One of my internet friends has been tackling the phrase 'worship experience' lately along with probing the idea that worship is something we "feel" or an environment we can create on Sunday mornings.
As a person with a more reserved personality, this topic resonates with me and while I never feel that I have the answers, I am learning to join the conversation.
My churched background has afforded many opportunities to feel pressure from the platform or my gathering of friends to 'perform' worship in a way that is more visible and animated than my comfort level.
I have prayed beside people offering their prayers in tongues unknown.
I have been told that my faith was only genuine if I was willing to pick up a snake. (There were no snakes present in the Kroger where this conversation occurred, thankfully - but it was a real conversation)
I have scoffed at fog machines and cameramen running across the stage to get the next shot.
I have scoffed at three piece suits and kicked up sawdust.
I have heard seminary students be offered a little cash incentive to whoop and holler, to loosen up and help set the tone of a 'Baptistcostal' service.
I have felt the strain of an extended alter call when the desired emotional response was not forthcoming.
I have had a pastor fix his gaze on me specifically and say "Everyone raise your hands" when I was the only one in the room not raising my hands.
This has led to a strange sort of resistance anytime there's an audible directive from a worship leader or song lyric to "...just lift my hands toward Heaven and praise the Lord..."
If I was going to (which I probably wasn't) now there's no question that I won't be able to because you told me to... it's too much like *Simon Says now and not enough like genuine expression.
I start thinking about those Pharisee guys who prayed to be heard and contorted their faces as visual evidence of their spirituality. I think about closets and how that's where we're told to do our praying. I lean back into my personality type - one who brings a book to a football game. There's very little I get worked up about in the first place, my feelings are anchored to a concrete post of reasonableness and decorum.
And yet, when I see a withered old hand lifted to Heaven in the midst of a song, I find it beautiful and moving (internally- because, as I have established, I'm a stick in the proverbial mud)
I have heard an old woman's hallelujah and been encouraged that if the Lord was faithful to her, I can also trust Him.
I've been learning some stuff recently, here's some of it:
Worship can involve an emotional response from me. It rarely evokes a visible response.
Sometimes this response is present on Sunday morning, during the set time we sing and pray. Other times, it is Monday in my car or on the shower floor, and sounds more like questions or despair.
Many times, everything feels flat and doesn't seem to touch me at all.
I'm finding the consistent factor in that scenario is often me.
Did I go to bed at a decent hour on Saturday night? Do I have coffee gut? Am I actively participating or going through the motions? Are there issues I'm refusing to surrender to God? Did I greet a lot of people on my way in? Wouldn't I rather just go hide in the nursery or take a nap in the puppet booth this morning? (the answer to this one is almost always yes)
When the answer is yes, I might as well be watching The Rockafire Explosion. ( Confession: sometimes, my visible response in church is to smirk at the thought of our musicians dressed up as The Rockafire Explosion.)
I remember as a kid trying to see the circuitry under the drummer dog's sleeve. I remember one time the power went out and the animatronic band froze mid-song. I remember ascribing feelings and emotions to these robots based on what they had been programmed to sing and say. Even as a kid, it was easy for me to lose the forest for close observation of each tree.
Some Sunday mornings, it's the same. I'm looking at all the shoes on stage or everyone's facial expressions. Who fought on their way here this morning? Why does everyone seem to raise their hands on the same note - did they rehearse that part, too? The music becomes secondary, a backdrop for robot observation.
But... I am also finding that, if I was in the trenches with my brothers and sisters this week... if I see this one who has been waking up under the wet blanket of anxiety all week with his hands aloft in as much a plea as decree that God is good, or a tear steal across my sister's cheek because of that thing she's been walking through.. I have found that I can actually feel that.
I can be confounded by an abundance of animation in one's worship style, but I am struck by the beauty of the contrast of it, too.
Like watching a foreign film with subtitles; it is not my native tongue, but I am able to understand, especially the more of life I share in with my animated brothers and sisters.
