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Home , Alexander Schmemann, Divine Liturgy

Living God’s Story: Strengthening Liturgical Participation and Christian Formation through the Renewal of Enacted Narrative in the Orthodox Divine

by

Geoffrey Ready

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of College and the Toronto School of Theology. In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Ministry awarded by the University of Trinity College and the University of Toronto.

Ó Copyright by Geoffrey Ready 2020

Living God’s Story: Strengthening Liturgical Participation and Christian Formation through the Renewal of Enacted Narrative in the Orthodox

Geoffrey Ready

Doctor of Ministry

Trinity College and the University of Toronto

2020

Abstract

It is axiomatic in Orthodox liturgical theology that the central act of worship, the Divine

Liturgy, is a participation here and now in the coming kingdom of God. This should naturally result in the shaping of Orthodox worshippers to live in this age according to the heaven-on-earth reality of the age to come, to live the “liturgy after the liturgy” in a life of kingdom-building. Yet there is little to suggest that this is happening in Orthodox churches today.

Drawing on postcritical insights that challenge ’s limitations— especially the concept of life as an enacted social drama, the importance of narrative for signification and formation, and the priority of embodied, participatory knowledge—the author proposes that the decline in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy's power to transform worshippers results principally from an eclipse of the enacted narrative of the kingdom of God within liturgical celebration.

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Using his ministry base of an Orthodox mission parish as a case study, the author has implemented a series of changes in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy to recover and prioritise narrative elements. This includes the publication of a service book focusing on what to do in the liturgy—in essence, a contemporary mystagogical attending to the participatory knowledge of enacted narrative. Then, drawing insights from a narrative method of qualitative research with a group of worshippers at the mission, the author shows that, when worshippers are encouraged to grasp and embody the story contained within the liturgy, they can be inspired to reflect on and re- narrate their lives according to the story of God as a precursor of fuller Christian formation. The discussion concludes with a tentative model of narrative liturgical formation and suggestions for application in other parish contexts and for further study within the Orthodox .

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Contents

I – Introduction An Overview of the Ministry Base Context ...... 6 The Problem and Research Interest: Caught Between a Traditional Mystagogy and a Postmodern World, Celebrating the Orthodox Divine Liturgy Today ...... 7 II – Towards a New Mystagogy Liturgy Intended as Transformative Theologia Prima ...... 13 Homo Capax Dei – The Need for Liturgical Capacitation and Proficiency ...... 22 Liturgy as Enacted Social Drama ...... 27 Liturgy as Narrative Signification ...... 33 The Formative Power of Enacted Narrative ...... 42 Deep Transformation through Embodied Participation ...... 44 Attaining Theologia Prima through Re-cognition and Re-narration ...... 51 III – Research Project Description and Narrative Methodology Research Project ...... 54 Narrative-Focused Changes in Liturgical Celebration ...... 55 Narrative Methodology ...... 64 Research Parameters and Ethical Considerations ...... 67 Focus Group Meeting ...... 70 Individual Interviews ...... 72 Journal Questions ...... 75 Data Collection and Analysis ...... 75 IV – Results of the Study Stories and Themes ...... 77 Story I—Alexandra ...... 78 Theme I—The Setting: Participation in the Liturgy ...... 82 Theme II— The Characters: Identity Formation ...... 89

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Theme III— The Author: God as Playwright (and the Play) ...... 93 Story II—Yuri ...... 99 Theme IV— The Plot: Facing Complexity and Struggles ...... 103 Theme V— The Climax: New Ways of Seeing ...... 106 Theme VI— The Resolution: Enacting Love and ...... 110 Story III—Lara ...... 114 Theme VII—The Archetypal Story: Following the Pattern of Christ ...... 118 V – Analysis and Application of Results and Limitations of the Study Application of the Study ...... 125 A Tentative Model of Narrative Liturgical Formation ...... 126 Limitations of the Study and Further Questions ...... 131 VI – Conclusion and Potential Benefits Contribution to the Practice of Ministry ...... 134 Potential Benefits to the Wider Church and Society ...... 137 VII – Bibliography Traditional Mystagogy—Symbolism and Meaning of the Divine Liturgy ...... 139 Liturgical Theology—Development, Current State and Pastoral Problematics ...... 142 Towards a New Mystagogy—Contributions to Liturgical Theology from Postcritical Hermeneutics (Critical Realism, Participatory and Embodied Knowledge), Ritual Studies, Performance Theory, and Narrative Theology ...... 146 Narrative Enquiry as Qualitative Methodology and in Pastoral Practice ...... 151 VIII – Enclosures Approved Thesis Proposal Approved University of Toronto Human Participant Ethics Protocol New Liturgy Book: Enacting the Age to Come – The Divine Liturgy

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I – Introduction

An Overview of the Ministry Base Context

This project arises from my ministry as an ordained presbyter and the rector of Holy

Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission, established in May 2016 as the only fully English- language Orthodox church in the greater Toronto area.1 We worship in the chapel of

Trinity College, with an average attendance of around 60 people from various

Orthodox and non-Orthodox backgrounds.

The vision of Holy is to be an apostolic mission in the truest sense and we are working to bring together Orthodox Christian leaders and faithful with a shared vision of outreach and service in Toronto. We are doing this by identifying specific ministry projects, including caring for the poor, the sick, the alienated, the grieving, and the imprisoned, and then equipping “the for the work of ministry, for building up the ” (Ephesians 4.12). It is our desire for the oft-praised splendour of the kingdom-oriented worship of the Orthodox Church to be expressed in loving service.

Our mission is also integrated with the Orthodox School of Theology at Trinity

College, which I serve as co-director. This graduate school trains and lay leaders for ministry, and we are developing specific courses to train and certify Orthodox faithful from across the city to carry out the service projects envisaged by Holy Myrrhbearers mission. There is moreover a unique opportunity afforded by our base within a school of

1 For more information, see our website https://www.myrrhbearers.ca.

6 7 theology for Holy Myrrhbearers to function as a place to implement a project of liturgical and spiritual renewal analogously to the way an “experimental farm” serves a wider agricultural community, carefully trying new approaches and methods before proposing them for broader application in different contexts.

The Problem and Research Interest: Caught Between a Traditional Mystagogy and a Postmodern World, Celebrating the Orthodox Divine Liturgy Today

The Orthodox of ministry, professedly formed in the apostolic and patristic tradition of the early church, asserts that ministry or service (διακονία) is a function of the intended purpose (τέλος) of our existence, our participation in the kingdom of God. As taught by many liturgical theologians, the clearest and most dominant characteristic of Orthodox is that it is eschatological: it begins with “the invocation of the Kingdom, continues with the representation of it, and ends with our participation in the Supper of the Kingdom, our union and communion with the life of God in Trinity.”2 In contrast with (mainly post-enlightenment) Christian philosophies dividing an eternal heaven from a temporal earth and preoccupied with salvation as an escape from our own space and time to “eternal life,” Orthodox

Christianity is grounded in the understanding of heaven and earth—

God’s realm and the world of His creation— as fundamentally intertwined and now for ever united in Christ (Ephesians 1.10). Early Christians followed Jewish tradition in

2 John Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World (New York: T & T Clark, 2011), 39.

8 asserting that the real division is not between earth and heaven, but this present age— full of misery, strife, suffering and death—and the age to come, when on the “day of the

Lord” (κυριακῇ ἡμέρᾳ) God would act decisively according to His promise to put all to rights, turn misery to joy and death to life, and gather His people under His sovereign power and protection. For the apostles and other witnesses to the life, voluntary death and glorious resurrection of , that day has been inaugurated, and the age to come, as yet not fully revealed, made mysteriously accessible to those who follow in the pattern of

Jesus, gather in His name to worship God and manifest the church, the new humanity.

This worship effectively takes place in the kingdom, on the last day, when heaven and earth are already united, because the church is precisely “the eschatological manifestation of the kingdom of God” called to “manifest this identity in the world.”3 In worship, all baptised believers, clergy and lay alike, are revealed as co-members and co- ministers of the new kingdom.

This our tradition teaches us. Yet this Orthodox Christian eschatological and liturgical theology of ministry finds less sure ground in application. Like most of my fellow presbyters within the Orthodox Church, I find myself caught between the beautiful theological vision expressed by the Divine Liturgy—the belief that our worship actualises heaven on earth—and the reality of our parishes in which people are no longer formed in any meaningful way by that worship experience. Anyone scrutinising

3 Dimitrios Passakos, “Worship, Rituals and Liturgy in Orthodox Tradition: Insights from Practice and Theology,” in Worship Today: Understanding, Practice, Ecumenical Implications, ed. Thomas F. Best and Dagmar Heller (Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches, 2004), 26.

9 the Orthodox Church today would be hard-pressed to see the manifestation of the kingdom of God beyond the hallowed, -bedecked walls of the church and the ancient chants rising up within them. If heaven and earth are now joined in Christ and every celebration of the Divine Liturgy is a foretaste of the fulfilment of the day of the Lord, the experience now of the coming and future kingdom, then why are not more Orthodox

Christians encouraged and equipped to be kingdom-builders? Where are the hallmarks of self-sacrificial and loving kingdom-living that should characterise all those who are by

God’s grace made to be participants of his uncreated life?

The sad truth is that most Orthodox Christians have largely forgotten what New

Testament scholar N.T. Wright calls the “devastating and challenging”4 message of the advent of the kingdom of God and inauguration here and now of the age to come. As

Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas asserts, the Divine Liturgy has lost its power to shock, to announce the dethroning and reversal of the world’s powers, the victory of God in Jesus, and the kingdom of God already present now in the fulness of the power of self- sacrificing love. Although it is “glaringly obvious” that the Orthodox Divine Liturgy is an image of the kingdom of God, Zizioulas laments the disappearance of this image in

Orthodox Christian consciousness “under the weight of other kinds of questions and other forms of piety”—not least a turn towards an individualistic, consumerist religious practice piously framed as the ascent of the soul to God—a loss which has had “very

4 N.T. Wright, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2012), 37.

10 grave consequences for the way the Liturgy is celebrated, the piety of the faithful and the whole life of the Church.” It is a serious distortion, for “we are misled into notions alien to the true Orthodox tradition, often thinking that we are defending , whereas in fact we are reproducing and promoting ideas foreign to its tradition.”5

Our quandary is reminiscent of the problem signalled by one of the great pioneers of liturgical renewal in the 20th century, Romano Guardini: the central problem, he says, is the liturgical act itself. Specifically, he asks: “Would it not be better to admit that man in this industrial and scientific age, with its new sociological structure, is no longer capable of a liturgical act?”6 For Guardini, the liturgy itself comprises “a forgotten way of doing things” as well as “lost attitudes.”7 Human beings may well be liturgical by nature, even homo adorans, but now they are unaware of liturgy’s existence. The symbolic universe which human beings once inhabited has been transformed or emptied altogether, and the world is suspicious of any kind of signs or unwilling to see a reality behind them. David Stosur notes that, in addition to problems of “lethargy” and

“individualistic devotionalism,” we are “so influenced already by cultural and sociological forces that we unconsciously distance ourselves from many of the liturgy’s most profound participative demands and possible transforming effects.”8

5 Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World, 40. 6 Romano Guardini, “An Open Letter.” Paul Bradshaw and John Melloh, eds., Foundations in Ritual Studies: A for Students of Christian Worship (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 8. 7 Ibid., 5. 8 Stosur, “Liturgy and (Post) Modernity,” 33.

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Does this mean that majestic Orthodox worship, originating in a now-lost premodern world, can no longer work? Have we lost for ever the liturgy beautifully described by the mystagogical of the early centuries, in which we are brought into union with God’s own life and shaped to love as he loves and to do his will? Are we truly no longer capable of a liturgical act, as Guardini muses? These are, I warrant, questions shared by many Orthodox clergy and faithful today as we face up to the consequences of modernity, with its arresting combination of rationalism and individualism within an ever-waning symbolic world.

