In another post I will go through the four pieces of theatre that I have had some involvment with and why they are liturgies. But now I want to talk about liturgy and how I create it.
I was a very religious child. I went to Catholic School. I was raised in the Baptist Church where I chose to "give myself to Christ" at seven years old and almost on a cloud walked to the front of the church when the "doors were open to join the church." I was baptized with a full immersion at seven. I floated through every nature religion looking for a way to be in tune with G*d's creations. I was in a coven. I received the first level toward full priesthood in Lukumi, my elekes. And ultimately I converted to Judaism which is where my heart had been ever since I was a young girl reading and watching the Hasidim walk to shul on Saturday mornings while I sat in the window seat in my Grandmother's Brooklyn brownstone.
I searched for Hashem through so many different avenues because I had not found a home for my Judaism. At the age of forty-one I walked into a shul on the Upper West Side of New York City with other members of my Interfaith/Interspiritual Seminary. It had everything. The singing and movement of my Baptist upbringing. The set liturgy of Catholicism, the recognition of the Mother of life, in the form of Shekinah and a beautiful and purposeful message from the Rabbi with the Torah, jokes and pop culture references that were right within my age of understanding. I got the jokes! It would be another five years before I became a member of this shul and then another three years before I converteted. I had to be sure!
I loved studying, I had wanted to be Yentl since I saw the movie.It took me so long to convert because I never thought I knew enough. School had finite endings. You graduate and then you move on. But this was different. I could study and study and study before I set a date for my trip to the mikveh for my conversion. I only decided to schedule my conversion when my teaching Rabbi said: "There will always be more to learn. Growing in Judaism doesn't stop after the mikveh". That made sense to me. I continued to study and create ritual long after graduate schools, so why would Judaism be different.
While at the University of Iowa I studied Directing for the Stage. Every show was a chance to create sacred space. We had a set, lighting, costumes, actors. As a Director I got to decide how everything looked, sounded and who said the words. It was creating worship in a different way every time. I worked with living playwrights who were in the room during rehearsals changing their words based on the choices we all made. A collaboration to make art? Yes. An opportunity to create liminality? Definitely.
Liminality is an anthropological concept of transformaton. Arthur Van Gennep observed and named it as stages in rites of passage ceremonies but the credit for this word is given to Victor Turner. There are three stages: there is the pre-liminality stage, the liminal stage and the post liminal stage. Pre-liminality is when you are going through your every day just living your life. The liminal stage is the juicy part - you are transported to a sacred space outside of time. If you are fortunate enough to do this in community it is outrageously real. A time of illumination, otherwordliness and pure clarity. You see everything about life and why you are here, all at once. And when the activity that captured your imagination ends of something shifts you come back to your every day lfe. You feel as though something transformative has happened to you but you can't quite put it into words. I wanted to create that space. To take the audience to another place. To literally see their G*d. It's a powerful gifts and in the wrong hands and with a little charisma it creates cult leaders and cults which usually end in destruction.
You cannot maintain that liminal space for ever. As a human being - you would go insane. It's what addicts call "Chasing the Dragon". You will never have that experience again. Nothing will live up to it mostly because you've forgotten about the details mainly because it defies language and is all feeling and how does one talk about the sensations of their body except through metaphor and simile? That's not the thing rather the thing's cousin.I remember when I realized that I could not live in ecstasy (maybe if I went to Tibet and sat on a mountain but even then it was not promised). We can just be grateful for the experience and muscle memory those glorious moments.
What was I talking about? Yes, liturgy and sacred space. When I decided to attend Union Theological Seminary it was for totally utilitarian reason: I wanted to be a chaplain and needed a Masters of Divinity (M.Div) to do that work. Had I been more clear in my thinking I would have crossed the street and gone to Jewish Theological Seminary. But you make choices and you live with them and then make more choices. Union was familiar and I only needed on thing from them so why not? But while I was there I experienced so much more. I could create liminal spaces there, too. All of my prior education was leading to those moments of making church.
Once again I got to pick the words, the set, the lighting, the music and the players and I even had a stage manager in the form of chapel ministers whose entire job was to help bring the liturgical experience to life. There was only one drawback - if you created the liturgy you had to preach the sermon. I became a director because I did not want to be an actor (and because I did not like people telling me what to do!) Acting terrified me but at least in theatre you get to be someone else so that lessened the shock. In Liturgy - it was all you giving that sermon. But you did get to choose the words so you had the opportunity to craft what you wanted to say even if you weren't sure how to say it. And I could craft words.
But something interesting happened the first time I gave a sermon - I had a liminal moment. I was preaching about shame and victim-survivors of Domestic Violence/Intimate Partner Violence which had been my work for about two years at that point. I knew the stats and the stories. And at some point in that sermon I stopped looking at my notes and looked at the congregation. They were hearing my words and it was affecting them. My mind and body came together and promised itself that it would not miss this moment. This opportunity to have people hear the truth about the best friends: shame and violence. And the only way I know what I said is because there was a recording of it. But even then when I watched the recording I focused on the things my mind could understand: my cadence, when I was reading, how bored someone in the third row looked.I could not access the moment anymore. And this truth depressed me until I could let it go and come back to the knowing that there would be another moment and another if I stayed connected to, well, all of it.
And I began seeking out opportunities to preach. And I got better at it. My theology: the meaning behind the piece of scripture I would preach about was always sound. I was a great researcher and interpreter. It was the execution that needed help. But getting better at the delivery of my sermons was not what made Liturgy my jam. It was all the things around the sermon that prepared you for it. The way you entered the space what your senses are taking in, the music, set pieces, lights and then the praying and preaching were the liminal moments and then we were done. And so I preached and preached always about things that kept me up at night and interpretations that most people would never touch. I became fearless which made me good. And my willingness to fly without a net gave others the opportunity to also ditch their net. So, yes, that's why liturgy is my jam. I am good at it but more importantly I love doing it - not just for me but so that community is created - if only for ten minutes. A lot can happen in ten minutes. And it usually does. Tread gently upon the earth with your eyes open and when something shifts, if even just a little bit, go there, see what "there" has in store for you and when you are ready come back.
