Going through Walter Brueggemann's book Gift and Task this Lent has led me to appreciate how following a set liturgy has the effect of forcing you to think about things that you either aren't inclined to think about on a particular day or, perhaps ever. Going with "the spirit" might be good for some things but I think it can be as dangerous as becoming too liturgically directed, it has a very high potential for narrowing your scope and your activity. I am not going to give the readings and his commentary for every day of it because this illness has made it harder for me to read while I type. Wish everything was available in large-print.
I was, in my early adulthood, afraid of falling too much under the influence of any specific would-be authority which, looking back, was unwise. Someone who is aware of the dangers of falling under the influence of other people is probably already more or less immune from the greatest dangers of that happening.
It did have the effect of leading me to seriously consider the Society of Friends, the local variety here in New England who have unprogrammed meetings* and who wait for the Spirit to move them. Which led me to think well of some aspects of that and not so well of others. I was kind of troubled at how Quakerism seemed to peter-out from a lack of cohesive substance in some of the Quakers I encountered and their families. And I also found, both in the reading of the history of Quakerism and what I observed that even the unprogrammed following of the Spirit didn't protect Quakers from developing very rigid habits and practices and even conventions of thought, Rufus Jones, one of the major figures in Quakerism in the early 20th century mentioned some of that that, seeking to free the Society of Friends from those but I think even modern Quakers can become quite rigid. Looking at some of them online, there seem to be some rare instances of that even among some of the most purportedly liberal among them.
From this I take it that we can take what we can get from even the most set of liturgical practices in even some of the more rigidly legalistic churches, I read or listen to the daily readings from the Catholic Conference of Bishops - most days - and find I get new things out of it. I listen to sermons and read commentaries and find that whatever spirit leads the observations others have had can, sometimes, also lead me in similar directions. I also find that when it leads me to disagree with those commentaries that thinking about them can be helpful too. Sometimes I have had to go against my own inclinations to conclude what I disagreed with was worthy of consideration or even agreement.
I should have realized that back a few years when I went through Brueggemann's book, The Bible Makes Sense here but I guess I wasn't ready to think about the value that was to be had from commentary. The idea that just a plain-sense reading of the Scriptures was the safest to avoid falling into a distortion of the meaning of it was silly. You're as capable of distorting the meaning and I'd say more likley to if you don't consider what other people have gotten from it. Which makes things a lot more complex than just reading it for yourself but it also means that you are open to someone maybe being guided to a deeper understanding than you're going to get from it. Rugged individualism is one of the more destructive delusions of modern thought, it can be as destructive as following a multitude to, perhaps, evil results. It might make a satisfying theme in a stupid movie but it's no way to approach the Jewish-Christian Scriptures. Jesus told us to pray "Our father" "Give us" "Forgive Us" "As we forgive those" and "Deliver us from evil". I'd have to check to see if I'm right but he seemed to address individualism mostly when he talked about matters of taking personal responsibility. I'll bet some commentator, somewhere, has addressed that in exhaustive detail, I just don't know enough to know about that. I hadn't known, until I heard Rowan Williams talk about her, that St. Edith Stein had addressed some important theological and philosophical problems directly relevant to egalitarian democracy until I listened to him the other day.
* I do actually like Quaker meeting, though I wish they had them earlier in the morning than they do. Haven't gone for decades because of that.
What I really wish there was around me is a house church led by a Roman Catholic Woman Priest, I'm tired of waiting for enough of the clerical reactionaries to die off so Pope Francis will open up the official priesthood. He'll never do what needs to be done.
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