This is a test: do you know what the footnote to the asterisk says in our worship bulletin?
(Answer: ‘Congregation to rise in body or spirit’)
Extra credit: has it always said this?
(Answer: no).
And for double extra credit: what did it say before?
(Answer: it used to say ‘Congregation standing as able’)
The Disability Concerns ministry asked for this change last summer. There are moments in our worship when people who are able are invited to stand. We do this when singing or at other moments in the course of our liturgy. Why the shift the language? To speak about ‘standing if able’ draws attention to people’s differing physical abilities rather than pointing to the attitude of heart that standing is supposed to reflect. Why do we ever stand in someone’s presence? I’m thinking about traditions to rise when people of power enter a room, like the President of the United States for instance. We rise to show honor and respect. Or the spontaneous joy and approval that prompts a crowd to their feet after a particularly stirring performance or exhilarating speech. The point is not the standing. The point is the rising of attention and honor or joy and celebration. It is something you can do in spirit or in body. (This article is filled with parentheses…I know. This isn’t the last of them. But, did you ever wonder why the music we sing after the words of assurance and summary of the law is sometimes called an acclamation of praise with an asterisk inviting us to rise in body or in spirit and sometimes is called a response without that same invitation? If the song is filled with praise and thanks to God then it is named an acclamation of praise and we are invited to rise in that spirit of joy and celebration for the promise of God’s forgiveness in the words of assurance. If the song is a call to action or a reminder of how we should live, then it is named a response to the summary of the law and we are invited to remain seated in a spirit of contemplation and reflection.)
Why am I writing about all of this? Two reasons. In a conversation with some of our senior members recently, we talked about something I had never thought about before which is how difficult it can feel to be the only one who rises in spirit while everyone around you is rising in body. Someone commented that it would make them feel more comfortable if others around them would sometimes choose to rise in spirit while remaining seated to make it feel more “normal” for others to do so. I can remember doing so when a sleeping or nursing baby required that my rising be in spirit and not in body. Could we do so for other reasons as well or even just to be in solidarity with someone who needs to start doing this for the sake of an aching back or shaky balance? (By the way, some of us could use some assistance in other ways in order to keep coming to corporate worship longer – like helping them get their wheelchair up the ramp incline or navigate their wheelchair into one of the cut-out spots or to assist someone in moving their walker out of the aisle once seated and then return that walker at the end of the service. People sometimes decide to stop coming to worship even though they could still worship with us in the sanctuary for quite a bit longer with this minimal assistance.)
The second prompt for this was the witness to reconciliation that Cindi Veldheer-DeYoung shared on January 20th. It was entitled Reconciliation in Health Care. As I listened to Cindi sharing stories from her ministry as an ICU chaplain walking with families making very difficult decisions about health care, I thought another way to title her witness might be Reconciliation with These Bodies of Ours. Can we learn to tend our bodies and honor our shifting abilities and needs with a gentler love and care and less shame? By the time you read this, I will have had my hysterectomy and will be on medical leave. (My surgery is scheduled for January 31). I’ve had a very interesting experience with people whispering to me in hushed tones about this coming procedure for my “female problem”. It has been an act of rebellion on my part (or perhaps reverence for these sacred bodies God gave to us) to say out loud that “yes, I am eager to be on the other side of this hysterectomy.” If they want to know, I go on to tell them that the doctor will be taking my uterus where the pre-cancerous cells were found as well as my fallopian tubes, that I’m hopeful I can keep my ovaries to avoid triggering a surgical menopause. I’ve noticed most people don’t usually flinch with all that body talk but only wanted to give me the privacy if I wanted it in their whispering.What I am wanting to do is remind myself and others that we don’t just have bodies but actually are body-mind-soul-spirits. What happens to one part of us affects the other parts. We are learning so much more about those interconnections of body and mind and spirit and body. All aspects of ourselves need constant care and calibration. I’m hopeful we can continue to be a place that recognizes that and makes it normal and easy for us to adapt to our shifting needs day by day, season by season, year by year.
And while this may be a rather small way to do so, if rising in spirit while remaining seated in body is a way you could support someone near you in worship who could use some solidarity in this lifelong journey of being gentle and loving toward our shifting needs and abilities – by all means let’s do it! And let’s find some more ways as well.
Grace and peace,
~Pastor Jill