One Priest’s Wondering Beliefs - John E. Bowers

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nutrient of their accustomed stimuli; conversely, prolonged minimal scanning and minimal differentiation weaken and disrupt these psychological structures, their functioning is no longer stabilized by constancies and their reality breaks down; new and awesome meanings may abound. Silverman discovered in his study that such altered perceptions and resultant disruption of psychological structures within the mystical experience have a high correlation with the sensory and attention patterns of persons (1) in the incipient or acute stages of a schizophrenic episode, (2) undergoing LSD psychotherapy, and (3) in conditions of extreme sensory deprivation. All four (mystics, schizophrenics, psychedelics, and sensory deprived) of these sets of persons experience (idiosyncratically) cosmic consciousness, oneness with the universe, ultra consciousness (i.e., one defying description), exhilaration, ecstasy, serenity, strong positive affect, oceanic engulfment, transcendence of time/space, ancestral and collective unconsciousnesses, new and startling insights, knowledge and understanding, heaven and hell, a diabolical mysticism.

      The Bowers paraphrase of this process is that when perceptions are significantly changed, then the psychological structures we need to receive and process incoming data and our response to it begin to break down, and those psychological structures in turn begin to search for a new reality which makes sense of this new data set, which in turn potentially opens the door to new insights, new comprehensions of reality. My conclusion out of this (perhaps too simplistically) is that the insights of mystics are of roughly the same ilk as those of schizophrenics, drug-trippers, or sensorily deprived persons, and are no more to be automatically trusted than these. All such insights should be taken seriously, but scrutinized in light of this reality in which we daily live, and not from within such perception-altered experiences.

      b.) Mythic-Literal Faith [ca. 10 yrs, though some never grow beyond this stage],

      c.) Conventional (i.e., fits general beliefs) Faith [adolescence, sometimes permanent in adults],

      d.) Individuative-Reflective Faith,

      e.) Conjunctive Faith [no simple definition], and

      f.) Universalizing Faith [only a few, e.g., Gandhi and Mother Theresa].

      Chapter 3: My Circle of Standing Stones

      I have never been able to sustain a discipline of journaling for more than a few days at a time. But at this Christmas Eve service I found my mind wandering. Not intentionally. Not even absent-mindedly, nor out of boredom. And the thoughts seemed substantive, worthwhile. So I paid attention. I suppose these bits may have been the beginning of my spiritual wandering. You might want to watch for that as we proceed.

      St. Luke’s in Granville is my circle of standing stones. What I mean by that will become apparent as you read.

      December 24, 2007, Christmas Eve—11:20pm

      I sit and listen. I sit and luxuriate, I wallow in the atmosphere. I sit and wonder. I suppose the midnight Christmas service has always been my favorite. As Susan Lehman suggested in my theological infancy, the Jews had it right, the Christians got it wrong when we switched from Friday evening to Sunday morning. I know the historical and theological rationales for the change. But they are ex post facto. And whatever rationalizations they scream in my ear, they still got it wrong. The reality is that evening times, midnight and pre-dawn are the magical times for worship. So the Christmas Eve midnight service has everything going for it, as does the Easter Eve Vigil. The hour and the colors and the smells and the cold, crisp breezes (maybe even snow!) outside, but inside the warm, friendly faces and bodies crowded together, enjoying being together, and surrounding, embracing, enfolding it all the dark and candlelit, mysterious night.

      I cannot really remember my first Christmas Eve church service, but it was certainly in my pre-teen years. That and New Year’s Eve were the only times I was allowed to stay up that late. It was a rare privilege, a special occasion. The very dark, small, old, clapboard church, candlelit (long before fire marshals thought to shut down such operations), one of the rare times when it was very filled with people, with two lighted balsam trees perfuming the air with Christmas aromas jammed inside the tiny sanctuary, so it was nearly impossible for the priest and acolyte to maneuver inside the altar rail, swatches of pines hanging from the window sconces and pew ends, red bows everywhere, and wonderful music, the organ and the singing choir, familiar but special Christmas carols. It all worked together to make that dark hour magical, and filled with mysteries intended to be savored, not solved. Warm, very tender memories. Powerful, healing memories. Binding, life-giving memories.

      So tonight, an old man now, I sit and watch, and listen, and sense, and wonder: what’s it all about? Oh, I know the theological content, the rational and supra-rational content. It’s been my profession for over forty years. But tonight I sit and wonder what it’s all about. Stephen preaches, thinner stuff tonight than his usual (but that’s alright, because the preaching of the word does not carry the message this night; the darkness and every other wonderful thing inside this building convey the complex of messages), so I sit and hear the words, but my listening is more inward, a wondering: what’s it about? What is wanting to be said to me? To be heard by me? The secular Christmas has become such an impossibly heavy, jangling and jarring noise (an annoying, no, a disorienting cacophonous racket I want to creep away from, really). What’s the real message here in the dark quietness?

      And here, in the dimming years of my life, I wonder what it’s really all about, this Christian stuff? I’ve learned it and recited it and preached it and taught it for six decades now, but more and more in recent years I quietly wonder, what’s it really been about? As I age, and the experiences of my spirit wander outside the boundaries of accepted and promulgated Christian orthodoxy, I wonder. And that’s what these pages are about, my wonderings. Call it “speculative theology.”

      So as I sit in church on this Christmas Eve and wonder these days, I say to myself, “Now, Bowers, this is your chosen standing stone circle. So, what’s it about? What is going on here, at the describable level, or at the unknowable?” The answer comes quietly, muttered deep inside myself in mumblings incomprehensible and unrepeatable, but significant. I can almost hear the words, the ancient truths, but not quite. Not yet. But I keep listening. And anticipating.

      ********************

      Palm Sunday, 2008—Sitting in Church

      Palm Sunday has never been satisfying to me, as a liturgist or as a participant. It is such an odd perversion of the regular Sunday liturgy. We begin with that curious little blessing of palm branches which are then given to all without instruction what to do with them (the kids’s notion of sticking them in each others’s eyes might be the best suggestion). And then we sing a hymn, sometimes processing about inside, or outside, or from outside to inside (Stephen’s favorite) or watching others (the choir and crucifer, for instance) process around, all very messy and poorly organized. My sense and experience is that congregations don’t like this falderal. But then, that’s what I (as liturgist) have always intended, that they should be very discomforted by it. After all, it intends to capture just a smidgeon of what the disciples and bystanders might have felt, doesn’t it?

      Back in our usual (translate “accustomed”) places, we go through some regular prayers and readings and such, standing and sitting (perhaps even kneeling), until we find ourselves sitting(!) in the middle of the Gospel reading, listening to the priest read (or having the Gospel read as a dramatic reading by members of the congregation) with all of us shouting “Crucify him, crucify him!” the whole Passion Story (and t-t-t-that, folks, is why we are wont to call this Passion Sunday, because we read the whole passion story in case some here won’t make it back before Easter morn). The preacher preaches, trying to make sense of this and linking all of Holy Week together. And from there on out it’s a regular Sunday Eucharist.

      I’ve never felt it worked. But then in seminary and ever afterward no one taught us how to make it work, or what “work” might mean even in this context. What should this Palm Sunday liturgy do for us, or to us? We know that probably it’s all most will see of Holy Week until Easter morning (although this week is the very core

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