Recovering an early Christian vision has been the chief goal of the liturgical movement over the last century, and the ongoing working out of (and reaction to) that movement forms another element in the backdrop to Orthodox worship and its renewal today. Sadly, much of this liturgical renewal has been predicated on the words and meaning of liturgy, in liturgy in a reduced “narrative or purely linguistic form,”9 and so those seeking renewal remain trapped in the modern world’s obsession with text, authority and thought, still imprisoned within the very intellectual mindset they are trying to transcend. Truly recapturing the ethos of the early Christian era requires a new model for contemporary worship that broadens our understanding of the scope and purpose of liturgy beyond its scripted definition and meaning to grasp it as holistic and transformative, embracing all of

9 Richard McCall, Do This: Liturgy as Performance (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 83.

12 life. It is only today, in our postmodern era,10 assisted by the advent of postcritical philosophy, that we can draw on new insights from ritual and performance theory, narrative theology, phenomenology, and embodied hermeneutics, to overcome the obstacles to worship and Christian formation posed by the modern age. This does not entail a return to premodern sensibility as such, for time only marches forwards, but it permits the depiction of a new mystagogical vision for a postmodern world, a vision that would share the transformative character of ancient Christian worship, shaping the here and now to share the life of the age to come.

10 While the terms “late modern” and “postmodern” are largely interchangeable, both indicating a questioning of the fundamental assumptions of the modern era, I will however use the term “postmodern” because of its resonance with “postcritical” thought, an essential aspect of the new opportunity our day affords us for understanding how liturgy works.

II – Towards a New Mystagogy

Liturgy Intended as Transformative ‘Theologia Prima’

The belief that worship should naturally transform participants lies at the heart of the revival of Orthodox liturgical theology first articulated by .11

Scholastic thought had treated liturgy as little more than “ceremonied adiaphora,”12 not the ground for theology . A return to patristic sources turned this understanding on its head, showing that liturgy constitutes theology, that orthodoxy (ὀρθός + δόξα:

“right glory” or true worship) is prior to orthodoxy (ὀρθοδοξία: “right doctrine”). To make this point, Schmemann appeals to the famous dictum of Prosper of Aquitaine: ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi—“that the law of praying establishes the law of believing.” Under the tagline lex orandi lex credendi, Schmemann emphasises the interdependence of worship and belief, for faith is “source and cause” of liturgy, but it needs the liturgy as “its own self-understanding and self-fulfillment.”13 Inheriting

Schmemann’s mantle, Aidan Kavanagh is more definitive still, insisting the terms lex orandi and lex credendi are not interchangeable, for liturgy founds belief like a house is

11 Schmemann was of course part of a wider movement of patristic revival and ressourcement dominated by French scholars such as Yves Congar, Jean Daniélou and who sought to revitalise the church with “a new and deeper sounding of ancient, inexhaustible, and common resources.” C Péguy, as quoted by Yves Congar, Vrai et fausse réforme dans l’église (: Cerf, 1950), 602. 12 Aidan Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology (Collegeville, Minnesota: Pueblo Books, 1984), 151. 13 Alexander Schmemann, Liturgy and Tradition: Theological Reflections (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), 39.

13 14 built on a foundation.14 We do not worship because we believe, but rather we believe because “the One in whose faith lies is regularly met in the act of communal worship.”15 Whereas scholastic theology looked at liturgy, analysing its words and rituals, liturgical theology looks through liturgy, seeing with a liturgical lens, understanding liturgy “as a way of living and a way of thinking, expressed ritually.”16 It sees liturgy as coterminous with the church, for it is the “church’s faith in motion” where worshippers transact “the church’s faith in God under the condition of God’s real presence in both church and world.”17

Liturgy is not simply a source of information for the theologian but is rather theology’s “natural milieu” and “self-evident term of reference”18 and the “dynamic condition within which theological reflection is done.”19 Liturgy is in effect theologia prima, a direct spiritual apprehension of divine truth through relationship with God himself. Building on this understanding, Kavanagh articulates how the body of Christ gathered in worship operates: in the liturgy, the assembly encounters God, who is both object and source of faith, and stands faithfully in his presence; the assembly is changed

14 Aidan Kavanagh, “Primary Theology and Liturgical Act: Response,” Worship 57, no. 4 (July 1983): 323. 15 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 91. 16 David Fagerberg, “Liturgical Asceticism: Enlarging Our Grammar of Liturgy,” Pro Ecclesia 13, no. 2 (2004): 206. 17 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 8. 18 Schmemann, Liturgy and Tradition, 12. 19 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 7–8.

15 as a result of the encounter; and the assembly must then adjust to this change, and this adjustment is “theologia itself.”20 This process of adjustment, of theologia prima, is neither “placid” nor “genteel” but involves “collision, chaos and a certain violence.”21 The liturgical assembly stands “on the edge of chaos” and only by God’s grace can it stand there or “come away whole from such an encounter, and even then it is with wounds which are as deep as they are salutary.”22

By locating the operation of primary theology in the church constituted by liturgy,

Orthodox liturgical theology highlights that theologia is the daily work of ordinary people assembled for worship. Kavanagh thus imagines a certain “Mrs Murphy” as the liturgist par excellence. Mrs Murphy is not an academic scholar, but a simple woman, formed by lifelong immersion in liturgical worship:

Mrs Murphy and her pastor are primary theologians whose discourse in faith is carried on not by concepts and propositions nearly so much as in the vastly complex vocabulary of experiences had, said, sights seen, smells smelled, words said and heard and responded to, emotions controlled and released, sins committed and repented, children born and loved ones buried, and in many other ways no one can count or always account for.23

This is not an anti-intellectual or egalitarian stance as such; it is simply the recognition that we become primary theologians and members of “that theological corporation Paul

20 Ibid., 74–75. 21 Ibid., 74. 22 Ibid., 75. 23 Ibid., 146–147.

16 calls Christ’s body” by our .24 Moreover, primary theologians like Mrs Murphy are responsible for an awe-inspiring task, throwing “flashes of light upon chasms of rich ambiguity,” a much harder task than the work of the secondary theologians with their

“words about words.”25 Liturgists are simply those who do liturgy: they make up the church, and they are its primary theologians.

This vision of liturgy as transformative theologia prima represents a high understanding of liturgy that has not gone unchallenged. Critics question how realistic this theology is in practice, especially as liturgy does not appear to have a single and

“readily identified” meaning.26 Paul Bradshaw makes use of the work of Jewish liturgiologist Lawrence Hoffman to show that rituals can have many different meanings at the same time.27 He distinguishes and contrasts the official meanings, “the things experts say that a rite means,” from private meanings, “whatever idiosyncratic interpretations people find in things,” and public meanings, “agreed-upon meanings shared by a number of ritual participants, even though they are not officially preached by the experts.”28 According to Bradshaw, it is the so-called “official meaning” that liturgical

24 Kavanagh, “Primary Theology and Liturgical Act,” 322. 25 Ibid., 323,322. “My admiration for her and her colleagues is profound, and it deepens daily,” Kavanagh adds. Ibid. 26 Paul Bradshaw, “Difficulties in Doing Liturgical Theology,” Pacifica: Australasian Theological Studies 11, no. 2 (June 1, 1998): 189. 27 Lawrence Hoffman, “How Ritual Means: Ritual Circumcision in Rabbinic Culture and Today,” Studia Liturgica 23 (1983): 78-97, esp. 79-82. 28 Ibid., as cited by Bradshaw, “Difficulties in Doing Liturgical Theology,” 189.

17 scholars define as the primary theology emerging from liturgical experience, even though that official meaning may not even be the same in later generations as in the one that framed the liturgical service in the first instance.29 Despite this focus on the official or true meaning of liturgy, that may not be what attracts people to worship in the first place, and, as Hoffman argues, “as often as not, it is any of the other meanings that carry the day.”30 Indeed, it is in the face of such ambiguity and lack of readily grasped meaning in liturgy, the critics maintain, that worshippers end up imposing their own private meanings on liturgical experience, rather than the case that “God speaks and people adjust.”31 The problem with the conception of liturgy as primary theology is that, according to Paul Marshall, such an encounter is “necessarily mediated through the lenses of a vision of God already formulated by others and by the worshippers themselves.”32

Yet the liturgical theology model, as pioneered by Schmemann and elaborated by

Kavanagh, accounts for such different meanings by conceiving liturgy not as text, but icon: there is multivalency in the presence of a corporate act or icon,33 only it is a

29 Bradshaw cites the example of a subsequent reading a ‘higher’ form of Anglican into the Book of Common than Thomas Cranmer intended. 30 Hoffman, “How Ritual Means,” as cited by Bradshaw, “Difficulties in Doing Liturgical Theology,” 189. 31 Paul Marshall, “Reconsidering ‘Liturgical Theology’: Is There a Lex Orandi for All Christians?,” Studia liturgica 25 (1995): 135. 32 Bradshaw, “Difficulties in Doing Liturgical Theology,” 192. 33 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 104.

18 different kind of multivalency than in the competing meanings of different texts.34 True liturgia is not actually found in the creeds, liturgical texts and prayers themselves; these are the by-products of “that dialectical process of change and adjustment to change triggered by the assembly’s regular baptismal and eucharistic encounters with the living

God.”35 It is rather the “sustained dialectic”36 of liturgy that transforms the assembly, along with all its preconceived ideas and previous life, into the life of God. This dialectic means that it cannot be said, as Marshall maintains, that our spiritual posture during liturgy is “essentially passive and receptive,” nor that forms of liturgical worship cannot adapt as “an adequate expression of what our faith is or becomes as it is lived in a changing environment.”37 Quite the opposite, for the thesis brought by the assembly perdures into the synthesis: the “liturgy must be rich and varied because the assembly of faith itself is rich and varied in its nature and operation, that is, catholic in the fullest and most basic sense.”38 Kavanagh contends that this dialectic process is often not

34 It is not coincidental that most of the critics of the Schmemann-Kavanagh school of liturgical theology are Protestants focusing on texts. For the liturgical theologians, the received text of the liturgy is best thought of as the “representative source of all potential ‘performances’” or actual experiences of liturgia. Brian Butcher, Liturgical Theology after Schmemann: An Orthodox Reading of Paul Ricoeur (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2018), 50. 35 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 93. 36 Ibid., 76. 37 Marshall, “Reconsidering ‘Liturgical Theology’: Is There a Lex Orandi for All Christians?,” 135. 38 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 172.

19 understood because we have fallen into the trap of secondary theology which has

“imperceptibly rendered us aphasic and inept with regard to it.”39

The difficulty arises, though, when Mrs Murphy herself falls into such aphasia and ineptitude, when the worshipping community cannot perceive the transformative theologia prima. Kavanagh admits that the change precipitated in the assembly can often be “not so much immediately apparent […] as it is long-term, even eschatological, and inexorable.”40 Although that may well work itself out in the long run, the liturgist is presumably left to muddle through with “whatever idiosyncratic interpretations” were brought to worship in the first place. This is what Schmemann so often laments: people do not always bring open hearts and minds to worship; they bring superstition, anti- sacramental worldviews shaped by the modern world’s dualism and pietism, and preconceived beliefs alienated from the core teachings of the faith. The liturgy is supposed to manifest the life of the age to come, but instead nominalism “reigns almost unchallenged.”41 With regards to the church’s central act of worship, the Divine Liturgy,

Schmemann like Zizioulas notes the frequent serious distortions of Orthodox faith, including harmful divisions between clergy and laity and the reduced to an

“individual act of piety, completely disconnected from the liturgy as a corporate act.”42 In

39 Ibid., 77. 40 Ibid., 93. 41 Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist: of the Kingdom (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), 18. 42 Alexander Schmemann, “Problems of Orthodoxy in America: II. The Liturgical Problem,” St Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly VIII, no. 4 (1964): 179.

