Worship and the Arts (Or rather, the art of worship)

In October 2000, around seventy folks gathered for the Pathways Conference on Spiritual Leadership. Interspersed among stimulating lectures by Jane Vennard and Marjorie Thompson, heartening discussions, instructive small-group sessions, and shared meals, we experienced a variety of worship experiences

• Morning and evening prayers in the Celtic tradition from Iona;
• An evening service of healing and wholeness;
• A service of prayer using the songs of Taizé;
• Singing and prayer around a labyrinth;
• A Communion service at the conclusion of the conference.

Just as all of the presentations and discussions were absorbed through very individual lenses, these worship services were no doubt experienced in similarly personal ways. Some participants observed that the services seemed different from other conference worship services. Several people commented on the sort of restfulness as well as energy experienced in the worship: how the art spoke to them in some way; how walking the labyrinth and praying and singing all at the same time was truly a pilgrimage mirroring the spiritual journey; and how the simple, elegant prayers from ancient Celtic writings readied them for the day and served as a lullaby for the night.

A Holy Hunger

As I reminisce about last year's Pathways Conference and the worship we experienced together, I cannot help but recall a recent conversation with people from various backgrounds of church-going and religious experience. I discovered that if you want to stop party conversation in a hurry, just ask: "Why do you worship?" A pregnant silence is sure to ensue.

As murmurs and groans started to rise and fall, and it became clear that the question was not "Why do you go to church?" but "Why do you worship?", some responses began to form. Some individuals knew precisely why they worshiped: "I'm created to worship God," or "I cannot not worship," or simply, "I always have." Others remained silent. Still others struggled haltingly out loud, troubled by the very word worship. Before long, free-floating debates about the etymology of worship began to mount — many expressing a distaste for the dryness, authoritarianism, and submissiveness associated with the whole concept. Still others asked, "What is the difference between prayer and worship?" The volleying kind of conversation reminded me of the growing number of congregations splitting their worship times between "contemporary" and "traditional" services, trying wholeheartedly, and sometimes desperately, to meet the needs of so many different kinds of people.

At the conclusion of that impromptu focus group discussion, one person mused aloud, "I used to wonder why there were so many different denominations in the world. Now I wonder why there are so few."

All of this suggests to me an audible spiritual restlessness crying out to be noticed. There seems to be a sort of Holy Hunger in our worshiping communities of faith. Worship, the supposed centerpiece of Christian life and community, seems to find itself increasingly in the cluttered room of cultural debate, vying for attention, straining to respond to many voices, calling for many different strategies. It is a long way from the catacombs of Rome and an even longer way from stories and a picnic of fish and bread on a grassy hillside. We are still hungry.

Restlessness and Pilgrimages

As part of a Study Grant for Pastoral Leaders, a sabbatical opportunity provided to me through the Louisville Institute, a Lilly Endowment program for religious studies, I am embarking on a study I have decided to call Restlessness in the Pews: The Hunt for Authentic Worship. As a part of this study, I made a pilgrimage to the Taizé community in France, an ecumenical community started by Brother Roger in 1940 as a place of prayer and hospitality during World War II. I have been part of a prayer group that uses the songs of Taizé at the Scarritt-Bennett Center for the past four years, playing and praying the music with a small group of musicians. We offer the service of prayers to the Nashville community twice a month and on other special occasions.

My visit to this amazing little community tucked in the hills of Burgundy in France, where I participated in services of sung prayers with hundreds of people from around the world, was exhilarating and profound. I am inspired by Brother Roger's vision to create a community that would become a parable of Communion. Today, with thousands visiting this tiny village each year, Taizé still serves as a place to reflect on the sources of one's faith, to look for meaning in one's life, and to sing songs composed of simple repeated phrases.

It is truly a place where an inner joy can be experienced or renewed. For Brother Roger and the Taizé Community, prayer is seen as a "serene force at work within human beings, stirring them up, changing their hearts, never allowing them to close their eyes in the face of evil. . . . From it we draw the energy to wage other struggles, to transform the human condition and to make the earth a place fit to live in."¹

At Taizé where these sung prayers happen three times a day (morning, noon, and night), no one really ever mentioned the word worship. Surrounded by candlelight and ancient and contemporary icons, it all seemed to be about being open to mystery — through prayer, singing, silence, Scripture, simplicity. The art of it is the mystery. The mystery of it is the art.

