I was at the gym last night, working on my balance. My ankles are weak, and landing my jumps safely, with rebound and buoyant ankles cushioning the impact, has become difficult. So, I stood, one-legged, in the center of a Bosu ball, leaning this way and that, trying to perform different maneuvers so to strengthen my ankles and improve my dancing.
Next to me was a woman on a pink yoga mat, breathing deeply, moving fluidly through the postures of the Sun Salutation. Her class had been canceled due to the sudden and rapid snowfall, but, she said when she finished, "I still needed to get my yoga in." I had trouble focusing on my own balance work, I was so enchanted by her. The Y is beautifully chaotic, with children running around and yelling on the basketball court, preteens trying to use machines and dropping the weights every so often, muscle men in the free weight area grunting and yelling with their exertion, the pound of feet on the treadmills. And yet here she was, quiet, peaceful, entranced, as though there was nothing going on around her. There was only her form, her mind, her breath, and the Sun Salutation.
I met with my confirmand again this week - the young woman whom I'm "mentoring" through her confirmation in the Episcopal Church. When I took on this mentor role, I didn't know I would like it so much. But I do. She's a bubbly, intelligent, and thoughtful fifteen year old, and we both are reaching a point of comfort where we can be candid, and frank, and honest. And, truth be told, our meetings may give me more to think about than they give her. I find this to be the case with most ministry-type things: I always receive far more than I give.
Towards the end of this particular meeting, we were again discussing youth in the church and how the service gets really boring, because "we do the same thing every single week." That was my brothers' perennial complaint: it never changes. It feels dead and static. It's boring.
I had to think for a while before I found a way to respond. I used to think it was deathly boring as well, and my poor mother had to put up with my obnoxious rebellion against church. She still made me go to church, but she let me sit out in the garden or wander around the building until the service was over. Now, I really do appreciate the Episcopal mass, so how was I going to convey its "magic" to myself - my own teenage self whom I saw in my confirmand's eyes?
She's an actor, and she attends the same arts high school I attended, so there's already some common ground there. I thought that a good place to start. "Well, you know how when you finally get "off-book" for a show, and you're able to really become your character? It's no longer you play-acting your character - you begin to fall away, and the character becomes you, you become your character?" She nodded. "That's what I think I love the most about playing piano, or singing, and definitely dancing - the moment when I've learned my piece so well, or learned my dance so well, that there's no longer a distinction between me and the music, or me and the dance. The veil is lifted. The music flows through me, the dance flows through me. And I become the dance."
"I think that's what distinguishes the student from the artist. What do you think? Are you still a student or have you experienced moments when you've been an artist?"
"Well," she said, "I think mostly I still struggle as a student, but sometimes there's these moments when I finally get off book, and the other actors get off book, and we really become our characters. We really feel the action of the play - we're no longer pretending."
"Exactly," I said. "And I think the biggest reason I'm able to appreciate Episcopal worship, which is really a catholic mass - we don't call it the "mass," but that's what it is - is because I am a student of the arts. I understand what it's like to practice and work to the point where I am no longer struggling to perform, but I AM the performance. I AM the dance, or the music. And I think knowing how to do that in the arts has allowed me to do that in worship, too. I know the words so well - I could say the Nicene Creed in my sleep - so when I go to church to worship, I don't have to think anymore. I can let myself fall away, and kind of let my mind go to another place. Will you try that sometime? It might make church a little more interesting."
"Yeah. Yeah, I will."
My youngest brother is a baseball player, and I wish I could share this same thing with him. Baseball players have hours and hours of batting practice, swinging the bat over and over so that in the heat of a game, they can focus, let worries and anxieties fall away, and focus on the pitcher and the ball speeding toward them. So they can stop thinking "turn my hips, pull the bat back, lean into the swing, see the ball, see the bat contact the ball, follow through, and now run like hell," and they can just be entirely in the moment, entirely focused and calm, letting thoughts about HOW to hit the ball fall away so that they can just DO it.
The same is true of all art forms and all sports.
And, the same is true for Episcopal worship.
Batting practice can get boring, but if you want to be a good baseball player, you do it anyway. Having to learn your lines as an actor can be tedious and frustrating, but you do it so you can BECOME your character.
Repeating my jig for the thousandth time is likewise monotonous, but I do it so that when I'm finally onstage, the dance can flow through me. Worries, cares, and details fall away so that the dance becomes a perfect whole. So that I can be made perfectly whole.
If you're bored with the mass, perhaps approach it in a new way, with fresh eyes. Immerse yourself in the experience, let reality drift away and let the worship take you to a different plain of being.
Be made perfectly whole.
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