20 spite of the eloquent rhetoric of liturgical theology, such realistic appraisals of the actual effects of worship give credence to critics who believe it ascribes “some sort of Platonic ideal existence to ‘the liturgy’.”43 As the critics contend, liturgical theology is at best romantic and idealistic;44 at worst, its implied structuralism amounts to “liturgical imperialism.”45

Expecting liturgy to be transformative, though, does not mean that it is

“utilitarian, or for something.”46 The liturgy should not be oriented towards education or training, nor should churches be reduced to centres of social service. Yet, without being didactic as such, worship should “inform, shape and guide the ecclesiastical consciousness as well as the ‘worldview’ of the Christian community.”47 By drawing the worshipping community into union with God, liturgy should enable the church to manifest the selfless love of the Holy Trinity to the world. The liturgy should naturally result in the assembly “doing the world” as liturgy,48 reflecting as an icon the life of the age to come. Nicholas Denysenko, an Orthodox theologian of liturgical renewal, thus sets

43 Paul Marshall, “Reconsidering ‘Liturgical Theology’: Is There a Lex Orandi for All Christians?,” Studia Liturgica 25 (1995): 133. 44 Bradshaw, “Difficulties in Doing Liturgical Theology,” 191. 45 James L Empereur, “What Is Liturgical Theology? A Study in Methodology,” Theological Studies 54, no. 3 (September 1993): 590. 46 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 151. Emphasis added. 47 Schmemann, Liturgy and Tradition, 51. 48 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 173.

21 out Christian formation as the ultimate, if ever elusive, standard for assessing the impact of any efforts at liturgical reform:

What kind of people is the Church producing, and how is the liturgy shaping their lives? Do Orthodox Christians make significant contributions to society? Does the Church raise global leaders whose vision for the world reflect the teachings of the and the kingdom of God? Do the people of the Church conduct themselves in ways consistent with the larger aspirations of liturgical reform? So, for example, if we emphasize the Gospel commandment to forgive one another’s sins and to exchange the , and make that ritual moment particularly important in liturgical celebration, can we claim that we are becoming people who habitually forgive the sins of others? Can we claim that we seek to end divisions in our homes, neighborhoods, cities, and countries, and commit ourselves to making peace?49

For Denysenko, good liturgy is therefore not the perfection of ritual performance, but

“the emergence of transformed communities who love God, are thankful for their life in the communion of the , and who love and attend to their neighbors,” adding that “the love for God, thanksgiving, and love for one’s brother and sister must be inscribed upon and communicated by the very liturgical rites we engage.”50 That there should be little evidence of such all-encompassing life change emerging from worship and the dialectic of liturgical theology is thus a particularly damning indictment.

Schmemann himself frequently laments that many people remain attached to ancient rites but fail to see the liturgy as “an all-embracing vision of life, a power meant to judge, inform and transform the whole of existence, a ‘philosophy of life’ shaping and

49 Nicholas Denysenko, “Is Liturgical Reform Possible in Orthodoxy?” (Lecture at the University of St , 1 October 2016), 15. 50 Ibid., 16.

22 challenging all our ideas, attitudes and actions.”51 Liturgy functions properly each time it

“cracks open radical values, invites without coercing people into them, and celebrates their living presence deep within these same values.”52 And yet one may well wonder how often it does function properly in this way, as we continue to see a complete

“alienation of liturgy from life.”53 When the critics say that liturgical theologians permit themselves only “slim, very passing, and somewhat sentimental references to care of the poor and ministry in the world,”54 they may well have a point.

‘Homo Capax Dei’ – The Need for Liturgical Capacitation and Proficiency

Commenting on those who attend the Divine Liturgy but choose not to commune, despite the entire service being oriented towards that end, Schmemann distinguishes these

“‘worldly ones’ (κοσμικοί)” from the “former laikós, members of the people of God

(λαός), ‘God’s own people’ (I Peter 2.9).”55 By falling short of their vocation as laity, worshippers effectively immunise themselves against the transforming power and spirit of the liturgy, and the liturgy on its own is impotent to prevent this. Kavanagh notes that while liturgy precedes faith, it does not mechanically create it, nor does it necessarily correct it; rather it prods its emergence, and throws “flashes of light, coherence and

51 Schmemann, Liturgy and Tradition, 52. 52 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 116. 53 Schmemann, Liturgy and Tradition, 52. 54 Marshall, “Reconsidering ‘Liturgical Theology’: Is There a Lex Orandi for All Christians?,” 137. 55 Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, 232.

23 congruence” into the life of worshippers so that they can sense the presence of God, and it gives faith a foundation.56 When it works, liturgy properly speaking “drastically affects minds and hearts” such that “reality is perceived in new and unforgettable ways.”57 Yet much depends on the response of the worshippers, the response either of God’s own people or of “worldly ones.”

It is addressing this capacity to respond to liturgy that the standard bearer for a new generation of Orthodox liturgical theology, David Fagerberg, has taken up. Mindful of the criticism of Marshall and others that liturgical theologians have failed to take account of worshippers as people needing preparation for, instruction during, and sending out from worship into ministry,58 Fagerberg turns his attention to discipleship as an essential element of the dialectic of primary theology. In so doing, he elaborates a principle hinted at by Kavanagh, that asceticism belongs to liturgical rite59 and should be taken seriously.60 If in going back to sources Schmemann and Kavanagh enlarged the vision of liturgy in its theological dimension, Fagerberg draws on the same patristic tradition to widen the ascetical dimension of liturgy. Defining liturgy as the “Trinity’s perichoresis kenotically extended to invite our synergistic ascent into deification,” he argues this definition begs asceticism: “if liturgy is heaven on earth, and theologia is

56 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 99. 57 Ibid., 170. 58 Marshall, “Reconsidering ‘Liturgical Theology’: Is There a Lex Orandi for All Christians?,” 137. 59 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 160. 60 Ibid., 6.

24 deified union with God, then asceticism is demanded.”61 By asceticism he means the efforts of training, self- and self-discipline—such as prayer, fasting, keeping vigil, repentance, and pilgrimage—that are analogous to the exercise athletes undergo to discipline their bodies for contest. Such ascetical effort “is requisite to being a liturgist, and to becoming a liturgical theologian.”62

For Kavanagh, there is an implied asceticism in the dialectical encounter of worship, for the adjustment of theologia prima, involving theological judgement and self- criticism, can be difficult and costly. The assembly’s new life can only be maintained in

“openness, totality, sacredness and sent purpose” by remaining in the presence of God and “suffering whatever change that Source chooses to work within it, and of its painful coming to terms with that change.”63 Yet, while this is the common experience of all the baptised, Kavanagh does not expect all to take up the struggle. It is the ascetic who, as

“virtuoso,” “serves the whole community as an exemplar of its own life.”64 The life of struggle for holiness, to be sure, is what life is created for—and the “ascetic is simply a stunningly normal person who stands in constant witness to the normality of Christian orthodoxia in a world flawed into abnormality by human choice”65—but the ascetic alone manifests it. In his recension of Kavanagh’s thought, Fagerberg goes further, picking up

61 David Fagerberg, On Liturgical Asceticism (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 9. 62 Fagerberg, “Liturgical Asceticism,” 206. 63 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 95. 64 Ibid., 161. 65 Ibid.

25 on the patristic notion that asceticism is actually intended for all. Given that liturgists

“make up the church, and the church is made up of liturgists, and the term is virtually synonymous with baptized or with laity, to name the members of the mystical body of

Christ,”66 it follows that “liturgical asceticism is for every baptized Christian.”67 This struggle “is incumbent on every Christian” for it is “born in the waters of the font where the liturgist-in-formation is immersed into the blood of a suffering Christ.”68

Ascetical effort is about discipleship and spiritual growth, and it “capacitates a person for liturgy”69 for it is “the discipline which increases the measure by which the

Christian can participate in the liturgical life.”70 If the liturgy, standing in the presence of

God, is experienced as fire and light, it is liturgical asceticism that “makes us combustible.”71 The fruit of asceticism is a complete change in the worldview of the liturgist that enables liturgy to function properly:

[It] yields a doctrine of creation that asserts matter was made to be sacrament; it yields an eschatology that asserts everything is destined for glory; it yields an anthropology that asserts the image of God can attain the likeness of God (deification); it yields a christology that asserts the reign of God brings with it obligations to the poor, imprisoned, and outcast; and it

66 Fagerberg, “Liturgical Asceticism,” 202. 67 Ibid., 214. 68 Ibid. 69 David Fagerberg, Consecrating the World: On Mundane Liturgical Theology (Angelico Press, 2016), 2. 70 Fagerberg, “Liturgical Asceticism,” 213. 71 Ibid.

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yields an ecclesiology that asserts the Church manifests the potency of the world.72

In other words, so long as we have the requisite liturgical ascesis, and our liturgists are capacitated to participate fully in liturgy, the idealised world envisaged by the liturgical theology expounded by Schmemann and Kavanagh should fall naturally into place—the church assembled in worship experiencing and manifesting theologia prima arising from the direct encounter with God.

Nonetheless, postulating the necessity of ascetical preparation as the solution to the apparent ineffectiveness of liturgy as primary theology is not ultimately sufficient to address the practical problem. Fagerberg asserts simply, “We should expect Mrs Murphy to know all this. It is required of her as a Christian.”73 That is true, but is it helpful?74 It is hard to overlook the fact that few of the laity, who are meant to be coterminous with the liturgists, are actively engaged in asceticism, or indeed aware of their “synergistic participation in the of God, as the Almighty gathers up history to bring it to eschatological perfection.”75 Have we not therefore simply shifted from an inspiring yet apparently unachievable conception of liturgy as the all-sufficient ground of encounter with God, to an equally eloquent but impractical expectation of the faithful to be capacitated by asceticism for their participation in liturgy as “a deified people, a filial

72 David Fagerberg, Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology? 2nd edition. (Chicago: Hillenbrand, 2003), 226. 73 Ibid. 74 Cf. Empereur, “What Is Liturgical Theology?,” 590. 75 Fagerberg, “Liturgical Asceticism,” 206.

27 race grafted by the into eighth-day existence” setting about their liturgical vocation to create a “new heaven and a new earth”?76 Can our Mrs Murphy truly be enough of an ascetic to be a full participant in liturgy and thus a primary theologian?

Liturgy as Enacted Social Drama

Moving towards a new mystagogy for our day means therefore addressing the central issue of liturgical participation, the problems of which are essentially what launched the liturgical movement in the first place. In the words of one of the liturgical movement’s pioneers, Virgil Michel, while renewal began with leading “the faithful into more intimate participation in the liturgy of the Church,” true liturgical renewal demands more: “the further objective must also be that of getting the liturgical spirit to radiate forth from the of Christ into every aspect of the daily life of the Christian.”77 These two objectives form one single liturgical movement, according to Mark Searle, and the underlying assumption of this movement is that the liturgy of the church should once again shape

“the faithful and the faithful contribute to the shaping of the world.”78 Replacing the debased but common notion of better liturgical participation as merely getting

76 Fagerberg, Theologia Prima, 222. 77 Virgil Michel, “The Scope of the Liturgical Movement,” Orate Fratres 10 (1936) 485. As cited by Searle, Called to Participate, 8. 78 Searle, Called to Participate, 12.

28 congregants to pray and sing along with the service,79 Searle identifies three ascending levels of participation of the faithful in the worship of the church:

1. participating in the rite as a whole according to one’s assigned role and doing so in such a way that one is 2. participating in the priestly work of Christ on behalf of the world before the throne of God and thus identifying with Christ dead and risen; and 3. participating in the trinitarian life of God as human beings.80

In this description, the early church vision is recaptured insofar as full, active liturgical participation culminates with theosis, in direct communion with the life of God. This trinitarian participation reflects moreover a proper understanding of liturgy as collective and communitarian, not individualistic. Liturgy becomes the “place where the many collectively discover their individual lives to be inextricably part of the one collective life in the Spirit.”81 The worship of the church is the “action of the assembled whole,” and it is not necessary—even in reaction to the clericalist theatre of the past—to insist on everyone joining in every word and act.82

When the faithful join together in liturgy, meaning is derived not from the understanding and motives of the assembled individuals, but from the collective act itself, from what the worshippers do. Liturgy is therefore, according to Searle, “essentially

79 As implied by a reductionist reading of the words of Sacrosanctum Concilium, 30: “To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, , and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times all should observe a reverent silence.” 80 Searle, Called to Participate, 44. 81 Ibid., 12. 82 Ibid., 20.

