Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, July 8, 2009

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself
as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties
can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling,
is at the center of true religion.

- Albert Einstein


I am a unashamed delighter in elegant, exuberant liturgy. I have experienced it in many ways. The Feast of Corpus Christie at St. Mary’s, Bourne Street, London., or St. Mary the Virgin, NYC. (Despite the glory of the edifice, liturgy at Santa Maria del Fiore, Firenze, is ugly, alas!) Buddhist & Hindu temples. An American Indian celebration of the Earth. Bom Fin in Brasil, in the old days, and the Candomble festival of the sea goddess. So many different places!

I find most worship today too “wordy” and, despite a few colourful vestments, too drab. (And here let me give a cheer for St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, San Francisco – drab it is not!) Wordy and drab is mostly unable to awaken us to the “impenetrable that exists”. Einstein is correct – our faculties are dull (or maybe “dulled?), and they need help to peer into the Great Mystery that is Life. I rather think that liturgy planners need to be consciously motivated by a desire to manifest the “highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty”. We might not get too far, we may only expand the “primitive forms” a bit, but any success would be a welcome achievement!

I realize these days how much I have ignored the “highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty” which has surrounded me all my life! I have always been aware of it at some level – which is probably why I wanted to be a priest from such an early age, urged on by Medieval art! And now, away from the bureaucracy of “church”, I feel it even more. I want my Life to be lived in the context of “highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty”.

I’m working on nurturing this context. Because I think Einstein is bang on.

If we are going to practice a “religion”, we need to take care to what we are attaching ourselves.

Brian+