Even when it comes from a struggle, I am finding that there can be an air of celebration when we purpose to lift our hearts as one, whether we lift our hands or not.
We aren't alone. We are here together, hopeful, grateful and unashamed.
Relationship is an essential key to feeling like a participant instead of an observer.
This is true in most things.
On Mother's Day, I was in church without some of my children. Their absence was more noticeable on this particular holiday and my situation is no secret.
I'm not sure this Sunday was my first awareness that everyone knowing my story was an act of public nakedness, but it was one day that I recall the vulnerability being heightened. Last year, I was given one of those little congregational awards for having the most children in attendance with me at church on Mother's Day. This year, I've been accused of being such a terrible mom that some of my children have stopped speaking to me. It's a story line I've been walking out in front of others, whether I wanted to or not.
And on that day, I felt a deeper sympathy and empathy for those who no longer have their mom. What I found was there were almost as many at church that day without their mom or with a strained relationship with their mom as those who were on their way to brunch with Mom.
Last year, I probably walked past just as many hurting people on my way to claim that prize without a thought at all about Mothers' Day for the motherless. Now, I see.
On Father's Day, when the importance of a godly dad was emphasized and the plight of too many single moms proved bleak in the shared statistics, one friend, realizing that I may be hearing a more discouraging message than my well-married counterparts, texted me a compliment about being a good parent (yes, during the service - we're modern like that).
It was encouraging that I wasn't lost in the shuffle of that Sunday's theme. Someone was mindful of me and wanted to lift my countenance.
Getting to know those I experience worship with and allowing myself to be known by them, too has deepened the experience for me.
Having others come alongside me, draping their own garments over what has been laid bare, has stripped a layer of my life-long reserve.
I still get distracted by moving lights or something on-screen. I still get kind of scoffy at "setting an environment", but as I am getting to know my brothers and sisters who help with that, I understand better that they are bringing what they have to the table on Sunday mornings. They are sharing their time and talents. They are giving their best, at the very least, I can give grace.
I could get caught up in motivations- sometimes, being honest, I still do. There have been worship leaders in my life who wanted to go to Nashville and it showed (and no big surprise, they went to Nashville). That used to bug me a lot more than it does now, but I've had enough time to see that these aren't really issues. They are choices.
If I have chosen to worship with a group whose leader wants a recording label, I can wish him all the success that Amy Grant or Mercy Me has known, and for God's glory.
I may decide his skinny jeans and trending hair is too distracting to continue to meet together starting next week, but in this moment, even as he's doing something showy, I must choose to focus on why I am here, too. If I don't, I am as guilty as Mr. Nashville of putting on a show, only it is a smaller, more secretive show. Honestly, his show is at least entertaining, mine is just pathetic.
Do I want the lens turned on me? Have I ever appreciated being judged as 'not worshipping' because my hands are in my pockets or my body language always naturally returns to a comforting and constricting arm cross? I must leave hearts to the one who can see them and focus instead on the boundless grace I've been given.
If you need me, I'll just be in the puppet booth, digging this log out of my eye.
This is not to say there's no place for making sure motives are right and worship is the true object of our gathering and activity, but this is not a scathing discernment blog. It is more so a challenge to self to practice one of the first rules in critical thinking: start with the benefit of the doubt, ascribe no ill intent without cause.
*~*
I am still the girl who gravitates to an outlying corner. I prefer holding up walls to hands. I will always be me, I bet. But I have had some expansion of my thinking on the subject in recent days.
I recently shared that I had finally embraced my "Type 9" diagnosis. One of the cautions for the nine personality types is to "Remember you have a body as well as a soul"
Perhaps my movement level is affected by forgetting that I've been given a body as well as a soul - or some level of shame over my body that is also to blame for my complete lack of dancing ability.
I'm not sure. But what got me to thinking about it originally was not the personality test. It was David Bowie's video for Black Star.