29 a performance into which individuals fit themselves, discovering its meaning and implications as it were from the inside.”83 Liturgy as performance does not mean liturgy as theatre. Nevertheless, worship shares characteristics with theatrical drama as an enacted event, meaning that its participants employ similar tools to understand and interpret it. Liturgical scholar Richard McCall points out that such a view of liturgy is very ancient indeed, for this toolset comprises the same method of “symbolic expansion used since New Testament times,” specifically, the elaborated symbolic world reflected in the early fathers and mystagogical commentators on the liturgy. Though elaborate, this “old semiotic” was nevertheless popular and widely grasped by the faithful, as it is

“basically intuitive” and “rooted in the human imagination.”84 This toolset was obscured with the rise of and new semiotic categories in the late mediaeval era, which brought about a secularised tradition of drama separated from a church increasingly obsessed with dialectic and systematic theology. From that point, “drama would cease to be an acceptable hermeneutical tool for the exposition of the liturgy because, after all, dramatic performance requires a concrete enactment and a kind of visual symbol unsuited to dialectic.”85

It is only in the second half of the 20th century, with the advent of a postmodern worldview including a new dramatic tradition capable of radical experimentation, that the boundary between liturgy and drama could once again be transcended. From

83 Ibid., 23. 84 McCall, Do This, 22. 85 Ibid., 40.

30 creative experiments in dramatic form, evoking in many ways the drama of the premodern era, and from critical reflection upon them, the new discipline of performance theory emerges, drawing together insights from “anthropologists, sociologists, semioticians, linguists, and dramatic critics,”86 all of whom underline the performance quality of social interaction. Prominent among these is Richard Schechner, a professor of performance studies who adapts cultural anthropologist Victor Turner’s metaphor of

“social drama” for the way societies negotiate transitions. For Turner, such social dramas involve social structures passing through four subsequent stages of breach, crisis (the liminal stage in which an “antistructure” exists called communitas), redressive action, and reintegration.87 Schechner reappropriates Turner’s metaphor, returning it to its native context of theatrical performance, and frames the four stages of performance within the acts of “gathering” and “dispersing.”88 This framing differentiates that which we can describe as “performance” (of a play or of liturgy) from ongoing social reality. Schechner distinguishes three types of performance: aesthetic, where viewing an external performance affects the audience’s consciousness; ritual, where the subject of the ceremony is transformed by the performer; and social drama, properly speaking, where all (performer and audience alike) are involved and transformed.89 Although all three types of performance could be said to be at work on some level within every liturgy,

86 Ibid., 42. 87 Ibid., 51. 88 Ibid., 52. 89 Ibid., 54.

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McCall argues that the liturgy of the modern era in the grip of scholasticism belongs primarily to the first, the aesthetic performance category, whereas in the premodern era, as well as in postmodern aspiration, liturgy both unfolds and is experienced most fully as a dynamic and transformative social drama.

Searle too recognises the social drama that liturgy represents, insisting that liturgy is a “performance that makes a difference”: it is capable of shaping reality and generating new situations, redefining people and their roles, and above all “creating, modifying, or sustaining relationships.”90 Oriented towards others, liturgy “transcends the individuals who participate in it, lifting them up to engage in something far beyond their ability to create or even to imagine.”91 Within this communal process of change and becoming—coming out of the structure of the world, being pushed into an ambiguous and disorienting liminal state that challenges that structure and forms an antistructure

(communitas), and ultimately not only fosters growth and development but engenders a radical new life—the church is constituted with what Orthodox theologian Dimitrios

Passakos describes as an “anti-structural kind of ecclesiology,”92 belonging no longer to this present age but to the age to come. Therefore, as Zizioulas explains, true causality is derived from the future not the past, and the true nature of all people and things is what

90 Searle, Called to Participate, 23. 91 Ibid., 14. 92 Passakos, “Worship, Rituals and Liturgy in Orthodox Tradition: Insights from Practice and Theology,” 26. It also implies that such a church born in the transformative performance of liturgy is and must remain a marginal community, radical movement opposed to the structures of this age. It is fundamentally incompatible with worldly power and tyranny.

32 they will be in the age to come.93 The key to the transformative potential of the social drama of worship is thus an eschatological awareness: the “more of your eschatological identity you carry with you, the more you will love and come to the aid of whomever needs your help, whatever it costs you.”94 This new participative eschatological ontology heals our distorted relations for we come to know each other, not as we have been, as sinful, self-centred individuals, but as we will be in the glorious life of communion of the age to come; and it therefore leads to new actions and new witness within the world.95

As we edge towards a new and transformative mystagogy for our postmodern world, contemporary performance theory thus helps to explain how the enactment of the social drama of liturgy can involve and shape worshippers for the new life of the kingdom. Nevertheless, we are as yet simply begging the question, pointing simply to participation in the liturgy itself—even if it be a fuller participation in a more broadly- scoped liturgy as event—as the way to Christian formation. Yet it is not enough just to declare it is so. Apart from simply insisting on our iconological participation in the eschaton through the Divine Liturgy, a trenchant critic of contemporary Orthodox liturgical practice like John Zizioulas does not articulate in any practical way how awareness of this eschatological identity is to be acquired, how eschatological ontology works through worship to make us into people who belong in and derive their being

93 Zizioulas, The One and the Many, 15. He draws this from . 94 John D. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, ed. Douglas H. Knight (New York: T & T Clark, 2009), 127. 95 Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World, 48.

33 from the age to come. A pragmatic solution is sorely needed, though: consider just how scathingly Zizioulas decries clergy who, lacking the proper eschatological awareness, have turned the liturgy into “a distortion of the image of the last times.”96

Liturgy as Narrative Signification

We turn therefore to a New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright, who fully shares Zizioulas’s concern for the dearth of awareness among Christians of an experience here and now of the new way of life in the age to come. Wright perceives the real solution will come with the recovery the fuller kingdom narrative. Over and again he emphasises that it is in the telling of the story that the work of God in Jesus to establish his kingdom becomes the

“mandate and pattern” for the church: “The more you tell the story of Jesus and pray for his Spirit, the more you discover what the church should be doing in the present time.”97

What Wright says of the gospels could equally be said of the kingdom worship of the

Orthodox Divine Liturgy: the story has a “dense and complex centre” and we need to regularly “be struck anew by the thick, rich, multilayered nature” of this narrative, “so full of vivid human scenes, but so evocative in their resonance of meaning about the world, God, life and death, and pretty much everything else.”98 In the telling of God’s story in worship, there is the potential for the transforming encounter and renewal of our minds that we need:

96 Ibid., 46. 97 Wright, How God Became King, 119. 98 Ibid., 157.

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God has to sweep away all our ideas, including all our ideas about God, in order to draw us, unwilling as we are, face to face with the reality, which is both greater and gentler than we can imagine. And if that is true in our praying and thinking—if it is true that we have to be stripped of our own noisy jumble of thoughts in order to hear afresh the word of the triune God—it is just as true in our living.99

In liturgy, then, God’s story shapes our own, the narrative of the age to come moulding us to be citizens and bringers of the kingdom: in liturgy we come to inhabit God’s world and his story.

Wright builds here on one of the main insights of postcritical theory, the emergence of story as a governing metaphor for life itself and human thought, words and action within it. Setting out his own postcritical framework of “critical realism,”100 he explains that stories “are one of the most basic modes of human life.” Narratives are not accounts derived from human words and action: rather, what we say and do are “enacted narratives.” In other words, “the overall narrative is the more basic category, while the particular moment and person can only be understood within that context.”101

Postcritical philosopher Richard Kearney adds that every “human existence is a life in

99 N.T. Wright, For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 38. 100 Based in no small part on the work of critical-realist theoretician Michael Polanyi. See especially Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958) and The Tacit Dimension (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1967) and Michael Polanyi and Marjorie Grene, Knowing and Being: Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). 101 N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 1 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 38.

35 search of a narrative”—not simply in the sense of trying to weave a coherent story out of the confusing threads of life, but “because each human life is always already an implicit story.”102

This dynamic element of human life as an enacted narrative connects stories directly to the performative aspects of liturgy as enacted event described above. As story-laden creatures, we all come to worship bearing our own complex of explicit and implicit narratives. We are often not aware of them at all, for we have not stopped to do any narrative criticism on our own lives—we have yet to ponder the plot, the structure, the characters of the stories in which we inhabit. Yet, as David Stosur writes, if we are to properly respond to Guardini’s challenge and solve the “imaginative shutdown” of the modern world, we must become aware as the “tellers and hearers” of worship of our mutual narrative identities.103 In the proclamation of readings from the scriptures, the performance of ritual actions, the and prayers, the liturgy presents us with a myriad of sensory-data, ideas and symbols, story-laden events derived from the grand narrative that is God’s own story and representing “living stories of our tradition for our appropriation and deepened transformation.”104 These are based not only in the past, but in the “last things,” and they represent the telos, the fulfilment and truest form of our human existence:

Between the “once upon a time” of the Gardens of Eden and Gethsemane and the “happily ever after” of the Wedding Feast of the in the New

102 Richard Kearney, On Stories, Thinking in Action (London: Routledge, 2002), 129. 103 Stosur, “Liturgy and (Post) Modernity,” 41. 104 Ibid.

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Jerusalem, we will continue to find in the liturgical here-and-now the Author of our life, if only we have the courage honestly to narrate and implicate ourselves in the Story through which we discover our living and true identity.105

The stories and worldview embedded in the liturgy are meant to challenge and subvert all competing stories, for they are in essence revolutionary, proclaiming the dethroning and reversal of all tyrannical powers, the victory of God in Jesus that transforms sorrow into joy, darkness into light, and death into life. As Wright explains, this subversive role of narrative is intentional:

Stories are, actually, peculiarly good at modifying or subverting other stories and their worldviews. Where head-on attack would certainly fail, the parable hides the wisdom of the serpent behind the innocence of the dove, gaining and favour which can then be used to change assumptions which the hearer would otherwise keep hidden away for safety. […] Tell someone to do something, and you change their life—for a day; tell someone a story and you change their life.106

Yet we are almost completely oblivious and immune to this subversive message if there is no point of intersection between our complex of personal stories and the public narrative of the liturgy. Our existing tacit knowledge or matrix of stories prevents us from even seeing the obvious symbol system of the kingdom that pervades the liturgy. As

Wright points out, we have cut the narrative “down to size” and have allowed it “only to speak about the few concerns that happened to occupy our minds already,” rather than setting it “free to generate an entire world of meaning in all directions, a new world in

105 Ibid. 106 Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, 40.

37 which we would discover not only new life, but new vocation.”107 What occupy our minds already are competing narratives108 that create what Wright calls “bad habits of thought.”109 These result in perception filters that blind us to even the most obvious elements of God’s story, in cognitive biases or subjective perceptions of reality that distort our apprehension of the truths revealed in the narrative and experienced in worship. For any new story to be subversive, it must come “close enough to the story already believed by the hearer for a spark to jump between them,” and when it does,

“nothing will ever be quite the same again.”110

It is to Paul Ricoeur’s phenomenology-based hermeneutics of performative text and human action that Stosur turns for the model by which to analyse the transformative

107 Wright, How God Became King, 158. 108 This is the term used by John Milbank who writes about Christians needing to out-narrate “competing narratives,” principally through metanarrative realism, grasping the performative metanarrative—Jesus’s preaching and inauguration of the kingdom—which has been completed by Jesus but needs to be re-enacted and realised in every generation until the eschatological fulfilment. John Milbank, Theology & Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 385-390. Historian Antoine Arjakovsky, one of the few Orthodox to engage with Milbank and other thinkers of the ‘Radical Orthodoxy’ movement, writes that Milbank showed these competing narratives to be “a succession of disguised antitheologies, which unceasingly deform the vision of the Kingdom of Orthodox .” “The of Life, a Radical Orthodox Approach.” Sergius Bulgakov: A Review of Russian Religious Philosophy and Contemporary Integral Thought. Accessed 1 May 2018. https://sbulgakov.livejournal.com/30625.html 109 Wright, How God Became King, 158. 110 Ibid.

