https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=RXw8mBImFxA
Liturgy is something that at least the modern mind has to accommodate themselves to and the kind of let’s say this holistic practice of the church here and the and the and the hymns of the architecture and the and the And the icons and everything it’s something that it seemed alien at first to the modern viewer, but maybe you can tell us a little bit about how it is that this experience of the liturgy and the encounter of this holistic beauty, how does it connect to our life and to who we are as human beings? Well, one of the ways I think about it really is under the word tradition Meaning just that which has been handed down to us to me Tradition is not something made up by people when people say this is just you know, the ideas of men A tradition is just you know, like my father telling me about how things work My grandfather was a mechanic, my father was a mechanic, my two brothers are mechanics How did they learn how to do that? Somebody had to teach them. They didn’t reinvent the notion of machines in the same way So many things about our life that are just like that the And liturgy as well in a sense liturgy is a very traditional human behavior I like for instance when people come into an Orthodox Church There are some stands with icons, holy pictures on them and that sort of we kind of connect with that We’ll traditionally greet them with a kiss or whatever. I built a small little stand a little short one with icons on it for the children because about half of my congregation are toddlers and you can watch a child 18 months to two years old and this is all the time you see this on a Sunday morning who come in and literally just sort of lay on the icon stand hugging it and giving it a kiss and go in and nobody Nobody told them to do that. Nobody gave them a theological explanation the simple connection between a child and this This image of something they’re coming to love it’s just natural They might do the same thing at home with a favorite stuffed toy. Yeah, I I also Would say the most natural thing that children do Is is play The theorist Piaget one of your French buds Piaget his theory of learning was that children learn by playing You know, they act stuff out, you know, you’re gonna play house You’re gonna play we played mechanics when I was a kid constantly taking our bicycles apart kind of going through the ritual Because play is actually ritualized behavior And so I sometimes say to people that a liturgical life in the church is we’re playing heaven We’re doing something the most natural thing which is adults engaging in a ritualized behavior In which we’re acting out Outwardly something that is inwardly true. I mean we do these things all the time you come home from work You you kiss your spouse It’s a ritual. Why do you do that? I mean, there’s nothing It’s just a ritual. I mean, it’s just a ritual Yeah You don’t do it in you’re in trouble No, I agree. I agree I think that there’s something that I’ve been thinking about for quite a while is that this the inevitability of ritual You know, we have so many that we don’t realize we you know You shake hands the way we we look at people we have all these manners of So these matter that we’ve agreed upon of how to act with each other And so when people when people talk to me and they say, you know, I don’t like churches that are ritualistic I don’t like the ritual. I think okay, that’s odd you seem to be disconnected with a very important aspect of what it it is to be human and so I Would say that ritual is something like ordered action, you know, just in general It’s like it’s it’s action that is it’s like hierarchical action that has an order within it and that we can we all together Acting you need that, you know If you’re going to act together you need there to be some kind of implicit order in which you’re acting together And so and in the church we we kind of take that to the next level because we’re also We’re also celebrating, you know, it’s a it’s a celebration. But at the same time, it’s not a it’s not a disorderly celebration It’s an ordered celebration. It’s a you know, it’s also everybody looking together in the same direction everybody singing the same things and There’s this there’s also multiplicity within it people have their different different parts to play But it all comes together and kind of this great Symphony I always think that You know this this idea of Wagner that he talked about the perfect work of art and he said that opera was you know The perfect work of art because it it had all that, you know It had narrative but also music and it had visual aspects and everything and I always thought no Wagner’s wrong The liturgy is the perfect work of art because you’re inside the art. You’re not You’re not a spectator in the liturgy. Yes Participating in this kind of this this this this giant dance that’s going on around you Well, I think that the the element of song poor old Wagner Could go on for hours and he’s still trying to get it In in I think one of the things that works for the church particularly the the tradition of liturgy is that You know, it’s funny like Protestants technically rejected all of that sort of thing and then they invented things like masons and which they do highly stylized ritual things in which when you’re doing it you just feel very very hokey and you know and and It’s not it doesn’t feel authentic And I I think of I mean liturgy is an extremely natural behavior And you you kind of learn how to do it and you walk within it it should not be highly stylized It should not be self-conscious But actually you’re doing it because you’re you’re doing what you do Because you believe what’s going on is real. It’s reality you’re dealing with and These things they reveal things to us about who we are about how the world is You