In that video, the dancers' bodies move in an unearthly way. It is almost disturbing. The movements are coupled with imagery that goes on to push the whole thing over the line into 'actually disturbing'.
I'm sure that 'unease' was part of Bowie's artistic goal. His inclusion of a mock crucifixion, for whatever other statement being made, created a link in my mind between bodily movement and spiritual themes.
It made me think of all the stories I'd heard about spiritual forces seeking to invade the human realm and footage of supposed supernatural "possessions" I had seen featuring human bodies moving in unnatural ways, but always with little control or direction.
I thought of the demoniac in the Bible, unable to stay clothed and bent on self harm.
I considered 'worship' may be the genuine article being counterfeited by dark entities. My thinking was turned to rocks and trees crying out...to the dancing, undignified King David and to that notoriously long list of instruments in Psalms which we are told to use in praise.
Then, this song came along and directed my thinking some more...
~*~
I've been given a body as well as a soul, and I have full autonomy.
I have hands that clap and raise and can offer comfort to others.
My voice can raise a hallelujah or whisper out a desperate plea.
I am not a special edition human, devoid of tears - I have them; sometimes from sorrow, but at other times, gratitude and joy.
I can allow my body to reflect what my soul is navigating. In doing so, I may just encourage someone else looking on "If God has been faithful to her, I can trust Him also"
I remember a recent moment when something felt different as we sang together
"...this is how I fight my battles..."
The lady singing that day shared that she hadn't really wanted to sing the song, even as more and more people suggested she should sing it. She had, quite frankly, been wondering where God even was these days. She shared some of her story and the reasons she had been struggling with questions too big for any of us to answer. And then, she sang the song in an act of obedience and faith.
Before the song ended, I thought some of our group might actually take to the streets, ready to fight every injustice we came across.
We do have a large number of military and retired military families, so there is always the risk of marching, but I believe the palpability came from singing through the hurt and in our singing with her.
"It may look like we're surrounded, but we're surrounded by You..."
Like the exchange of oxygen with trees, she was reminding us of truth and, in an instant echo, truth was exhaled back into her own lungs...
As I looked around the room that day, I realized that I was singing for all their sakes as much as for mine. I love them. I want them to be okay. I want to see God move on their behalf. You wouldn't have known it to look at me, but I felt something. Surely it was emotion.
And surely it was worship.
*~*
The last thing I'll share about is a personal paradigm shift: allowing what I'm singing to be personal.
I learned a long time ago that remembering my own pit and living with gratitude for my rescue was spiritually transformational.
In one congregation, we sang "How Deep The Father's Love For Us" almost every week. I remember my attention settling on the line "...ashamed I hear my mocking voice, cry out among the scoffers" (which is the purpose of that line- to implicate us)
Letting that line be about me has been transformational, indeed.
Remembering the pit from whence I was lifted is good, but I've been finding that falling into a fresh pit and needing new rescue is also an effective method for converting my worship into high definition.
I've been walking through a season of suffering and loss.
I've been accused and left exposed.
I've needed the services of a human advocate.
I've had case stated to a judge.
I've had my physical and financial needs met.
I've been shown mercy. And grace.
I've been met in the road by my dad - who came running from a long way off.
I have been given a robe and ring and there's to be a big party.
These things have come to life. They have given me a physical glimpse of spiritual concepts. I've experienced being defended, being in need and being provided for. I've seen new things about a father's love and experienced anew the deep, gulping relief found in being forgiven...again and again.
I think my little legalistic heart needed to go into an actual legal setting to appreciate grace all the more.
So, whether we are singing "...your love defends me..." "...you're a good, good father..." or any one of the many songs about the goodness we've received, I've got newfound appreciation for the words that are coming out of my mouth. They have been defined as I am being refined.
I'm still the girl quietly wringing my hands behind my back, but like a wooden puppet becoming human, I can't lie: I felt my heart leap at the wonder of it all.
