Reflections on the connection between liturgical practices and learning styles.

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Recently I participated in a seminar-style course on the connections between Liturgy and Learning, or, in other words, how what is done at church can relate to how people learn. We began the semester by examining various aspects of how people, both individually and collectively in communities, learn and derive meaning from actions, words, surroundings, and events. We then progressed to make more explicit connections between these different styles of learning and the practice of liturgy. There were three main points that provided particular insight and meaning to me as the work of the semester continued; these will be ongoing topics for me as I continue my education both in and out of seminary.


Different strokes for different folks: Learning styles

Perhaps the most important insight for me in the entire semester has come as a result of putting together the connections between different learning styles and the multi-sensory experience of liturgy. As a daily attender of a eucharistic service for many years, I was aware that the same liturgy done in the same way by the same person with the same words can, given changes as small as a different seating location to as great as the weather or recent emotional stress, feel very different, and have new emphasis or reveal a new insight. It was this discovery that made daily attendance a blessing rather than a chore.

While I had always been aware that different aspects of the practices of liturgy were picked up upon by different people, the complexity of this is something I never fully appreciated. Having read Gardner’s Frames of Mind when it first came out, I never made an explicit connection between the concepts presented there and liturgical practice. What Gardner says with regard to education planning is equally applicable toward liturgical planning:

That they should do so with some awareness of what they are doing, with some knowledge of the alternative methods and outcomes, would seem to be preferable to operating completely from intuition or wholly from ideology. (Gardner, p. 393)

Individuals will have different abilities and competencies, and be more attuned to certain aspects some will connect to the music very strongly, whereas for others the music would be incidental. Some will pay close attention to the words of the service, while others will recite from memory or listen patiently, but not really hear what is being said, even what they say themselves (I have caught myself going on ‘autopilot’ a number of times). Some will pay close attention the movement, the gestures and the physical aspects of the service my friend Anya, the retired ballet dancer, had insights into the economy of motion I practiced as an altar server that were not conscious aspects to me, and I was the one doing them!

Particularly in the area of personal intelligence, the area Gardner considers in many ways both the most integrative and most illusive, the insights gained will help me work to connect my liturgical practice with the members of my congregation.

It seems legitimate to construe rituals, religious codes, mythic and totemic systems as symbolic codes that capture and convey crucial aspects of personal intelligence. (Gardner, p. 242)

How people are connecting to liturgy is a deeply personal experience. As the liturgy is striving toward ultimate meanings, people place ultimate importance in what is happening. While the communal aspect is never to be denied, each person comes to experience and understanding as an individual within the community, with a unique combination of levels of intelligences integrated in a unique combination through their personal intelligence.

This is something my natural tendency toward book/written word knowledge might overlook. Gardner’s work with multiple intelligences relates to Connerton’s work with distinctions: distinctions between myths and rites; distinctions between gestures referential and notational; distinctions between rites as symbolic, rites as quasi-textual, rites only in context; distinctions between literate and oral cultures and cultural aspects. However, it is in the blending of these elements that most of life and liturgy are practiced. For instance, Connerton states:

The impact of writing on social memory is much written about and evidently vast. The transition from an oral culture to a literate culture is a transition from incorporating practices to inscribing practices. (Connerton, p. 75)

However, our culture is not an exclusively literate culture, nor has it become a non-oral culture. This is nowhere more clear than a place like the retirement centre, where the trend of individuals away from the literate to the more physical, emotional, oral and musical aspects of intelligence take primary place.

Just as when examining the past, the difference between oral-based cultures and oral/literate cultures (there have been no exclusively literate-based cultures in history), the kind of history and meaning formed, maintained and transmitted is different.

The oral history of subordinate groups will produce another type of history: one in which not only will most of the details be different, but in which the very construction of meaningful shapes will obey a different principle. (Connerton, p. 19)

The communal nature of how people are interpreting the liturgy becomes clearer to me by talking and working with the members of the congregation before and after service.

It has been of interest to me to provide services and pastoral care for a retirement centre, where people in their final stages of life begin to loose various abilities -- the challenge to discover how they still connect has been considerable. Many can no longer maintain a ‘cognitive’ connection, in that they can no longer read or focus attention for very long, yet when Psalm 23 or the Lord’s prayer is begun, they immediately join in, and the emotion on their faces, a sense of real purpose and connection, becomes clear. Likewise, through music, even if they choose not to sing, these people are still able to join in and celebrate worship in a way that is comfortable and still accessible to them.

