Greenblade - creation - faith - justice
User Login
Greenblading
Quick, now
I’ve been writing a lot about Greenblade recently for various grant proposals and I find myself putting an emphasis on the post-communion prayer that includes this line, which is buried in that lilting “prayer book language” we all love to love:
… send us out to do the work you have given us to do …
That line always jumps out at me – and stays out because what I hear and the prayer it is embedded in are not exactly the same.
The prayer says, “Almighty and everliving God, we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the Body of your Son, and heirs of your eternal kingdom.”
What I hear is, “We have just eaten physical food at your table – a bite, a sip – but within the ritual it was a connection, the physical with the spiritual, the now with the then, the here with the everywhere.”
The prayer says, “And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord. To him, to you, and to the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.”
I hear, “So, we have been fed and the next thing that is supposed to happen is we go do the work we were evidently given during this ritual of consecration. Whether we noticed it or not.”
How can we pray this prayer and then happily go off to brunch?
The rhythmic language with its formulaic phrases obscures (for me) the enormity of what is supposed to happen. I feel here as I do on Pentecost, which I always dread because I am never sure it is wise to call down the Holy Spirit on a group of otherwise innocent people. Or, as Annie Dillard says,
On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.
Perhaps we do not want to look at it this way. And with good reason. T.S. Eliott described the mandate (Italian mandare, to send) like this:
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
Comments
As someone who's surrounded by students, teachers, and scholars of literature on a daily basis, I don't think I've ever heard the comment that TSE is "old hat," Cullie. I can imagine that there are plenty of people who think this, but I probably don't want to have dinner with them. Or maybe I do, as long as they're willing to respect the fact that I think that "Ash Wednesday" is an extraordinary poem, a favorite, in fact. It's also one that I can't read without tears for just the reasons you mention in relation to "Little Gidding," she says, pulling Four Quartets off the shelf for a mid-afternoon meditation.
Hi, Susan:
I enjoyed your reflection on the Post-Communion Prayer
(the one we used this morning, in fact!). About your comment:
I hear, So, we have been fed and the next thing that is supposed to happen
is we go do the work we were evidently given during this ritual of
consecration. Whether we noticed it or not.
How can we pray this prayer and then happily go off to brunch?
Perhaps in part because I'm a great fan of brunch, I think we *can*
pray those words and "happily go off to brunch." There is joy in having
a clear sense of being given important work to do *and* the resources
to do it. But we need two sorts of nourishment to make us truly "able" --
physical/biological nourishment, and social/communal/spiritual
nourishment. Brunch can be one of the best sources of both!
I was also much taken by your T. S. Eliot reference; the last paragraphs
of *Little Gidding* (the whole poem, really, but particularly from
"The dove descending --" to the end) are words I literally cannot read
without tears -- not of sadness, but of revelation and a sense of
transcendent truth and beauty.
I gather (not being a scholar of such trends) that TSE is seen as rather
"old hat" these days -- too formal, structured and grounded in ancient
thoughts and ideas to be *with it.* If these allegations are true, I say
"So be it" (a/k/a *Amen*). Dean Inge said (many years ago, of course)
"The man who marries the spirit of this age will be a widower in the next."
Good work, Susan!
Cullie
P.S. Susan, I *love* the contrast in your original post between what you hear (in communal, spoken language) and what you hear in your heart. This actually makes me think about an idea I'm working through in my dissertation right now -- remind me to tell you in person.
Giffen