As a person with a more reserved personality, this topic resonates with me and while I never feel that I have the answers, I am learning to join the conversation.
My churched background has afforded many opportunities to feel pressure from the platform or my gathering of friends to 'perform' worship in a way that is more visible and animated than my comfort level.
I have prayed beside people offering their prayers in tongues unknown.
I have been told that my faith was only genuine if I was willing to pick up a snake. (There were no snakes present in the Kroger where this conversation occurred, thankfully - but it was a real conversation)
I have scoffed at fog machines and cameramen running across the stage to get the next shot.
I have scoffed at three piece suits and kicked up sawdust.
I have heard seminary students be offered a little cash incentive to whoop and holler, to loosen up and help set the tone of a 'Baptistcostal' service.
I have felt the strain of an extended alter call when the desired emotional response was not forthcoming.
I have had a pastor fix his gaze on me specifically and say "Everyone raise your hands" when I was the only one in the room not raising my hands.
This has led to a strange sort of resistance anytime there's an audible directive from a worship leader or song lyric to "...just lift my hands toward Heaven and praise the Lord..."
If I was going to (which I probably wasn't) now there's no question that I won't be able to because you told me to... it's too much like *Simon Says now and not enough like genuine expression.
I start thinking about those Pharisee guys who prayed to be heard and contorted their faces as visual evidence of their spirituality. I think about closets and how that's where we're told to do our praying. I lean back into my personality type - one who brings a book to a football game. There's very little I get worked up about in the first place, my feelings are anchored to a concrete post of reasonableness and decorum.
And yet, when I see a withered old hand lifted to Heaven in the midst of a song, I find it beautiful and moving (internally- because, as I have established, I'm a stick in the proverbial mud)
I have heard an old woman's hallelujah and been encouraged that if the Lord was faithful to her, I can also trust Him.
I've been learning some stuff recently, here's some of it:
Worship can involve an emotional response from me. It rarely evokes a visible response.
Sometimes this response is present on Sunday morning, during the set time we sing and pray. Other times, it is Monday in my car or on the shower floor, and sounds more like questions or despair.
Many times, everything feels flat and doesn't seem to touch me at all.
I'm finding the consistent factor in that scenario is often me.
Did I go to bed at a decent hour on Saturday night? Do I have coffee gut? Am I actively participating or going through the motions? Are there issues I'm refusing to surrender to God? Did I greet a lot of people on my way in? Wouldn't I rather just go hide in the nursery or take a nap in the puppet booth this morning? (the answer to this one is almost always yes)
When the answer is yes, I might as well be watching The Rockafire Explosion. ( Confession: sometimes, my visible response in church is to smirk at the thought of our musicians dressed up as The Rockafire Explosion.)
I remember as a kid trying to see the circuitry under the drummer dog's sleeve. I remember one time the power went out and the animatronic band froze mid-song. I remember ascribing feelings and emotions to these robots based on what they had been programmed to sing and say. Even as a kid, it was easy for me to lose the forest for close observation of each tree.
Some Sunday mornings, it's the same. I'm looking at all the shoes on stage or everyone's facial expressions. Who fought on their way here this morning? Why does everyone seem to raise their hands on the same note - did they rehearse that part, too? The music becomes secondary, a backdrop for robot observation.
But... I am also finding that, if I was in the trenches with my brothers and sisters this week... if I see this one who has been waking up under the wet blanket of anxiety all week with his hands aloft in as much a plea as decree that God is good, or a tear steal across my sister's cheek because of that thing she's been walking through.. I have found that I can actually feel that.
I can be confounded by an abundance of animation in one's worship style, but I am struck by the beauty of the contrast of it, too.
Like watching a foreign film with subtitles; it is not my native tongue, but I am able to understand, especially the more of life I share in with my animated brothers and sisters.
Even when it comes from a struggle, I am finding that there can be an air of celebration when we purpose to lift our hearts as one, whether we lift our hands or not.
We aren't alone. We are here together, hopeful, grateful and unashamed.