Also, the great majority of people at the retirement centre are women, whose early life experiences were before World War II. Few would describe themselves as feminists. Few would explicitly connect with theories advanced by Procter-Smith or some of the more advanced ideas of Belenky and co., and yet the sense of gratitude becomes immediately apparent when in homilies or bible studies the role and importance of women is emphasised. I have tried to be explicit in this approach, highlighting the actions of women in biblical texts or using women as examples in homilies. We also talk about the understanding of God as being without gender in addition to looking at God specifically as Father and Mother. This leads to a discussion of symbols and their importance.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar: Availability and meaning of symbols

When I started at the retirement centre, I started with (in local terms) a blank slate -- there had been no chaplain prior to my arrival, and the retirement community itself was less than a year old. Just as ecumenical gatherings lack a ‘natural constituency’ basis, so too do retirement centres, as people move in, often with a great sense of loss of their ‘real’ community. Frequently, part of this loss is the loss of their church. Thus, the challenge becomes to find symbols that the residents will connect to. Particularly at this stage of life, too many new symbols will create confusion and resistance. Rachel Reeder discusses ‘an economy of central symbols’ that hold deep meaning for participants in the liturgy. She states:

In every symbol there is revelation at the very least, the givenness of something that we do not create for ourselves, but find already in nature and human intercourse. And there is consciousness, word and gesture, our lifting up of the given thing to point beyond its own limits and finitude. (Reeder, pp. 6-7)

By starting with simple and clearly identifiable symbols bread, cup, cross, familiar prayers and music and building from there, I have found a remarkable openness, that people seem to concentrate on the central themes and, so long as those are secure and in place, to be willing to reach a bit beyond to new ideas. Nowhere is this more clear than in my efforts to be more inclusive toward women in the service.

There is a difficulty in the way historical norms and authority has come down to us the role of women in particular has often been neglected or erased, their presence as well as right to participate in much of the liturgy removed, and even the names of women have been forgotten, which Procter-Smith relates to the Jewish idea of death being the forgetting of names.

This sense of abandonment by God, coming from experiences of suffering, is for women intensified by the liturgy’s forgetfulness. ...This progressive loss of women’s heritage and memory in the loss or distorting of names had had profound consequences for women. (Procter-Smith, pp. 44-45)

Just as Procter-Smith concludes not with a sense of despair, but with a call to action and a sense of hope, I have likewise seen hopeful signs in the reactions of ‘traditional’ women and men in my congregation who find connection and new (and acceptable) meaning in changes that bring about a more inclusive tone. Shifting a reference from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebeccah, Jacob and Rachel and Leah reinforces the inclusion of women in the community (while at the same time ever-so-subtly providing a glimpse into the diversity present in primary figures of the Bible).

Belenky and her co-authors develop ideas of received, subjective and procedural knowledge, all of which can be used in liturgical practice. There can be, particularly in my prayer-book-heavy tradition, a tendency to emphasise received knowledge and some aspects of procedural knowledge, while confining other types of knowledge to secondary or tertiary roles in the liturgy. Dialogue sermons and opening up the participation to others can enhance the service, broadening it to other forms of learning styles.

Applying the principles of connected teaching to liturgy can have important results. ‘Connected teachers try to discern the truth inside the students.’ (Belenky, et al., p. 223) Perhaps this same kind of constructed style of shaping the liturgy to be more inclusive, more sensitive to the voice of the members of the community while still paying respect to the overall shape and intention of the community, can lead to greater connectivity of the community amongst itself, and the community members to the experience of the liturgy.

In Don Saliers’ article, perhaps the most important line to me was, ‘Authentic worship needs living symbols.’ (Saliers 2, p. 42) The symbols must have meaning for those participating, and those participating must actively understand and engage the symbols. By keeping the symbolic nature of my liturgy to a few central symbols that have continuity with the history of Christian practice, as well as relate to the individual practices from which members of the congregation have come, the members can connect more easily with them.

Unless the forms, the language, and the style of our worship of God as a gathered community can confront and live honestly with these disparate features of our life-world, our liturgies become, sooner or later, a self-serving flight from what is real. (Saliers 1, p. 24)

The temptation to escape from real life is very strong among the members of my congregation, particularly whenever there is a death in the community. Bringing the people back to being able to deal with real life, and the hope that offered in the symbols of the liturgy, is a very important ministry.

I am their leader; I must follow them.

From my first day at the retirement centre, I emphasised to the people there that I was a student, and that I hoped to learn as much from the people and experiences there as I could, and that my role as pastor and teacher would never negate or conflict with my role as student. Thus, I cast the people there very intentionally in the role of teacher and mentor. I also told them that the service we’ll do is not ‘my’ service, but rather something that needs to be shaped by the community and since we didn’t really know what that community was yet, things would likely change now and then as we found new ways of doing things that suited us better.

I found clear support in Hovda for my intentions in this regard: ‘Presiders and other worship leaders, especially the clergy, must see themselves first as members of the Sunday assembly.’ (Hovda, p. 137) In my time at my previous church, where I had developed the practice of daily eucharist out of my monastic experiences, I was surprised to find that none of the clergy attended services any more frequently than they were charged with leading the service. Only twice did I see any clergy person participate in a service without vesting and assuming some leadership role, despite the fact there were a number of clergy already present. They would never have taken Hovda’s advice: ‘…I recommend that we participate in the Sunday liturgy without portfolio, divested of our specialised functions, as often as we can.’ (Hovda, p. 136)

