Liturgy

I love liturgy. that may surprise you, but, of course, I mean something slightly different by this than what some people mean.

Liturgy is, at heart, the set of instructions for managing a situation. Within a church service environment, the service liturgy is a structure for organising worship, making sure that everything is included, and that the service has a form, a flow. But liturgy is more than that - it can be considered as a structure for any situation.

So there is a liturgy for traveling by train, in peak hours. You have to say and do the right things - often it is no more than a wave or a brief gesture, but it is important, it is the way that the whole process flows and hangs together. Without this liturgy, there would be chaos - even more chaos than there is normally. There are occasional spats where people fail to follow the accepted liturgy. But by and large, it works.

This is not what most people consider liturgy means, of course, For most people, liturgy is about a church service (assuming that they know what the word means at all). It is a rigid structure of things that are done, in order, to make up a church service. Sadly, for me, this is liturgy done at  its worst. The reason is that it is too formal, to rigid. The commute liturgy is flexible - it has its set of rules, people are expected to follow these, but it has flexibility. The church service liturgy also has flexibility, to an extent, but it is still very rigid.

So I like liturgy, because it is the way to do things - it makes commuting, for example, possible. It makes all sort of activities practical. But liturgy - the way of doing things - should be flexible enough to make changes when needed, to accept people breaking the rules when appropriate.

Liturgy - the way of doing things - is important, and without it, we would be lost. You cannot put into places a definitive set of rules for tube commuting. There are a few defined regulations - stand on the right; let passengers off the train before attempting to board; please more right down inside the car. But not everyone follows these to the letter, and it all works OK, as long as everyone follows the unwritten set of rules, the liturgy that everyone who does it regularly knows.

I just wish that the church liturgy could be as flexible. That it could be changed and modified for situations without anybody kicking up a fuss, or questioning whether they are allowed to do it. Liturgy should be to help people worship, not to separate people or to alienate people. Then, it is not liturgy, but stupidity.