38 aspect of narrative within liturgy.111 The choice of Ricoeur makes profound sense, for one of the guiding threads of the philosopher’s work is the notion of the “capable human being” (l’homme capable), which provides a neat foil to Guardini’s musing whether such a one could still exist. In his own work on Ricoeur, Brian Butcher discovers a path for construing “the liturgical faculty of l’homme capable—how to discern in such a one the form of Schmemann’s homo adorans” as well as a means for seeing “how liturgy, as an instantiation of Ricoeur’s axiom that ‘the symbol gives rise to thought,’ manifests homo capax as specifically homo capax Dei.”112 Though he was no theologian, Ricoeur would occasionally refer directly in his works to such liturgical capacitation:

I am grateful to the liturgy for delivering me out of my subjectivity, for offering me, not my words or gestures, but those of the community. […] I enter into a form that in turn forms me; by taking up in my own way the liturgical text I become text myself, in prayer and song. Indeed, by the liturgy, I am fundamentally divested of preoccupation with myself…. Behold the salutary disorientation that resituates the “I” amidst community, the individual amidst history and the human person amidst creation.113

111 A turn to text and the interpretation of text may appear retrograde if we are to escape the clutches of text-oriented modernity and scholastic thought. But as noted, with Ricoeur text is always performative. Moreover, “with Ricoeur’s shift to narrative comes a concomitant emphasis and re-evaluation of the essential role of human action in the articulation of personal and communal identity.” David A Stosur, “Narrative Signification and the Paschal Mystery: Liturgy, Participation, and Hermeneutics,” Questions liturgiques 96, no. 1–2 (2015): 53. 112 Butcher, Liturgical Theology after Schmemann, 60. 113 Paul Ricoeur, “Postface.” Taizé et l’Église de Demain, Jean-Marie Paupert (Paris: Fayard, 1967), 102. As translated and cited by Butcher, Liturgical Theology after Schmemann, 60.

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This liturgical resituating of our identities and lives is thus principally a form of

“narrative signification,” in which meaning is derived from the context of an overall and coherent story. Stosur notes that, if “at one time Ricoeur could say, ‘The symbol gives rise to thought,’ later he would say that no symbol can do so without its contextualization in narrative.”114 Indeed, the capacitation for and within liturgy characteristic of the capable human being represents a kind of narrative reshaping of human life: “we learn to become the narrator of our own story without completely becoming the author of our life.”115

Both Stosur and Butcher trace the path of this narrative signification and reshaping in liturgy along the lines of Ricoeur’s “narrative arc,” the threefold mimesis of prefiguration, configuration and refiguration. Participation in the liturgy of the church, which is at the same time and intersubjectively both personal and communal,116 passes continually through these three stages, which effectively correspond with the three ascending stages of participation identified by Searle. The liturgy has a context,

114 Stosur, “Narrative Signification and the Paschal Mystery,” 41. 115 Paul Ricoeur, "Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator," in A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. Mario J.Valdés (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991) 437. As cited by Ibid., 50. 116 “A narrative approach values the dynamics of intersubjectivity and understands that each individual's story incorporates uniquely personal and various communal histories, including the history and tradition of the actual celebrating assembly. While it is impossible for any two persons to understand their relationship to the community and to the community's liturgical act in precisely the same way, neither should this be the goal. Members of the assembly are not, literally, of one mind, but are ‘single-mindedly,’ together, sharers in the tradition.” Stosur, “Liturgy and (Post) Modernity,” 36-37.

40 consisting of both the story-laden life of the community and our own complex of individual narratives, which prefigures us and makes us capable (or not) of participating in and appropriating the narrative tradition. In the next stage, configuration, we are

“emplotted,” drawn into the mythos, into what Ricoeur considers the interplay of “acting and suffering, doing and undergoing,”117 and this constitutes an embodied and performed image of the world rightly ordered to the larger divine narrative. Claiming that narrative as our own, we reshape and arrange the events of our life to conform to the νόμον τοῦ Χριστοῦ (Galatians 6.2), the kenotic pattern of Christ—as we are drawn into what Searle calls our “living participation in Christ’s own sacrifice of obedience.”118

By this self-emptying participation in Christ’s priesthood, we are refigured, transformed in our understanding and action for our return to life and mission, the third stage of participation in the trinitarian life as human beings. Stosur sums this up with reference to the paschal mystery at the heart of the liturgy: “the deepest confirmation and affirmation [of] one's true identity—one’s real life—can be found only in living for and with others, ‘refiguring’ our stories in the power of the Spirit along the lines of narrative

117 Ibid., 61. Here we may also draw a direct parallel with the social drama metaphor already evoked in Turner and Schechner. Although “configuration” is primarily a positive development, the “emplotment” nevertheless involves a crisis giving rise to this interplay of acting and suffering. The threefold narrative arc is therefore analogous to Turner’s concepts of breach (which comes to a community that has been “prefigured”), crisis leading into the liminal stage in which an “antistructure” exists called communitas (which corresponds with the community’s “configuration”), before the redressive action and reintegration (which constitute “refiguration”). 118 Searle, Called to Participate, 37.

41 transformation ‘configured’ in the story of Christ’s paschal mystery.”119 Echoing Searle,

Stosur further describes refiguration—a process which is only complete in the fulness of the age to come—as the process by which “the ‘rehearsal’ of the liturgy of the world in the liturgy of the church gives way to living the liturgy of the world: the life of the assembly and its members becomes grateful life lived for others, always and everywhere.”120

Experienced according to this three-staged arc of narrative transformation, the liturgy of the church becomes the privileged arena for the recovery of Guardini’s

“forgotten way of doing things” and “lost attitudes,” the place for the vision and enactment of that lost symbolic universe, for the acquisition of those virtues and performance of those actions which participate directly in the larger purposes of God’s own story. Liturgy itself then becomes, as Stosur points out, “analogous to the ‘second naïveté’ that Ricoeur spoke of with respect to symbols,”121 and we move closer to a new liturgical mystagogy cast specially for our sceptical and fragilised postmodern age, one that permits full participation and enables real formation.

The Formative Power of Enacted Narrative

Significantly and altogether helpfully for our project, this concern for real formation is shared by postcritical virtue ethicists like the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and the

119 Stosur, “Liturgy and (Post) Modernity,” 37. 120 Stosur, “Narrative Signification and the Paschal Mystery,” 63. 121 Ibid., 60.

42 theologian Stanley Hauerwas, who likewise have insisted on the need for narrative in the process of formation. For them, “to speak of virtue entails that we tell stories.”122 This is because of the very definition of a virtue—both classically since Aristotle and in the postcritical recovery of virtue ethics—as an internal disposition or habit directed towards a telos, the end which is the “ought” of human existence. Virtues are thus characteristics needed to sustain communities, traditions and practices; as MacIntyre says, “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question

‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”123 Put another way, virtue is simply

“that excellence, skill, or acquired characteristic expected of one who is appropriately formed in the wisdom of a given community that is told in their stories.”124

The acquisition of such virtues requires two things: community exemplars or models of virtue to emulate, and importantly, practice. A “practice” is formally defined by

MacIntyre as “cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate.”125 And within the church, the liturgy is precisely “paradigmatic

122 Wayne A. Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality: The First Two Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 189. 123 Alasdair C. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 216. 124 Woodill, The Fellowship of Life: Virtue Ethics and Orthodox Christianity, (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998), 10. 125 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 187.

43 practice.”126 In the liturgy, the church acquires its fundamental story from its participation in God’s larger purposes, and our individual and communal life stories receive their telos through the ritual re-enactment of the narratives of God and the church. In this way, Hauerwas says, we deepen our understanding of what we are oriented towards by being confronted, challenged and reshaped by the fundamental story that has gripped our life: the “Kingdom is constituted by a story which one never possesses, but rather one which constantly challenges us to be what we are but have not yet become.”127 The liturgy has the potential to restore and reform us because it re- narrates our identity, drawing us into the narrative arc that replays and re-enacts the story of God reconciling the world to himself in Christ, which is the true telos of the world and the basis of the vision of flourishing (the “good”) towards which we are drawn.

Participation in the narrative of liturgy also embeds within us—in the terminology of the virtue ethicists resonating with patristic tradition—the phronesis, that is, the “narrative intelligence” or practical wisdom, required to exercise virtue and live well.128 Virtue and its formation within us thus are very much like learning a craft like bricklaying, an image that Hauerwas uses to underscore that being formed as a Christian “involves entering a

126 Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality, 91. 127 Stanley Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between (Durham, N.C: Labyrinth Press, 1988), 108. 128 Stosur points out how this notion of phronesis undergirds the notion of liturgy, as described by Aidan Kavanagh, David Fagerberg and others as theologia prima. Stosur, “Liturgy and (Post) Modernity,” 40.

44 tradition of skillfulness in a particular way.”129 This craftlike nature of formation points directly forward to the next essential element of our new mystagogy, the need to attend to the formative aspects of rituals, movement and embodied action by which we dwell within the liturgy.

Deep Transformation through Embodied Participation

That formation is more craftlike than didactic, more caught than taught, means our new mystagogy needs to make sense of the role of the body—both the corporeal individual body and corporate collective body—and specifically, of the story-shaping power of pre- cognitive bodily actions and rituals. Already Hauerwas in his virtue ethics is aware of the fundamental importance of embodied action for formation. Highlighting the importance of gestures which embody all that is significant, he writes:

[T]he church is but God’s gesture on behalf of the world to create a space and time in which we might have a foretaste of the Kingdom. It is through gestures that we learn the nature of the story that is the very content and constitution of the Kingdom. The way we learn a story, after all, is not just by hearing it. Important and significant stories must be acted out. We must be taught the gestures that help position our bodies and our souls to be able to hear rightly and then retell the story.130

Hauerwas illustrates his own point with a concrete case, the religious education of people with low cognitive intelligence. He admits they may not understand the meaning of the story, in the conventional sense meant by “understand” and “meaning,” or be able

129 Woodill, The Fellowship of Life, 5. 130 Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, 106.

45 to work out its social implications, but they know how the story is “embodied through the gestures of the church”:

[T]hey learn the story through its enactment as they feel and are formed by the liturgy that places us as characters in God’s grand project of the creation and redemption of the world. They know that they, too, have a role in God’s people as they faithfully serve God through being formed by a community that is nothing less than the enactment of that story.131

Hauerwas also links this embodied participation to the eschatological nature of the church and worship: because Christians believe they have seen “the end” in the saving work of God in Jesus, they are “able to take the time, time demanded by our bodily character, to acquire habits necessary to sustain a community people who live between the times.”132

Hauerwas is careful to insist this embodied knowledge is not some kind of bare minimum or low degree of liturgical participation and knowledge: rather, it is the very heart of what liturgical formation is all about. Searle too emphasises the immense importance of liturgical gestures. Taking up Ricoeur’s phrase “the symbol gives rise to thought,” he insists that it is actually only the embodied symbol that does so.133 In liturgy we do not think of meaning and then express it in gestures; rather meaning emerges and

131 Ibid., 109. 132 Stanley Hauerwas, “Foreword” to Colin Douglas Miller, The Practice of the Body of Christ: Human Agency in Pauline Theology after MacIntyre (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014), x. 133 Cf. Theodore Jennings: “The gesture gives rise to thought.” “Ritual Studies and Liturgical Theology: An Invitation to Dialogue,” Journal of Ritual Studies 1, no. 1 (1987): 38.

