What is your view of the "hymn sandwich"? How do you like your worship? These were some questions posed to us by the worship workshop on 13th February, led by Linda Hart and Joy Croft, and attended by people from all over the Western Union.
One of the sources that inspired Joy and Linda was the book
Telling the Truth: Comedy, Tragedy and Fairytale in the Gospels by F Buechner. The author says that a good service speaks not just to the public persona of the hearer, but also the private self. The best way to speak to this private or inner self is to use more images than thoughts, and for the speaker to talk about what something means to them personally. We must speak our truth with love, and offer the whole truth. When we step outside the usual forms of worship, we must ensure that truth and depth are maintained. Another inspiration was
Overhearing the Gospel by Fred Craddock, which says that people may have been exposed to ideas previously, but not experienced them inwardly.
Alternative forms of worship can sometimes be too surface-oriented, and we should be mindful of that when coming up with alternatives to the "hymn sandwich". We should not be afraid to tell difficult truths; the ideas that matter are the ones that speak to your own heart. Using your own life experiences is helpful; understanding the issues at hand, and where you are moved is important. Worship can be wrestling with angels, exploring difficult topics, and an opportunity for healing, so we can and should dig deep.
What is worship?
After this introductory talk, participants were asked what worship meant to us. Various ideas were put forward:
- Connection with the Divine and other people;
- Beloved community;
- feeling comfortable;
- comprehensible and accessible;
- meeting with like-minded others;
- finding a peaceful place in the self;
- time out from being busy;
- feeling close to God; renewing one's sense of place before God;
- welcoming, fellowship, reassurance;
- focus;
- recharging spiritual batteries;
- feeling part of everything and with other people;
- inspiration and gaining strength;
- to be part of a communion of saints;
- to be interested;
- music, singing and participation;
- Unitarian history;
- learning to live more authentically and Unitarianly;
- meditation.
Other forms of worship
We then looked at other forms of liturgy, such as Quaker meetings, Anglican services and so on. Quite often the more elaborate forms of worship will involve reaffirming the source of the tradition, appreciating the beauty and rhythm of words, and connecting to the past and to tradition. In a Quaker meeting on the other hand, people can worship at any time and place, and the aim of the meeting is to create a gathered silence. It is very plain and simple, and the participants sit in a square or in a circle. They look within themselves for the inward light, which they call "that of God" in everyone. The shape of the space matters here; there is nothing in the centre, and the circle gives a sense of community, as the group draws on their shared sense of the inner light. So worship needs to affirm community, both in the here and now, and with a sense of continuity from the past. The community is gathered around the Ultimate (whatever they conceive that to be). They affirm their shared sense of wonder at the universe, which is amazing, however you think it works.
The purpose of worship is to re-order our lives, to connect with tradition, and affirm our fellowship. In the Unitarian chalice symbol, the flame rises from the cup of community; it does not descend from above.
A spectrum of approaches
Within worship, there is a spectrum between different ways of approaching it. Linda identified four different spectra, and invited us to indicate where we stood on the spectrum.
The spectra are:
Intellect ----------------------- Heart
Silence ------------------------ Talking
Social justice ------------------ Inner work
Innovation -------------------- Familiarity / repetition
Obviously good services will have a mixture of all these elements, appealing to both heart and intellect, including silence (time for prayer and mediation) as well as words and music, talking about both social and inner work, and containing both familiar and novel elements. But most people have preferences for one or other of these options, and sometimes their preferences can change.
Doing a service without an address
We then divided up into small groups and discussed ways of doing a service without an address. We each picked a theme and worked out ideas for a service. For example, if the theme was "What is sacred?" the service could take the form of an engagement group, with all the participants contributing their thoughts on what is sacred, followed by a labyrinth walk to experience the sacred. Another group came up with an idea for a service about inner peace, with the image of ripples on a pond, and inviting participants to drop pebbles of different sizes in a bowl of water. Another idea was to invite children to draw a picture of what inner peace means to them. Another idea was doing a service about inclusion, and inviting participants to experience inclusiveness, perhaps by doing a water communion. Another group suggested a service about starvation, using a buffet meal to draw attention to hunger in the world. It was also pointed out that it's important to help people feel that they can make a difference in the world (and not just make them feel guilty), so there should be a positive outcome to this sort of service, such as raising money to send a cow to Africa.
In the next part of the workshop, we divided up into groups again, and each group was responsible for coming up with part of an actual worship service to celebrate loving community, which we all conducted together. Part 1 was centring and ingathering, bringing the group together with a chalice lighting and opening words. Part 2 was about sharing the journey, and was a storytelling activity. Part 3 was a mediation or prayer. Part 4 was a non-verbal expression of of how we create loving community, and part 5 was a closing activity to enable us to take the blessing of loving community out into the world.
This was followed by a group discussion on "Novelty and stability - can we have the best of both?" In the discussion, it was stressed that it is important that people don't feel unsettled by novel forms of worship, that they feel safe and not embarrassed, and know what is going to happen next. It is also important to ensure that the activity is serving the participants' needs, and is not just novelty for its own sake. It's also a good idea to ensure that if people don't want to participate in something, they don't feel obliged to do so.
Some very creative and meaningful activities were suggested, and hopefully worship leaders around the Western Union will be putting some of the ideas into practice soon. Everyone felt very inspired by the day to deepen our experience of worship.
Yvonne Aburrow
