults, removing all possibility of dignity, silence, thought, reflection, or genuine exchange with any other person unfortunate enough to have entered this dystopian nightmare. The only option is to shut down, to go through the prescribed motions: order, pay, munch (huddled and hunched) as quickly as possible, and depart.

"Fast food means not only fast delivery of imitation edibles into the hand of the corralled consumer; it also encourages fast, mindless eating. There is no time for consideration; if there were, we might discover how disgusting are the items saturated with fat, sugar, and salt that pervade the malign, addictive combination of substances that we are shoving into our mouths. The atmosphere renders impossible the time-honored value of meals as gatherings for appreciation of healthful, lovingly prepared food to be shared with conversation and the renewal of relationships."