46 dawns on those who carry it out.134 And, just as it is for those incapable of higher level thinking at all, this proves particularly useful for sceptical postmodern human beings:

To us who have become distrustful of the word, the liturgy offers the opportunity to rediscover its power by submitting to the gesture as well. We kneel to confess, stand to salute and to praise; we bow, we beat the breast, we raise our hands, we genuflect, we make the — and in all this we discover the meaning of the rite by putting ourselves as best we can into what we are doing. In all these ways and more, the liturgy encourages us to try on the metaphor; not just to stand there, but to body it forth.135

The kinaesthetic meaning that emerges from such “bodying forth” Susan Wood calls participatory knowledge and she gives the example of learning to ride a bicycle. No one can teach us what balance feels like; we can only learn that by doing it. This is because of the way tacit knowledge functions. She notes postcritical philosopher Michael Polanyi’s point that we often assume the true conception of something lies in its particulars because they are more tangible. Yet the real truth lies in the whole, which is a Gestalt, an organised comprehensive entity that is greater than the sum of its parts. Just as we cannot know the balance involved in riding a bike by focusing on our muscles or our individual movements, so also we cannot really know the meaning of liturgy in any of its constitutive parts. We need rather to dwell within the liturgy, within its particular

134 Searle, Called to Participate, 14. 135 Mark Searle, “Liturgy as Metaphor,” Worship 55, no. 2 (March 1981): 115.

47 movements, symbols and words—and this “indwelling constitutes a type of empathetic knowledge” in which we can perceive the whole picture.136

The kinaesthetic and bodily knowledge of enacted narrative that Hauerwas, Searle and Wood refer to has been the focus of intense study under the of ritual knowledge by theologian Theodore Jennings. Ritual knowledge, he says, “is primarily corporeal rather than cerebral, primarily active rather than contemplative, primarily transformative rather than speculative.”137 He proposes three ways in which such knowledge is gained in and through the body. First, ritual knowledge is explorative, enabling us to enquire and discover new meanings. This corresponds again to an understanding of liturgy as social drama: Jennings notes that Turner locates the transitional or liminal state within ritual itself, showing that liminality “is not accidental to, but is constitutive of, the ritual process.” Indeed, the liminal moment is the properly generative aspect of ritual knowledge.138 In this way, it is by an engaged action that does

136 Susan Wood, “Participatory Knowledge of God in the Liturgy,” in Knowing the Triune God: The Work of the Spirit in the Practices of the Church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 2001), 101. Significantly, Wood notes that Polanyi describes religious ritual as “the highest degree of indwelling that is conceivable.” Ritual is a sequence of “things to be said and gestures to be made which involve the whole body and alert our whole existence” in such a way that the true participant is completely absorbed in them. 137 Theodore W Jennings, “On Ritual Knowledge,” The Journal of Religion 62, no. 2 (April 1982): 115. He actually cautions against the term “embodiment,” for it implies meaning exists first and then is performed corporally, whereas the bodily action and the body ‘minding’ or attending to itself happen at the same time. 138 Ibid., 114.

48 not leave things the way they are but alters them in some way (such as lifting a in prayer) that ritual knowledge is gained—in other words, through an embodied configuration and refiguration, through the transforming encounter that is theologia prima, noting Kavanagh’s point that such change usually involves “collision, chaos and a certain violence.”139 Secondly, ritual knowledge is pedagogical, providing not a new

“point of view so much as a pattern of doing.”140 This pedagogy itself works on three levels: by imitation, we learn how to repeat the actual ritual (for example, ritually proclaiming the Lord’s prayer); by response, in which the ritual action leads to new action that is governed by it (using the Lord’s prayer as a framework for other prayers or one’s whole prayer life); and then, extending even further, the ritual act may become the epitome of a new way of living (like when St Cyprian remarked, commenting on the

Lord’s prayer, “If we call God Father we should behave as his children”).141 This last aspect of pedagogy gives rise to the third mode of ritual knowledge, in which it extends beyond the ritual space: in this way, ritual knowing becomes demonstrative, presenting itself to “an observer who is invited to see, approve, understand, or recognize the ritual action.”142 In this process of the re-cognition of bodily knowledge discovered in liturgy,

Jennings finds a basis for determining the authenticity of ritual itself: he posits that liturgical action may actually be “’falsified’ to the extent to which it cannot serve as a

139 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 74. 140 Jennings, “On Ritual Knowledge,” 117. 141 Ibid. 142 Ibid., 112–113.

49 paradigm for significant action outside the ritual itself” or “validated to the extent to which it does function in this way.”143 In other words, authentic liturgy must be manifested in real transformation—in a liturgy after the liturgy.

Embodied ritual knowledge is ultimately a form of disclosure of truth. Attending upon the truth that emerges from liturgical action requires, in Searle’s words, the suspension of disbelief and cultivation of a “trusting imagination”: we need to enter into the enacted narrative of the liturgy with sympathetic expectation until truth is disclosed.144 That means that the repeated corporeal and corporate bodily gestures of the liturgy ultimately work at a precognitive level of seduction rather than conviction, reforming our imagination, desires and character far more than we are consciously aware. As James K.A. Smith has emphasised,145 human beings are primarily worshippers and lovers, rather than thinkers, and we will always worship and love something, even if it is not what we think or intend. This divide between our hearts and minds emerges because we are most deeply formed at the subconscious, precognitive level of the body, in our hearts and imaginations. Smith draws on French phenomenologist Maurice

Merleau-Ponty to show that action is not always directly governed by thinking. The imagination shaped within us is not primarily a thing of the mind, but a bodily form of

143 Jennings, “On Ritual Knowledge,” 119–120. Lest this be misinterpreted, he emphasises that the goal is the transformation of the world—so the paradigmatic applicability is not a function of mirroring the world. 144 Searle, “Liturgy as Metaphor,” 114–115. 145 James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011).

50 intelligence (praktognosia, “know-how”) that surpasses conscious reflection. Great athletes and musicians naturally know this—and even speak of thinking and responding with their bodies without conscious thought—but the same is true of all human beings.

Consequently, in all ritual action, we effectively learn to “believe with our bodies.”146

Smith also adopts French Marxist anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, “the complex of inclinations and dispositions that make us lean into the world with a habituated momentum,”147 and shows that the cumulative force of inhabiting an enacted narrative, with its ritual actions, is that we eventually have habits of desire and love formed within us: “ are formative because—and just to the extent that— they tap into our imaginative core.”148 The difficulty is that this habituation process is as true of all enacted narratives as it is of the liturgy of the church, and worse yet, the rival secular liturgies—including those taking places in shopping malls and stadiums—often operate with a better understanding of human desire and formation than the church does. The solution to this deforming and imagination-warping influence of cultural liturgies, Smith says, is not information—more religious education or theological reflection—but a thoroughgoing counter-formation, overcoming these opposing attractions that attempt to divert our desires and love. This is precisely the point of full participation in an embodied and enacted narrative of liturgy: it provides a shared

146 James K. A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 92. 147 Ibid., 79. 148 Ibid., 137.

51 habitation that conscripts and reshapes our imaginations and reorients our desires, presenting our bodies with an alternative communal body and habitus, in which we are cleansed of rival symbols and loves, and through which we learn to love the vision of

God’s beauty and to desire what he desires.

Attaining ‘Theologia Prima’ through Re-cognition and Re-narration

Lest Smith’s emphasis on embodied ritual be misconstrued as a denigration of the rational character of worship, of liturgy as λογικὴν λατρείαν (“reasonable worship,”

Romans 12.1), he ultimately turns, like Jennings does in his model of ritual knowledge, to the need for conscious reflection on the meaning that emerges in ritual. Jennings writes that liturgical actions meaningfully “point beyond themselves in such a way as to provoke reflection,”149 and this reflection is precisely the re-cognition of ritual knowledge, the transfer of bodily knowledge outside worship into reflective-critical meaning.150 Smith also argues for reflection and analysis of liturgical practice, specifically identifying the need for reflection by those who preside at or lead worship: they should

“take on the responsibility of reflexive evaluation of our practices in order to ensure that the imaginative coherences of worship are consistent with the vision of God’s kingdom to which we are being habituated.”151

149 Jennings, “Ritual Studies and Liturgical Theology,” 38. 150 Jennings, “On Ritual Knowledge,” 126. 151 Smith, Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works, 187.

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Critical re-cognition of ritual knowledge enables what Smith calls “re-storying” or

“re-narration” to move from a subconscious process within our bodily imagination to an engaged form of narrative therapy—a way of bringing out, challenging and reorienting the private discourse that governs people’s lives so that it realigns with the authentic kingdom narrative that is God’s story for human beings. Narrative therapy is a recent social justice approach to personal and family therapy that asks people to confront the destructive stories they have been living by and author new ones, drawing on their values, skills and knowledge so that they can surmount their obstacles. Increasingly common in counselling, it has been proposed as a form of congregational care by Mary

Clark Moschella, who encourages pastors to work with parishioners to co-author the future within their community of faith:

Two dynamic activities are involved in this kind of “writing”: first, constructing one’s life story in a new way, using new themes, metaphors, and story lines; and second, actually living into these new themes and plot lines that were not previously imagined or tried. The goal of narrative therapy with individuals is that persons become free to think and act in new ways, departing from old constraining scripts. Pastoral ethnography with congregations or groups similarly has the goal of freeing groups of people to revise their narratives—their ways of thinking about and living out their faith—collectively and corporately.152

In this intersection of pastoral care with narrative therapy, we can see the potential for a pragmatic method of harnessing personal and communal narratives as sites of transformation. By enabling people to unpack and rewrite the scripts of their own lives,

152 Mary Clark Moschella, Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice: An Introduction (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2008), 237–238.

53 and allowing God to re-author their stories, the gap between our hearts and heads, between our bodies and minds, may be overcome, and a balanced view of worship may emerge—of the liturgy as a place of dialogue between body and mind, of embodied imagination and values repatterned by ritual practice, and of conscious reflection on the theologia prima emerging from our communal encounter with God. We can thus finally return to the dialectic of liturgical theology so eloquently articulated by Schmemann and

Kavanagh, with liturgy engaging and transfiguring the real lives of real people, becoming an “ongoing process of experience, memory, reflection, and reappropriation carried out by real people in always changing circumstances.”153

153 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 93.

III – Research Project Description and Narrative Methodology

Research Project

The theoretical framework and theological assumptions outlined above suggested to me that, if the narrative elements of the Divine Liturgy could be brought again to the fore and worshippers could be encouraged to embody that narrative, then they would be inspired both to strengthen their liturgical participation and to begin to re-narrate their lives according to the story of God as a precursor of fuller Christian formation.

In order to test this thesis, I carried out an action-research study within my ministry base of Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission. I implemented a series of changes in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy intended to make the liturgy’s embedded narrative content more obvious. I also created and distributed a new service book for

Sunday worship that, while still containing the entire text of the liturgy, focuses on what to do in the liturgy.154 I then sought to gauge the outcomes of these interventions and to evaluate them using a narrative method of qualitative research with a group of worshippers at the mission.

154 In essence, a contemporary mystagogical catechesis focused on the participatory knowledge of enacted narrative (see the complete text of the new book, Enacting the Age to Come: The Divine Liturgy, enclosed).

54 55

Narrative-Focused Changes in Liturgical Celebration

In order to make the narrative character of the Divine Liturgy more prominent at Holy

Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission, a new service book was published and a series of changes in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy were consolidated or newly implemented. None of these changes in liturgical celebration could be described as transforming or distorting the liturgy itself—for in many cases they simply revived more traditional practices that had been lost during the modern era—but they were all specifically oriented towards telling, depicting and enacting the entire narrative of God’s kingdom, increasing the connection between liturgy and mission, and enhancing the capacity of the faithful to be encouraged and equipped to become kingdom-builders. The following measures were implemented.155

Renewing the Liturgy of the Word

The narrative content of the first half of the Divine Liturgy (also known as the “Liturgy of the Catechumens”) was brought to the fore in the following ways:

• using fuller versions of the (103 and 145) for the first and second

antiphons, which tell the fuller story of the God of Israel, his covenant-

faithfulness, and his kingdom priorities, including loving mercy for all especially

155 Some of these changes were first proposed by Peter Galadza, “Schmemann Between Fagerberg and Reality: Towards an Agenda for Byzantine Christian Pastoral Liturgy,” Bolletino della Badia Greca di Grottaferrata 4 (2007): 25–32.

