Yesterday was a case in point. I attended a church service in a denomination that I am not super familiar with. There was lovely music, and there were interesting readings. There was a thoughtful sermon. There were great people, and fellowship followed afterwards at an extended coffee hour. I left feeling somewhat bewildered, but that's been the story of my life. I have felt that way in most of the settings I have found myself in; they don't "speak" to me. Yet I felt a sincere appreciation for the fact that the experience spoke to others.
Later in the afternoon, as it was getting dark (too early!), I decided to listen to Choral Evensong on BBC Radio 3, which came this week from Salisbury Cathedral. Relief poured over me to hear the sung words, "O Lord open thou our lips/and our mouth shall shew forth thy praise." The Clucas responses, the psalms and the Howells Collegium Regale Te Deum were familiar to me (the latter, gloriously so); the service (Walmisley in d minor) and the anthem were not, but it didn't matter. The idiom and the sound were "home." It's not the same thing, listening on the radio or by webcast, but it's closer than other religious experiences. It is the spiritual language that I speak and understand.
That's what hit me when I woke up this morning. The service I attended early on Sunday -- like most of my spiritual explorations from about 1985 to 2010 -- was in a foreign language. Yes, I understood the individual words, but they didn't string together to create spiritual meaning for me. It is a mystery, but it is true. The Church of England's choral evensong service is my language for expressing belief in a Divine Being, even though my 21st century image of that Being has expanded way beyond anything the 16th or 17th century framers of the service would have understood or accepted.
I'm scrambling to try to explain this. Please forgive the inadequacy of my words. We are all energetic beings with a different "signal" going out, and with different experiences matching that signal. Late afternoon choral evensong is an energetic match for me with what being in the presence of the Divine would feel like, sound like, look like. It feels like awe. It feels like wonder. It feels, sounds, and looks like transcendent beauty and harmony. In Britain, you are likely to sit in ancient nooks right near the choir, carved throne-like seats that enfold you and make you feel safe and loved (American churches by and large aren't designed this way). The exquisite musical sounds and their reverberations are, literally, heavenly. The repetition of ancient words and the candle-lit singing of the tradition's music are almost a form of time travel, linking you to distant past and distant future. You are in a liminal space between light and darkness, between heaven and earth, as day is coming to an end. And when you are in the soaring architecture of a cathedral, you literally feel as if the stars and galaxies are right overhead, and that they will continue to expand and swirl through the night until the service the next afternoon.
There isn't a chasm between modern me and this service after all. I know "God/Goddess/Universe/Source" -- however imperfectly -- because I have "felt" divinity energetically at evensong, in all its immediacy. It's not just the music, or whether I do or don't sing in the choir. It is not just the architectural setting. It is not the theology or the readings, which can sometimes rub me the wrong way. There is a much bigger energetic and beauty match at work here. There is a oneness at my core after all, not a split. And with "getting" that, I think I've finally "gotten" that each person who finds meaning in any tradition's religious ceremonies, or none at all, or sitting at the top of a mountain or by the edge of the ocean, has an opportunity to find an energetic match with their concept of Source. Thank goodness for all of today's options. Choral evensong isn't for everyone. But finally, after half a century of trying to explain it away, I get why it is my spiritual language. And I embrace it. Finally.
