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Our Heroine of The Decanonon examines and mocks the future of fashion. Well done! Bravissima!
The hardest part about blogging is that you see everything in your life as bloggable. This is not to say that one considers everything fair game, but that there is a constant voice in the back of your head trying to formulate topics out of the things you encounter, and staying analytically detached from events around you. It’s ridiculous, and I’m very aware of it, which makes me self-conscious; why, I ask myself, can I not simply enjoy the my life? Why can’t I just…be there, and live life? But instead, there hovers about me an invisible camera, aware of my every movement, with a stentorian narrator examing every angle, every clue.
So, I’ve been seeing this girl Nina, who’s super-duper Protestant. On our second date, she took me to her place of worship, a little hole-in-the-wall establishment called RIHOP — Richmond International House of Prayer. The congregation was small — all told, there were maybe twelve people there, half of whom were in the band. This being a Tuesday evening, I’m not sure if this is representative, but Nina sings the praises of this place, so I’d be surprised if more people don’t show up on their bigger things; judging by some photos on the website, I’m forced to assume the place gets pretty happening. RIHOP is part of something called the “international prayer movement,” which is apparently geared toward achieving 24-7 prayer in its various affiliated congregations. Nina acknowledges that this is something the Evangelical Protestant movement lacks, something it needs, which is true; prayer is very important, and needs to be something we’re striving towards, and even something we need to approach as a vigil; we Catholics make a point of perpetual adoration ourselves, and the Liturgy of the Hours is constantly ringing forth across the face of the Earth.
To their credit, their website includes a history of 24-7 prayer, and it’s pretty comprehensive, going from David and the Temple to the Desert Fathers to the monastery at Cluny to St. Patrick, veering off, as can be expected, at about the year 1500 or so, and picking up with the Moravian Church.
So she took me here. It’s her primary congregation, if I understand properly, her principal place of worship. She’s a fantastic drummer, and an integral part of their worship team, whose music, not so much overwhelms as dominates their prayer meetings. The music started promptly at six pm, and did not at any time stop until eight. Non-stop. I’m not exaggerating. Songs segued into other songs. There was no preaching, just this continual, dramatic, rock music prayer. I have since learned there’s an underlying liturgy of sorts to it, but not that I could tell. It was a big, intense, two-hour rock-a-thon for Jesus. I could not, and still don’t, fully understand what was happening.
That seems to be happening a lot lately.
I want to say the music wasn’t my taste, but that’s not a fair assessment; I have absolutely insane taste in music, and the band, for what its worth, was fantastic. The congregation was passionate and involved, some of them clearly moved outside of themselves, hands outstretched or defiantly pacing back and forth, rife with the tension of the Spirit in the room. One of them, a tall lanky fellow with bright red hair, rocked back and forth as he proclaimed his intercessions, his voice strong and willful, confident in his God, filled with love for the Holy Spirit. There is, it seems, at RIHOP much fruit. I don’t want any RIHOPers who might be reading this to think I’m being disrespectful. But as a Catholic, this was a huuuuuge shift in tempo, tone, and tenor.
I haven’t attended too many protestant services; one in particular, a few Easters ago, was at my mom’s Methodist church, my mom being vaguely Methodist. The service was…nice, I suppose, and it was interesting to see the basic traditions of Christianity filtered through a Methodist lens, but I found the whole thing decidedly unbalanced; it didn’t build to anything. We sang some songs, read some Scripture, heard a sermon, and then repeated the first two steps, and we were done. It never got anywhere. There was no sacrament. I was left remarking to my friend Erik, who had joined me, “What the hell was that?” What had been the point of the exercise? There was nothing there I couldn’t do in the privacy of my own home, or together with some friends. And if that’s all it is, well, hey, why not just meet with some friends to sing songs and read the bible? (As it stands, why don’t we do that anyway?)
Nina’s thing at RIHOP wasn’t the same species of worship, though; this whole affair was an intercessory prayer meeting, so I’m not sure how much I can even compare them. It was specifically intercessions for the state of Israel — which I reluctantly participated in but made a point of praying for other countries, as well — and while we all know the sorts of problems I’m going to have with taking such a particular tack on Israel, what I found oddest was how the band took center stage.
I like to pay attention to church architecture, and while this wasn’t a church per se, it’s still a worshipping community. But it’s all eyes forward, on to the band. There was no altar, obviously no tabernacle, no pulpit, no cross, no displayed copy of the Scriptures. All eyes were forward, focused on the band, as though this were a performance more than a prayer. The music was all contemporary, vaguely alternative rock, which didn’t help my impression. Now, as a long-time, card-carrying member of the Roman Catholic Church, this was very off-putting. If they didn’t need the visual focus to concentrate, fine. But why were all the chairs facing forward, then? Why is everybody oriented in that direction, unless you’re oriented toward something? And what is that something? In Catholic churches, the orientation is always toward the altar and the crucifix — toward the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, which is the whole point. In most Protestant churches, the orientation is toward a pulpit and a cross, and maybe a small altar on which to place the Bible — toward the Word and its preaching. At RIHOP, it’s toward the band.