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those at the margins, rather than the short psalm excerpts sung in most Orthodox

churches; so, for example, in the case of the first :

First Antiphon () – standard abbreviated form156 Bless the Lord, O my soul, blessed art thou, O Lord. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Who forgives all thine iniquity, who heals all thy diseases. The Lord is compassionate and merciful, longsuffering and of great goodness. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Blessed art thou, O Lord.

First Antiphon (Psalm 103) – renewed fuller form Bless the Lord, O my soul, blessed art thou, O Lord. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Who forgives all thine iniquity, who heals all thy diseases. Who redeems thy life from the pit, who crowns thee with steadfast love and mercy. Who satisfies thee with good as long as thou dost live, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s. The Lord works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed, he made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The Lord is compassionate and merciful, longsuffering and of great goodness. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger for ever. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all. Bless the Lord, O you his , you mighty ones who do his word, hearkening to the voice of his word. Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers that do his will. Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Blessed art thou, O Lord.

156 This is the standard form in most Slavic Orthodox churches. In Orthodox churches within the Greek tradition, the two antiphons are usually reduced to the refrains “Through the prayers of the , O Saviour, save us” and “O Son of God, who art risen from the dead, save us who sing to thee: ” without any psalm verses or narrative content.

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• saying aloud the collect prayers after each of the , which carry forward

many of the main themes of the service (instead of inaudibly by the presbyter as

in most Orthodox churches, where only the ending exclamations are heard by the

worshipping community)

• reinstituting a meaningful entrance with the —bringing the book out

for people to venerate in an embodied ritual action, praying the prayer of the

entrance aloud, having the choir descend for the entrance and enter again to the

kliros during the of entrance to further “body forth” the entrance

• privileging the readings from the New Testament by ensuring readings are more

easily heard by congregants: for example, by not doing the censing before the

gospel during the apostolic reading, as has become standard practice and makes it

hard to hear the reader, but rather censing after the reading and before the gospel

by adding more psalm verses with the “Alleluia” refrain

• ensuring more of the New Testament is read on Sundays by adopting the Saturday

lections every second year157

157 As suggested by David Petras, “The Gospel in the Byzantine Church,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 41, no. 2–3 (1997): 113–140. Petras also recommends a lectionary third year could be constructed from additional readings from the gospel of John which are not read during the current Sunday or Saturday lectionary cycle. This suggestion, along with the equally compelling idea of reinstituting of an reading at the Divine Liturgy, would nevertheless require wider study and planning, along with episcopal backing.

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• providing context for readings from Acts, the and gospels by adding a few

verses before and after the appointed lections: so for example, where the reading

usually begins simply “Jesus said…” this would provide the background and

narrative context for the parable or teaching

• preaching on the fuller scriptural, narrative context of the gospel passages and

readings from the Acts and the epistles

• including more variable and specific petitions in the “ of fervent

supplication” to bridge the liturgy to the concerns and experiences of parishioners

(concerns for the needs of the community and wider world), and also to

distinguish the purpose of the opening great litany (gathering and rehearsing all

our own stories and concerns and immersing these stories in the wider narrative

of God’s kingdom) from intensive and heartfelt prayers of supplication—“with all

our soul and with all our mind”—for all those in need, offered in response to the

proclamation and incarnation of the Word of God

Renewing the Liturgy of the Eucharist

The narrative content of the second half of the Divine Liturgy (also known as the “Liturgy of the Faithful”) was made more prominent in the following ways:

• focusing on the importance of offering—of the of bread and wine, of our time

and talents (financial offering), and of ourselves—by:

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o placing the table of preparation at the back of the church (as it was

centuries ago) rather than in the altar area, thus enabling people to leave

their gifts as they enter

o teaching people to bake (offering bread) at home and to bring

loaves to church for the commemorations (particles of bread that are cut

out to remember the living and departed by name, which are placed on the

diskos or around the lamb, the bread that is consecrated as the

eucharistic body of Christ)

o processing from the back of the church during the “great entrance,”

carrying forward not only the bread and wine but (in the hands of a lay

person) the offerings plate with people’s financial gifts (rather than, as in

common Orthodox liturgical practice, making only a small

from within the altar from the table of preparation out through

the only to immediately return to the altar and place the gifts

on the holy table)

• restoring the pax (kiss of peace) as a fundamental embodied expression of sharing

the peace (shalom) of God, an essential aspect of his kingdom (whereas in most

Orthodox churches, this practice is only preserved among the serving clergy in the

altar)

• reviving the practice of praying aloud—both unhurriedly and prayerfully—the

central great prayer of thanksgiving () and

60 o in most Orthodox churches, this core part of the liturgy (in this example,

from the Liturgy of St , served on most Sundays) would be

experienced in a very reduced form, emptied of its “story” content as well

as to a very great extent its logical meaning, by the worshipping

community:

Deacon: Let us stand aright. Let us stand with fear. Let us attend, that we may offer the holy in peace. People: Mercy, peace, a sacrifice of praise. Presbyter: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of , and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. People: And with thy spirit. Presbyter: Let us lift up our hearts. People: We lift them up unto the Lord. Presbyter: Let us give thanks unto the Lord. People: It is meet and right to worship the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit: the Trinity, one in essence, and undivided. Presbyter: Singing the triumphant hymn, shouting, proclaiming and saying: People: Holy, holy, holy, Lord of sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Presbyter: Take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you, for the remission of sins. People: Amen. Presbyter: Drink of it, all of you. This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins. People: Amen. Presbyter: Offering unto thee thine own of thine own, on behalf of all and for all… People: …we praise thee, we bless thee, we give thanks unto thee, O Lord, and we pray unto thee, O our God. Presbyter: Especially for our most holy, most pure, most blessed and glorious Lady Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary…

61 o by chanting the prayers aloud, the central narrative content of the Divine

Liturgy (the story of God and the mystery of his saving love) is clearly

proclaimed and experienced:

Deacon: Let us stand aright. Let us stand with fear. Let us attend, that we may offer the holy oblation in peace. People: Mercy, peace, a sacrifice of praise. Presbyter: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. People: And with thy spirit. Presbyter: Let us lift up our hearts. People: We lift them up unto the Lord. Presbyter: Let us give thanks unto the Lord. People: It is meet and right to worship the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit: the Trinity, one in essence, and undivided. Presbyter: It is meet and right to hymn thee, to bless thee, to praise thee, to give thanks to thee, and to worship thee in every place of thy dominion: for thou art God ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever-existing and eternally the same, thou and thine only-begotten Son and thy Holy Spirit. Thou it was who brought us from non-existence into being, and when we had fallen away didst raise us up again, and didst not cease to do all things until Thou hadst brought us up to heaven, and hadst endowed us with thy kingdom which is to come. For all these things we give thanks to thee, and to thine only begotten Son and to thy Holy Spirit; for all things of which we know and of which we know not, whether manifest or unseen. And we thank thee for this liturgy which thou hast deigned to accept at our hands, though there stand by thee thousands of and hosts of angels, the cherubim and the seraphim, six-winged, many-eyed, who soar aloft, borne on their pinions, singing the triumphant hymn, shouting, proclaiming and saying: People: Holy, holy, holy, Lord of sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Presbyter: With these blessed powers, O man-befriending master, we also cry aloud and say: holy art thou and all-holy, thou and thine only-begotten Son and thy Holy Spirit. Holy art thou and all- holy, and magnificent is thy glory; who hast so loved thy world

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as to give thine only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have the life of the age to come; who when he had come and had fulfilled all the dispensation for us, in the night in which he was given up—or rather, gave himself up for the life of the world—took bread in his holy, pure, and blameless hands; and when he had given thanks and blessed it, and hallowed it, and broken it, he gave it to his holy disciples and apostles, saying: Take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you, for the remission of sins. People: Amen. Presbyter: And likewise, after supper, he took the cup saying: Drink of it, all of you. This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins. People: Amen. Presbyter: Remembering this saving commandment and all those things which have come to pass for us: the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the sitting at the right hand, and the second and glorious coming: Presbyter: Offering unto thee thine own of thine own, on behalf of all and for all… People: …we praise thee, we bless thee, we give thanks unto thee, O Lord, and we pray unto thee, O our God. Presbyter: Again we offer unto thee this rational and bloodless worship, and ask thee, and pray thee, and supplicate thee: send down thy Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here offered. Deacon: Bless, master, the holy bread. Presbyter: And make this bread the precious body of thy Christ. People: Amen. Deacon: Bless, master, the holy cup. Presbyter: And that which is in this cup, the precious blood of thy Christ. People: Amen. Deacon: Bless both, master. Presbyter: Making the change by thy Holy Spirit. People: Amen, amen, amen. Presbyter: That they may be to those who partake for vigilance of soul, for the remission of sins, for the communion of thy Holy Spirit, for the fulfilment of the kingdom of heaven, for boldness towards thee, and not for judgement or condemnation. Again we offer unto thee this rational worship for those who have fallen asleep in the faith: ancestors, fathers, patriarchs,

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prophets, apostles, preachers, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, ascetics, myrrhbearers, and every righteous spirit made perfect in faith. Especially for our most holy, most pure, most blessed and glorious Lady Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary…

o the recovery of narrative content is even more dramatically pronounced

for the Liturgy of St Basil the Great (served 10 times per year) because of

the longer prayers of the anaphora (see service book)

• reintroducing the singing of psalm 34 (which is suppressed entirely in most

Orthodox churches) at the end of the Divine Liturgy as a culmination of the

narrative content of the liturgy: it celebrates the victory banquet of the eucharist

as the overthrow of the powers of this age and the transformation of the world

into the kingdom of the age to come

Other Measures

• serving the Divine Liturgy on occasion as a stational liturgy: centuries ago, the

first part of the liturgy was a procession singing the antiphons through the streets

of the city, stopping at various stations for the litanies; in this way, the entire city,

with all of its narratives and concerns, was drawn into the service and under the

sovereignty of God

• reinstituting baptismal and wedding liturgies by integrating the of

baptism and crowning into the Sunday Divine Liturgy, thus providing an

even fuller narrative depiction of the story of God (for instance, in the case of the

Orthodox wedding service, its principal theme is God’s loving covenant-

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faithfulness as illustrated throughout the many stories from the Old Testament

that are rehearsed in the wedding prayers)

Further details of all these measures are provided in the commentary written into the new Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission Divine Liturgy service book, Enacting the Age to Come: The Divine Liturgy.

Narrative Methodology

The choice of narrative enquiry and analysis as the qualitative method of study for this research project was the natural extension of a thesis focused on the recovery of the narrative dimension of liturgy as an essential element of its formative function.

Narrative enquiry “is primarily a vehicle for understanding and explaining lived experiences.”158 It emerges from the postcritical assumption that people make sense of the world through stories they tell.159 We all link events into meaning by telling stories to ourselves; indeed, narrative can be seen as constitutive of our own consciousness and identity, and an inherent part of our everyday experience. We make sense of the world by telling stories to one another, and our “stories are continuously written and constructed through dialogical human interaction.”160 That means our stories are not singular, but collective, and we “live within a network of stories, held by our families, our

158 Tim Sensing, Qualitative Research: A Multi-Methods Approach to Projects for Doctor of Ministry Theses (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 157. 159 See page 30 above. 160 Sensing, Qualitative Research, 158.

