On Our Knees

I have been introduced recently to the Franciscan preacher, teacher, and monk, Richard Rohr.  Since then I've been voraciously reading everything of his that I can put my hands on.  I recently encountered a line that really jumped out at me:

I do not want to belong to a religion that cannot kneel.

Let that sink in for a moment.  Sit with it, as it were.  I've had these words circling around in my brain and heart since coming across them a couple of days ago, and I realize that I don't either.  Yet I do.

There's a paragraph that was written by a teenage member of the Unitarian Church of Ithaca, NY, after their youth group visited a local Benedictine Monastery for vespers.  (It was originally published in their church newsletter; I first came across it in the Worship Reader compiled by the Congregation of Abraxas.

“In the chapel there were only a few people watching the service, and I sat in front of them.  I wanted the sensation of being alone there.  I wanted to be open to the beauty of the chapel and the circle of monks and to the chanting.  And I see now that I wanted more than that.  I wanted thru some sort of magic to enter into the service, not simply because its forms were beautiful, but because they seemed at once mysterious and full of meaning. . . .  The monks knelt and rose and bowed; bowing, their bodies bent forward from the waist, torsos almost horizontal.  But I could not move. . . .  I was brought up I this [Unitarian] church where no one kneels and no one bows.  Physically I’m very inhibited, so that I don’t move easily.  And when has it ever been suggested that I might kneel, even figuratively kneel, before or to something?  I wanted to kneel, that’s the important thing.  But I could not. . . .  To kneel and to mean it would be frightening because there is a darkness in the kneeling and a darkness in us which we cannot reason about.  You [Unitarians] teach the fear of form without meaning, and that is right; but having avoided forms, you have sometimes avoided the darkness, and it is from the darkness that the real questions arise.” [Italics are mine.]

Not that long ago the Christian Fellowship in the church I serve held a communion service.  Afterward, one of the members came up to me and, very excitedly, told me that they had "used the original words."  By this she'd meant that they'd sung, "Let us break bread together on our knees" instead the oft used variation, "Let us break bread together you and me."  When has it ever been suggested that we might kneel, even figuratively kneel, before or to something?

That teenager sure had it right -- to kneel and to mean it -- would be frightening.  Is frightening.  It means acknowledging that we are not the Grand High Poohbah of All Existence.  As the Rev. Barbara Merrit put once put it, "Whether or not we believe in God, we must recognize that we ourselves are not God."  And that means, ultimately, recognizing that there is absolutely nothing we can do to control the Universe and our part in it.  We cannot guarantee success for ourselves and our friends and doom for our enemies.  We cannot ensure that things will work out as we wish they would -- that we always will be safe, happy, and secure.  We just can't.  And whether or not we believe that there is some kind of Sacred Something that is holding us through it all, we do need to come to terms with the fact -- the inescapable and undeniable fact -- that we are not in charge.  That can be a terrifying thing for some of us, and kneeling -- and meaning it -- can be an embodiment of this truth.

If you haven't done it in a while, I encourage you to do so.  Kneel.  Literally get down on your knees

and see how it feels.  (Not so much how it feels in your knees and hips, but how it feels in your heart.)  Bow your head even, maybe, or lift it upward.  Do this in your home in front of a home altar or, just the end of your bed.  Do this in the sanctuary, before or during the service, with or without other people there.  Do this outside, in the woods or just a corner of your yard.

Richard Rohr said, "I do not want to be part of a religion that cannot kneel."  Neither should you.

Pax tecum,

RevWik