Relationship is an essential key to feeling like a participant instead of an observer.
This is true in most things.
On Mother's Day, I was in church without some of my children. Their absence was more noticeable on this particular holiday and my situation is no secret.
I'm not sure this Sunday was my first awareness that everyone knowing my story was an act of public nakedness, but it was one day that I recall the vulnerability being heightened. Last year, I was given one of those little congregational awards for having the most children in attendance with me at church on Mother's Day. This year, I've been accused of being such a terrible mom that some of my children have stopped speaking to me. It's a story line I've been walking out in front of others, whether I wanted to or not.
And on that day, I felt a deeper sympathy and empathy for those who no longer have their mom. What I found was there were almost as many at church that day without their mom or with a strained relationship with their mom as those who were on their way to brunch with Mom.
Last year, I probably walked past just as many hurting people on my way to claim that prize without a thought at all about Mothers' Day for the motherless. Now, I see.
On Father's Day, when the importance of a godly dad was emphasized and the plight of too many single moms proved bleak in the shared statistics, one friend, realizing that I may be hearing a more discouraging message than my well-married counterparts, texted me a compliment about being a good parent (yes, during the service - we're modern like that).
It was encouraging that I wasn't lost in the shuffle of that Sunday's theme. Someone was mindful of me and wanted to lift my countenance.
Getting to know those I experience worship with and allowing myself to be known by them, too has deepened the experience for me.
Having others come alongside me, draping their own garments over what has been laid bare, has stripped a layer of my life-long reserve.
I still get distracted by moving lights or something on-screen. I still get kind of scoffy at "setting an environment", but as I am getting to know my brothers and sisters who help with that, I understand better that they are bringing what they have to the table on Sunday mornings. They are sharing their time and talents. They are giving their best, at the very least, I can give grace.
I could get caught up in motivations- sometimes, being honest, I still do. There have been worship leaders in my life who wanted to go to Nashville and it showed (and no big surprise, they went to Nashville). That used to bug me a lot more than it does now, but I've had enough time to see that these aren't really issues. They are choices.
If I have chosen to worship with a group whose leader wants a recording label, I can wish him all the success that Amy Grant or Mercy Me has known, and for God's glory.
I may decide his skinny jeans and trending hair is too distracting to continue to meet together starting next week, but in this moment, even as he's doing something showy, I must choose to focus on why I am here, too. If I don't, I am as guilty as Mr. Nashville of putting on a show, only it is a smaller, more secretive show. Honestly, his show is at least entertaining, mine is just pathetic.
Do I want the lens turned on me? Have I ever appreciated being judged as 'not worshipping' because my hands are in my pockets or my body language always naturally returns to a comforting and constricting arm cross? I must leave hearts to the one who can see them and focus instead on the boundless grace I've been given.
If you need me, I'll just be in the puppet booth, digging this log out of my eye.
This is not to say there's no place for making sure motives are right and worship is the true object of our gathering and activity, but this is not a scathing discernment blog. It is more so a challenge to self to practice one of the first rules in critical thinking: start with the benefit of the doubt, ascribe no ill intent without cause.
*~*
I am still the girl who gravitates to an outlying corner. I prefer holding up walls to hands. I will always be me, I bet. But I have had some expansion of my thinking on the subject in recent days.
I recently shared that I had finally embraced my "Type 9" diagnosis. One of the cautions for the nine personality types is to "Remember you have a body as well as a soul"
Perhaps my movement level is affected by forgetting that I've been given a body as well as a soul - or some level of shame over my body that is also to blame for my complete lack of dancing ability.
I'm not sure. But what got me to thinking about it originally was not the personality test. It was David Bowie's video for Black Star.
In that video, the dancers' bodies move in an unearthly way. It is almost disturbing. The movements are coupled with imagery that goes on to push the whole thing over the line into 'actually disturbing'.
