A Pause Found

Have you ever been reading a book, and then come across something that deeply moves you? Something, where you might say, actually out loud, "Gosh, I want to remember that forever." The something provides a certain resonance that gives a pause, an awakening to something deep in your soul. I had that experience this morning while reading a book I started last week, Open Secrets by Richard Lischer. Open Secrets is a book about a young pastor in the late 1960s who full of ideals and thoughts of living out God's calling with a zest for change and compassion, is faced with the reality of being placed in an impoverished farm area in Southern Illinois amongst people who are used to things as they are in their community, and understanding the world in a certain way. Where his ideals and this community's reality meet are the crux of the grace and beauty of this book. This is the quote that stirred me and provide me with a sense of pause,

"The Protestant church was already in the process of discarding the named Sundays of Lent and Easter even as we blessed and planted the seeds. Now they bear the evocative names, 'The First Sunday in Lent', 'The Second Sunday of Lent', and so on. The Fourth Sunday in Lent was once named Laetare, which means rejoice. It was known in the church as refreshment Sunday. On this Sunday rose paraments [vestments, etc.] replaced the traditional purple of Lent, and psychologically and spiritually, we breathed a little easier. The color rose seemed to say, There's light at the end of the tunnel. Even at the dead center of Lent, Christ is risen.
The protestant church got rid of Laetare as well as Rogate [the Latin word for pray] and many of the other days for reasons I have never fully understood. It created a bland church calendar and liturgies du jour in the image of people who have been abstracted from place and history, who have no feel for the symbols and no memory of the stories. They live, work and worship in climate-controlled buildings. They have largely adopted a digitalized language. Their daily routines override the natural rhythms and longings of life.

I can only say that the Latin words were not too much for my high school dropouts. The simple outline of church history didn't overtax their imaginations. The liturgy and church year made sense to the farmers in New Cana, for who better than a farmer understands the circularities of life? The church year had a rhythm, and so did their lives.

Some would argue that the observance of Rogate arose in an agricultural world and is, therefore, irrelevant to all but the 1.7 percent of Americans [probably alot less today] who live on farms. But my congregation understood the metaphor that underlay Rogate, which is this: When we do any kind of useful work, we join the act of creation in progress and help God keep the universe humming."

Thank you God for helping me find the pause.