A Beckoning Canvas

The Pathways Conference draws religiously devoted and spiritually searching people of different backgrounds and parts of the USA. While participants may differ in stylistic preferences about worship, there does seem to be a shared and palpable hunger for simplicity and authenticity around prayer and corporate worship services.

As I reflect on working with Marjorie Thompson to prepare the worship services for last year's conference, I now ask myself, What were some of the elements that seemed to center us in different ways — different from what we may be accustomed to in our own churches and other conferences? Here are a few things that come to mind about what we paid attention to and ways we tried to prepare a canvas for worship and invited others to join in the art of it all:

• There is an inherent rhythm and poetry to the Celtic Prayers from Iona. These brief, bidding prayers are rich in earth, sea, sky, as well as Trinitarian images. The very nature of those images carries a repetitive, rhythmic simplicity that awakens our senses in the mornings and prepares us for letting go at night.
• All of the worship services were bathed in simplicity, participation, silence, and the overseeing presence of The Angels of the Hours: large paintings of contemporary icons that pointed us toward not only the time of day but the challenges that certain times can bring . . . challenges such as persevering, letting go, forgiving, showing courage, lightening up. The kinds of struggles and mysteries that face us as spiritual leaders stood before us in color, shape, and tenderness through these painted figures.
• Very few services were printed for all to follow. This allowed for more call and response, openness and flexibility for making momentary adjustments. Services that used printed orders of worship were spacious, not too dense with words, and led worshipers in song and moments of silence.
• Experiencing a common prayer in the Taizé tradition can be transporting. As Brother Roger, founder of the Taizé community, says, "Nothing is more conducive to communion with the living God than a meditative common prayer, with at its high point, singing that never ends and continues in the silence of one's heart when one is alone again."²
• These worship services were highly organic: naturally intuitive, participatory, and invitational. While there was an intrinsic structure to the form of each prayer and each service of worship, there was a feeling of not being enslaved by it. There was an openness to mystery in the midst of the form. There was shared leadership, with no one particular voice dominating the services. Many people served as Scripture readers, volunteers for prayers of healing, labyrinth walkers . . . and everyone sang. Some people even sketched, colored, and created artwork during the prayers — beautiful expressions of the Spirit's movement.
• We may prepare and create the "container" for worship, but the invitation is clearly from God. When we choose to step into the container or on the canvas with our whole selves, it seems that whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.

So Why Worry About Worship?

I once facilitated a worship planning retreat where I asked the participants to sketch a picture of one of the most memorable, spiritually satisfying worship experiences they could remember. What surfaced from this group of savvy planners and extraordinarily well-versed liturgy literates was surprising and unexpected. Pictures and stories of worship emerged from the most unlikely places: being "moved" by the movement to the center at a Billy Graham crusade; testimonies at an AA meeting; ecumenical worship on the beach around a cross; a rather nondescript Sunday service at a small-town Baptist church; monks processing with incense, chanting in an unknown language.

I was struck by the power, the sensuousness, the genuine "caught-in-the-throat" feeling evoked by the stories and pictures. They were all high and holy moments — unexpected — and without a great deal of labor around just the "right" liturgy or coherent and congruent hymnody. We sat in the stillness of the memories, filled with gratitude for the infinite variety of gifts of the Spirit. Even then I asked myself, "How can this be?"

As one who has been a church musician since I could barely manage to reach the piano pedals, planned liturgies for worship for over fifteen years at the same church, and now facilitate workshops about worship with folks from across the USA, I can say with some certainty that we all tend to work very hard week after week to "pull off" worship — often as if it all hinged on us.

So, why study what makes worship authentic, faithful — even artful — in this new millennium? As worship leaders and planners, whether lay or ordained, in the pews or on the platform, we are, I think, as Frederick Buechner says in Telling the Truth, "stewards of the wildest mystery of them all."

¹Brother Roger of Taizé, Trust on Earth (Ateliers et Presses de Taizé, 1998). Ateliers et Presses de Taizé, 71250 Taizé-Communauté, France, http://www.taize.fr.

²Ibid.

Karen Lee Turner, Ed.D., is a pastoral musician, liturgical artist, and spiritual retreat leader living in Nashville, Tennessee.