{"id":741,"date":"2013-06-23T10:55:42","date_gmt":"2013-06-23T17:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cosmostheinlost.wordpress.com\/?p=741"},"modified":"2015-05-31T11:09:17","modified_gmt":"2015-05-31T18:09:17","slug":"sunday-spoiler-the-liturgy-is-not-sacred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/cosmostheinlost\/2013\/06\/23\/sunday-spoiler-the-liturgy-is-not-sacred\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Spoiler: The Liturgy Is *Not* Sacred"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"cavanaugh<\/a>
This book is huge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

If you\u2019re looking for a book which is a huge difference-maker in how you view Christianity, then you should look no further than\u00a0Cavanaugh\u2019s\u00a0Migrations of the Holy<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0The point he makes here opens up several lines of thinking:<\/p>\n

\u201cToday the most significant misunderstanding of the Christian liturgy is that\u00a0it is sacred. Let me clarify. The problem is that \u2018sacred\u2019 has been opposed to \u2018secular,\u2019 and the two are presumed to describe two separate\u2014but occasionally related\u2014orbits. The problem is not simply that this separation leaves the\u00a0church\u2019s liturgy begging for relevance to the \u2018real world.\u2019 The problem is rather\u00a0that the supposedly \u2018secular\u2019 world invents its own liturgies, with pretensions\u00a0every bit as \u2018sacred\u2019 as those of the Christian liturgy, and these liturgies can\u00a0come to rival the church\u2019s liturgy for our bodies and our minds. In this brief\u00a0essay I want to explore in particular some of the liturgies of the American nation-state. I will suggest first that such liturgies are not properly called \u2018secular,\u2019 and second, that the Christian liturgy is not properly cordoned off into the\u00a0realm of the \u2018sacred.'\u201d<\/p>\n

These comments come from the chapter \u201cLiturgies of Church and State,\u201d which happens to be available as a standalone .pdf read right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This expanded notion of liturgy might be useful for literary criticism, probably also political science, or at least for the reading of Czeslaw Milosz<\/a> in my case. \u00a0Charles Taylor is onto the same insight in A Secular Age<\/em><\/a>\u00a0with his notion of cross-pressuring:<\/p>\n

\u201cOur age is very far from settling into a comfortable unbelief. The secular age is schizophrenic, or better, deeply cross-pressured.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Liturgy:<\/a>
Liturgy: It\u2019s not what it looks like.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The cross-pressuring by both the liturgy of the church and the liturgy of the state (and modernity as scientism) is especially strong in the Milosz<\/a> poem below. \u00a0What\u2019s remarkable about it is how the two liturgies are presented as overlapping, even coinciding. \u00a0The secularizing withdrawal of judgment and punishment turns into a hellish Divine punishment in itself.<\/p>\n

Oeconomia Divina<\/p>\n

I did not expect to live in such an unusual moment.<\/p>\n

When the God of thunders and of rocky heights,<\/p>\n

The Lord of hosts, Kyrios Sabaoth,<\/p>\n

Would humble people to the quick,<\/p>\n

Allowing them to act whatever way they wished,<\/p>\n

Leaving to them conclusions, saying nothing.<\/p>\n

It was a spectacle that was indeed unlike<\/p>\n

The agelong cycle of royal tragedies.<\/p>\n

Roads on concrete pillars, cities of glass and cast iron,<\/p>\n

Airfields larger than tribal dominions<\/p>\n

Suddenly ran short of their essence and disintegrated<\/p>\n

Not in a dream but really, for, subtracted from themselves,<\/p>\n

They could only hold on as do things which should not last.<\/p>\n

Out of trees, field stones, even lemons on the table,<\/p>\n

Materiality escaped and their spectrum<\/p>\n

Proved to be a void, a haze on a film.<\/p>\n

Dispossessed of its objects, space was swarming.<\/p>\n

Everywhere was nowhere and nowhere, everywhere.<\/p>\n

Letters in books turned silver-pale, wobbled, and faded<\/p>\n

The hand was not able to trace the palm sign, the river sign, or the sign of ibis.<\/p>\n

A hullabaloo of many tongues proclaimed the mortality of the language.<\/p>\n

A complaint was forbidden as it complained to itself.<\/p>\n

People, afflicted with an incomprehensible distress,<\/p>\n

Were throwing off their clothes on the piazzas so that nakedness might call<\/p>\n

For judgment.<\/p>\n

But in vain they were longing after horror, pity, and anger.<\/p>\n

Neither work nor leisure<\/p>\n

Was justified,<\/p>\n

Nor the face, nor the hair nor the loins<\/p>\n

Nor any existence.<\/p>\n

The line \u201cLetters in books turned silver-pale, wobbled and faded\u201d cannot but remind me of this tragically magical scene from Fellini\u2019s\u00a0Roma:<\/em><\/p>\n