I'm sure that 'unease' was part of Bowie's artistic goal. His inclusion of a mock crucifixion, for whatever other statement being made, created a link in my mind between bodily movement and spiritual themes.
It made me think of all the stories I'd heard about spiritual forces seeking to invade the human realm and footage of supposed supernatural "possessions" I had seen featuring human bodies moving in unnatural ways, but always with little control or direction.
I thought of the demoniac in the Bible, unable to stay clothed and bent on self harm.
I considered 'worship' may be the genuine article being counterfeited by dark entities. My thinking was turned to rocks and trees crying out...to the dancing, undignified King David and to that notoriously long list of instruments in Psalms which we are told to use in praise.
Then, this song came along and directed my thinking some more...
If the stars were made to worship so will I
If the mountains bow in reverence so will I
If the oceans roar Your greatness so will I
For if everything exists to lift You high so will I
If the wind goes where You send it so will I
If the rocks cry out in silence so will I
~*~
I've been given a body as well as a soul, and I have full autonomy.
I have hands that clap and raise and can offer comfort to others.
My voice can raise a hallelujah or whisper out a desperate plea.
I am not a special edition human, devoid of tears - I have them; sometimes from sorrow, but at other times, gratitude and joy.
I can allow my body to reflect what my soul is navigating. In doing so, I may just encourage someone else looking on "If God has been faithful to her, I can trust Him also"
I remember a recent moment when something felt different as we sang together
"...this is how I fight my battles..."
The lady singing that day shared that she hadn't really wanted to sing the song, even as more and more people suggested she should sing it. She had, quite frankly, been wondering where God even was these days. She shared some of her story and the reasons she had been struggling with questions too big for any of us to answer. And then, she sang the song in an act of obedience and faith.
Before the song ended, I thought some of our group might actually take to the streets, ready to fight every injustice we came across.
We do have a large number of military and retired military families, so there is always the risk of marching, but I believe the palpability came from singing through the hurt and in our singing with her.
"It may look like we're surrounded, but we're surrounded by You..."
Like the exchange of oxygen with trees, she was reminding us of truth and, in an instant echo, truth was exhaled back into her own lungs...
As I looked around the room that day, I realized that I was singing for all their sakes as much as for mine. I love them. I want them to be okay. I want to see God move on their behalf. You wouldn't have known it to look at me, but I felt something. Surely it was emotion.
And surely it was worship.
*~*
The last thing I'll share about is a personal paradigm shift: allowing what I'm singing to be personal.
I learned a long time ago that remembering my own pit and living with gratitude for my rescue was spiritually transformational.
In one congregation, we sang "How Deep The Father's Love For Us" almost every week. I remember my attention settling on the line "...ashamed I hear my mocking voice, cry out among the scoffers" (which is the purpose of that line- to implicate us)
Letting that line be about me has been transformational, indeed.
Remembering the pit from whence I was lifted is good, but I've been finding that falling into a fresh pit and needing new rescue is also an effective method for converting my worship into high definition.
I've been walking through a season of suffering and loss.
I've been accused and left exposed.
I've needed the services of a human advocate.
I've had case stated to a judge.
I've had my physical and financial needs met.
I've been shown mercy. And grace.
I've been met in the road by my dad - who came running from a long way off.
I have been given a robe and ring and there's to be a big party.
These things have come to life. They have given me a physical glimpse of spiritual concepts. I've experienced being defended, being in need and being provided for. I've seen new things about a father's love and experienced anew the deep, gulping relief found in being forgiven...again and again.
I think my little legalistic heart needed to go into an actual legal setting to appreciate grace all the more.
So, whether we are singing "...your love defends me..." "...you're a good, good father..." or any one of the many songs about the goodness we've received, I've got newfound appreciation for the words that are coming out of my mouth. They have been defined as I am being refined.
I'm still the girl quietly wringing my hands behind my back, but like a wooden puppet becoming human, I can't lie: I felt my heart leap at the wonder of it all.
"...If You gladly chose surrender so will I"