Likewise, the clergy there were very protective of their functions, and jealously guarded the clergy/laity division. Perhaps this was due to an insecurity on the part of the ministers there – in a congregation full of highly educated people (a significant number of congregation members were professors at the university), clergy without Ph.D.’s might well feel insecure (among other feelings). ‘Clergy are sometimes threatened by active, knowledgable, questioning laity.’ (Browning and Reed, p. 228) It was some time after I had been told by one of the clergy at Trinity/Bloomington that only clergy were permitted in the pulpit that I discovered that, in fact, that is not true . That the clergy at this church didn’t want to permit laypersons to preach was presented as a canonical restriction. ‘Ordained, full-time clergy need clearer self-understandings and a stronger sense of identity mutually agreed upon in the faith community.’ (Browning and Reed, p. 223)

It is only through doing things like stepping back, out of one’s usual role, that one can become aware of aspects of the liturgy that are being received by members of the congregation. By not taking a step back and examining what they’re doing, clergy members cannot engage in critical liturgy.

The concept of "critical liturgy" really involves two things. First, it means that we need to be critical about how the liturgy itself operates as a medium of socialization: that is, critical reflection upon the liturgy itself. Second, it means that the liturgy could be conceived as a form of consciousness-raising, hence as an exercise in critical praxis. (Searle, p. 349)

It is almost as if one is content to do things by rote, to paint-by-the-numbers, rather than take the risk and add an element of creativity and inspiration; likewise, it becomes difficult to see what is working, and succeeding in being meaningful, worshipful, and community-building. Too many clergy/presiders see their simple actions alone as being important. ‘Not all action, all practice, is "praxis": only that which is undertaken with critical consciousness.’ (Searle, p. 354)

I have been more conscious of the need for discussion and education outside of the Sunday service, and have made conscious effort to invite all members of the congregation to talk about what is going on in the services, what works, and what doesn’t work. For many in my congregation, this is a first – they are not accustomed to being included in planning, discussion, or thought about what happens in church. Even for those who have been in church leadership, the actual worship service was the strict domain of the clergy. In including their voices and ideas, I have grown through their experiences, as they speak coming from many different backgrounds, Protestant and Roman Catholic, and are able to teach me their feelings and understandings of the practices at their ‘home’ churches. They are also able to educate each other, and often confess they have found far more common ground than they ever though possible with a member of X denomination (whatever X happens to be).

Already, but not yet...

One absolute requirement of a symbol is that it be able to communicate. If it is not able to communicate, it loses its identity as a symbol – in essence, it loses power.

Symbols can never guarantee presence, either human or divine. That is because symbols are not things to be manipulated. Rather, if symbols are anything, we may describe them as crucibles of experience and meaning that occur in the context of narrative enacted. (Saliers 2, p. 48)

The symbols of community, the symbolic power of the words and music we use, the stories we tell and enact around the communion feast, all of these have meaning that speak to different people on different levels, and rarely the same way twice. The requirement of Christian symbols in the liturgy is to respond to God’s call to be in covenant relationship with God and each other, with the primary focus of that symbolic economy being the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The goal of liturgy is the worship of God in a meaningful way for participants in each liturgical event, and give meaning that will carry forward out of that experience into the rest of life.

Our job, then if we are serious about liturgy forming us for the Christian life, is to make it experiential today for all of us -- not to aim at some future time or to plan a ‘good liturgy’ for the kids. (Hovda, p. 141)

Doing liturgy, then, is an ongoing process perfection is not necessary, and indeed is largely unobtainable. But it needs to be meaningful. It needs to keep focus on the important points and provide a meaning that is accessible to all concerned, not just the leader or pastor, but for all the people in the congregation. The task is what is at hand; while planning for something new tomorrow is important, it should not detract or distract from the practice of liturgy today, which should be done with as much care and reverence in simple settings as in elaborate ones; with as much concern and seriousness for one member of the congregation as for a nave full of parishioners. Just as the Christian life should be a striving toward a Christ-like perfection, knowing that such is never obtainable in this lifetime, so too should the liturgy follow that pattern and always be striving, knowing that the climb is never ending, but always worthwhile.


Bibliography

Belenky, Mary Field, Blythe McVicker Clinchy, Nancy Rule Goldberger, and Jill Mattuck Tarule. Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind. (New York: Basic Books, 1986)

Browning, Robert L., and Roy A. Reed. The Sacraments in Religious Education and Liturgy. (Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1985)

Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989)

Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. (New York: Basic Books, 1993)

Hovda, Robert. ‘Liturgy Forming Us in the Christian Life’ in Eleanor Bernstein, ed. Liturgy and Spirituality in Context. (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1990), pp. 136-151.

Procter-Smith, Marjorie. In Her Own Rite: Constructing Feminist Liturgical Tradition. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1990)

Reeder, Rachel, ‘Images for Life’ in Liturgy 7/1 (1987), pp. 5-7.

Saliers, Don E. Worship as Theology: Foretaste of Glory Divine. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1994)

Saliers, Don E. ‘Worship, Symbol, and the Hidden Languages’ in Worship and Spirituality. (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1984), pp. 41-56.

Searle, Mark. ‘The Pedagogical Function of the Liturgy’ in Worship 55 (July 1981), pp. 332-359.