Now, I can’t say what thinking led them to this conclusion, or if it was sort of the default setting — everbody facing forward, and since there’s no preaching, there’s no pulpit, and since there’s no Eucharist, there’s no altar. Instead, it was constant, ongoing intercession, often for things I didn’t understand, the language removed from my own. There were repeated prayers that God “raise up the prophetic,” and frequent intercessions for the Messianic community in Israel but few prayers for the Church there, however they understand it (although it’s possible that that is how they view it). They pray for revival, for a raising up of Christians — in Iran, specifically — who will do, well, something. I wasn’t clear on what. I think it had something to do with overthrowing the Islamic Republic, or some other kind of whole-society change. Something about it, though, didn’t sit right with me. I’m not entirely sure what. I think it’s that, to me at least, they seemed to be assuming that “the Church” in Iran is the protestant evangelical church, part of the outreach mission groups they send over there, with no thought to the Catholic and Oriental Orthodox groups in the country. Maybe I’m reading too much into that, though; they never said that explicitly.
As a positive, though, they did pray for the Church in Iran to live “with boldness,” because you cannot be oppressed if you refuse to live in fear of those you can take your life. This was said explicitly, and got my firmest “amen” of the evening.
I’d like to stress, though, that this is Christianity on the ground. I’ve posed the observation before that I’m not sure how the ecumenical movement is supposed to do its thing when it does nothing but deal with mainline institutional churches, with whom it can hammer out all the agreements and joint declarations in the world, which in the end are ignored by a people either contemptuous or, ignorant of, or indifferent to them. Here on the ground, I have run, face to face, into the baffling gulf between us. The point of ecumenism is that we may be one, which seems to imply corporate worship. But how can we do that, when we can’t even agree on what the point of worship is?
Ah, the Legion. When I joined the Church, I’d heard about ‘em. I heard stellar, amazing things: an order that took Christianity seriously, didn’t mess around, and was growing by leaps and bounds, every single day. To me, at least, they were Norse gods, figures of legend, the bloody Jedi. I was young and inexperienced and barely knew a thing about what it really meant to know and follow God, but as far as I could tell, as far as taking the Gospel at its word, nobody beat the Legion. I contemplated joining them for a period, and was even in contact with their vocations director. He was a nice guy, if I recall, and very earnest. I was amazed at the level of their asceticism, in that the only possession each member had was simply a crucifix. My God, to be so devoted to Jesus that that was all you needed! I was — and am — wrapped up in music and media that I would have difficulty handing over. And so I stopped calling them, stopped responding to emails, because I knew I could never be that hardcore. And doncha know, I still feel guilty over it. I feel guilty at not being able to do it That’s ridiculous, but it’s true.
The Legion really had this elevated place in, at least, the more conservative wing of the Church to which I belonged. In Bud Macfarlane’s books — ya know, that pillar of the Catholic faith who ended up abandoning his wife — the Legion was presented as the last sound order out there, some amazing and stupendous wonder filled with the Holy Spirit. And I bought it. I fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker. And now that it’s been slowly leaking out that the organization was, in fact, vile, I feel like I was personally hoodwinked, hoodwinked by the giant machine built up around it.
I spent many years trying to overcome the guilt I felt about following my heart instead of my superiors’ and spiritual directors’ wishes that I become a Legionary. Intense, gut-wrenching, faith-damaging guilt. And I was only in their clutches for a relatively short time. Imagine what happens to the boys who join them at the age of 12 or 13 and spend more than a decade in seminary.
I’ll never forget one priest who was in charge of a large house of apostolate and school where I spent some time living in community as a layman. He told me that he was sure I had a vocation, and when I responded that I appreciated his assessment, but didn’t want to be a priest, his response was stunning.
“Who said anything about wanting to be a priest? I didn’t want to be a priest. I stilldon’t want to be a priest. But if God wants it…”
I later heard through a friend still involved with the movement that this particular priest was eventually laicized. As was the priest who brought me in to the movement – a man who had been engaged to be married before he was convinced that he had a vocation and dropped everything to join. These were good men, and good priests, insofar as they had the will to be, even without necessarily having the vocation. Why? Because they loved God. And I find it outrageous that their love for Him, and desire to please Him, was used to manipulate them.
Ain’t that something? It’s awful how evil can be draped in good.
My sincerest apologies for not getting here for the past few days. To be honest, there hasn’t been an awful lot worth blogging about; haven’t seen any good movies, haven’t completed any books, haven’t watched much TV or anything of the sort. So my usual brand of cultural commentary with a Catholic twist has seemed a difficult thing to achieve when there is little culture on which I have felt the need to comment. I could have taken the easy way out and posted a bunch of videos or something, but that’s cheating, and I try to avoid doing that any more than twice a week. I’ve felt locked in my own head, too, without much insight or interest in the world around me. Maybe it’s depression? I don’t know. I don’t feel bad — just lethargic. Which isn’t, I suppose, good. So take from that what you will.
Real life has also made a point of getting in the way insofar as I’ve spent the last few days in panic mode over a girl I’m seeing. I haven’t been seriously dating in over a year, so this is a strange and barren and mysterious land I’m exploring, full of uncertainty and doubt as to what’s going on in her mind, what she thinks this is, where she thinks this is going. And for the life of me, I have no idea. I mean, we went out twice, so it can’t be going entirely badly, but damned if I know what the hell is going on here.
It has given me a topic to write about, though. I’ll try and get to it shortly.