65 local communities, and our religious communities and traditions. We weave our own stories out of this net of stories.”161 Moreover, this complex of stories includes the larger story of God when we claim a Christian identity.162

As a method for qualitative research, narrative analysis is an interdisciplinary model: drawn originally from the study of literature, it has been increasingly taken up in the social sciences since the so-called “interpretive turn” or “narrative turn” influenced by postcritical and phenomenologist philosophers such as Mikhail Bakhtin and Paul

Ricoeur.163 Many researchers are drawn to narrative analysis because it respects a fundamental feature of much of the data that social scientists collect, namely, that it is storied information. Narrative enquiry uses tools borrowed from linguistics and literary studies, but it is more of an umbrella term for a set of analytical approaches, rather than any particular technique or rule of analysis. Some of the shared characteristics of narrative approaches include: (1) a close reading of stories, in both content and form; (2) an interest in the social and dialogical origins of stories and how shared narrative forms

161 Karen Scheib, Pastoral Care: Telling the Stories of Our Lives (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2016), 4. 162 As Hans Frei has written, the history-like realism of the draws us into the story with the result that the story shapes our lives. That it is story—and not (as modernity would have it) ideals, doctrines or historical facts—that shapes us is the main thesis of his The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974). 163 Catherine Kohler Riessman, Narrative Analysis (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1993), 1.

66 are drawn upon to account for human experience (for instance, genres or rhetorical devices); (3) a focus on how language and stories are used by people to interpret realities that are otherwise inaccessible (for example, psychological motives, or the underlying truth of events); and (4) an interest in the socio-cultural context of the stories: who tells to whom and where, in what situation, and how these relate to other stories.164

A narrative method was also fitting for this project as it intersects with the spiritual development and pastoral care practice of the Christian parish. As outlined earlier, narrative therapy asks people to confront the destructive stories they have been living by and author new stories drawing on their values, skills and knowledge so that they can surmount their obstacles. Mary Clark Moschella has adapted this approach of narrative self-criticism from personal and family therapy for use in the context of the local parish, and she encourages pastors to work with their congregants to co-author the future within their community of faith.165 Karen Scheib also promotes narrative pastoral care as “an ecclesial, theological practice through which we listen to life stories in order to discern the intersection of human stories and God’s story in the context of community and culture.”166 Likewise, this project has been focused on how a renewal of narrative content within the liturgy can prompt worshippers to re-story their lives, especially when given the opportunity to reflect on their own personal and corporate stories in relation to God’s story.

164 These characteristics are summarised from Riessman, Narrative Analysis. 165 Moschella, Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice, 237–238. 166 Scheib, Pastoral Care, 4.

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The research study also harnessed narrative enquiry’s method for reading stories closely to reveal underlying realities that are otherwise hidden or difficult to access.

Although as we have seen above the effects of liturgy are mostly subconscious in the form of habituation and the development of ritual participatory knowledge, Theodore

Jennings writes that liturgical actions meaningfully “point beyond themselves in such a way as to provoke reflection,”167 and this reflection is a form of re-cognition of ritual knowledge, the transfer of bodily knowledge outside worship into reflective-critical meaning.168 Through a narrative enquiry process of dialogue, such critical re-cognition of ritual knowledge enabled participants’ re-storying to move from a subconscious process within their bodily imagination to an engaged form of narrative therapy—a way of bringing out, challenging and reorienting the private discourse that governs people’s lives so that it realigns with the authentic kingdom narrative that is God’s story for human beings.

Research Parameters and Ethical Considerations

This action-research study involved a group of voluntary adult participants from the regular membership group of Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission who replied to written (in the mission newsletter) and verbal invitations to join the project, thus avoiding direct recruitment. The participants spanned a variety of profiles, including

167 Jennings, “Ritual Studies and Liturgical Theology,” 38. 168 Jennings, “On Ritual Knowledge,” 126.

68 different ages and sexes, longstanding members and newcomers, people who have grown up within the Orthodox Christian tradition and others who have become

Orthodox as adults, people already actively involved in worship (for instance, singing in the choir) and others who had long been more passive worshippers. As with any qualitative study, the point of such variety was not to establish a representative sample—for statistical accuracy or proofs have not been the intent of the research—but rather to increase the opportunity to generate content-rich data in response to the dialogical enquiry. To provide the “data saturation” needed to draw meaningful conclusions from the narrative research, I had projected that around 12 participants—a good biblical number—would suffice. In the end, 21 people came to the initial focus group, 13 of whom chose to be interviewed, and 12 provided three journal responses.

Because I was working with adult, non-vulnerable parishioners of Holy

Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission with whom I already had a close pastoral relationship, and carrying out discussions with them that were well within the bounds of normal pastoral activities, the ethical considerations of this study were somewhat limited. The project itself simply strengthened that existing pastoral relationship by improving my listening skills and “by increasing the depth of storytelling and the clarity of understanding in interpersonal relations.”169

There are nevertheless power dynamics involved in a pastoral relationship and l was sensitive to those as the project unfolded. It was essential, not merely for research

169 Moschella, Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice, 165.

69 ethics but because liturgy and the wider Christian life must always be an act of human free will, that this research project took place without coercion by “ecclesial interdict or personal humiliation.”170 Participants were invited to join voluntarily, to share as far as possible as partners with me in a transparent research project, and to withdraw at any stage if there were any concerns that arose. These points were made explicit on the participant informed consent form (see appendix A of the approved Thesis Approval, enclosed). Furthermore, one of the conscious goals of the project, in inviting people to reflect and re-story their lives within the context of God’s story made more obvious in liturgy, was precisely to empower people, to support their power to speak and tell their story. Hence the effort to include quieter members who may have previously been somewhat at the margins. As Moschella points out, listening to the stories of “’the least of these’—those whose social power is more limited than others’—can help us understand and begin to redress inequalities within the group.”171

At all stages of the project, I took seriously my responsibility for the dignity, privacy, and well-being of the participants. This included ensuring that the consent they gave for their participation was truly informed, including understanding the purpose and details of the study, as well as striving to maintain the highest standards of security and confidentiality in the collection, handling, and publication of research data. These points were also made explicit on the participant informed consent form.

170 Nicholas Denysenko, Liturgical Reform After Vatican II: The Impact on Eastern Orthodoxy (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), 371. 171 Moschella, Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice, 166.

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Focus Group Meeting

The project began with a focus group meeting involving all the participants along with a colleague from the Orthodox School of Theology at Trinity College to assist with “data triangulation” (see under “Data Collection and Analysis” below). In a two-hour meeting, the participants were inducted into the study and their role as co-researchers invested in the outcome of the research. The operating principles for the work—including classroom virtues such as those described by Sensing: desire for truth in the context of love, humility, honesty, openness, courage, wisdom, stewardship, hopefulness, and prayerfulness172—were reviewed before beginning a group session introducing reflection on the layers of stories that exist in our lives. Some of the topics of discussion for the focus group as well as the subsequent individual interviews were inspired by or adapted from Megan McKenna, We Live Inside a Story,173 as well as Karen Scheib, Pastoral

Care: Telling the Stories of Our Lives.174

The focus group introduced the concept of storytelling and the notion that we all live inside stories, exploring:

• What a story is, the genres of stories, and how stories are truth-bearing

• Jesus’s storytelling (including parables) and the narrative basis of Christian faith

172 Sensing, Qualitative Research, 48–49. 173 Megan McKenna, We Live inside the Story (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2010). 174 Scheib, Pastoral Care.

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• The image of Russian nesting dolls to illustrate layers of stories that we live inside

(for example, the smallest matryoshka doll representing ourselves and the

narrative identity of our own inner life, the next larger one our families and

immediate context, the next larger one our church or other local community to

which we belong, the next larger one our nation or cultural context, and so forth,

with all resting within the largest doll that represents the wider story of God and

creation which we all inhabit)

• The types of stories that we tell: sacred stories, community stories, personal life

stories

Following the overall introduction, I asked each participant to choose a partner, someone with whom they were perhaps less familiar than others. Each person took a few minutes to think of a story that reflected something of their life or personality—a kind of signature story, which may be their own memory or a story they’ve heard someone else tell about them. These stories were shared with their partners, who listened fully and asked only clarifying questions, with a view to hearing what the story captured of their partner’s identity. Each partner then introduced the other person to the entire group, not by repeating the story but by sharing what they had learned about the other person: for example, “I learned that Lara is dutiful to a fault, losing a bit of herself in order to serve and please others.”

After this exercise, a group discussion began around the following questions, though it was left open-ended to pursue interesting lines of conversation:

• What is your favourite story from the gospels, and why?

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• What binds our church community together?

• How would a first-time visitor describe our community based on our Sunday

worship?

• How do you describe our church community to people who have never visited it?

Would it be different if they were non-Christians, other Christians, or Orthodox

from other communities?

The focus group also included a discussion of “cultural liturgies”—the formative rituals of contemporary life that are played out in shopping malls, sporting events, and other cultural settings—and a preliminary look at a “practices audit” as suggested by James

K.A. Smith in his Desiring the Kingdom:

Are there habits and practices that we acquire without knowing it? Are there ritual forces in our culture that we perhaps naively immerse ourselves in—and are thus formed by—that, when we consider them more closely, are pointed at some ultimate end? Are there mundane routines that we participate in that, if we are attentive, function as thick practices aimed at a particular vision of the good life?175

The group session concluded with an introduction to journal writing as a form of storytelling, and presentation of the journal questions listed below.

Individual Interviews

Following the group meeting, I met with and interviewed the participants for around one and half hours each. These individual interviews were held variously in my office at the university (that is, near the chapel where our mission church meets for worship), at

175 Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 84.

73 participants’ homes or work places—in all cases, in a comfortable environment conducive to relaxed discussion. The interviews consisted of semi-structured and open- ended discussion designed to elicit sharing of participants’ life stories. Sample questions for starting discussion included:

• Describe your life’s story to this point. Who would you say is the author (or are

the authors) of this story? Has this changed over time?

• If you were asked to give a ‘testimony’ of your Christian faith, what would you

say?

• What role have church communities played in the direction your life is heading

in? Can you think of specific events or stories that have influenced you?

• Imagine that a loved one is writing your obituary. What would you like it to say?

• What are the most important aspects of our Sunday worship, in your opinion?

What images of God and his life do they convey to you?

• Can you think of ways in which you have changed or evolved the story of your

life?

• What are some of the most meaningful habits or practices that you are occupied

with each week, influencing your attitudes and beliefs?

• What are some of the governing stories from our culture, or your

workplace/school/family or other context, and how do they complement or

conflict with the story of God? How do you negotiate those conflicts?

• How have experiences of suffering challenged you or changed your view of the

story of God?

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During the course of the interviews, the following fivefold method of life story exegesis176 was applied to sustain and further the discussion and elicit a content-rich story from participants:

• Getting the story in view:

o Who are the main characters? What is the plot? What are the main themes?

• Understanding the story:

o Asking questions of clarification. Does it meet the six criteria of a good

story—that is, is it coherent, credible, open and vibrant, differentiated, and

does it contain reconciliation, and generative imagination?

o What larger story or stories are implicit in the telling of this story?

• Attending to the story:

o Noting both verbal and nonverbal communications.

o Asking playful, curious questions that open the story up to new avenues.

o Encouraging naming and externalising issues or problems.

• Testing what the story says:

o Checking back with the participant to ensure understanding is accurate.

o Further considering what is being said about plot, character, time, and

conflict.

o Does the story take a particular form?

o Why was the story told that way?

176 Adapted from Scheib, Pastoral Care, 154–155.

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o What are the theological themes or issues in the story?

• Moving towards interpretation:

o Bearing in mind that in life story exegesis interpretation is dialogical and it

is the storyteller’s interpretation that matters.

Journal Questions

Participants were also asked over the course of two months to write three short journal entries (or to provide another creative, artistic response, if they preferred) to answer three fixed questions. They were not given a particular length for the journal entries, but asked simply to write until they had expressed what they wanted to share.

1. What is it like to be in a story told by God, like no other, but somehow connected

to so many other stories?

2. When you sit alone, in the deepest place where you are before God—just you and

God—what do you know about who you are and why you are here? Sit, listen, and

be still, and later try to write about it.

3. How does coming to church and worshipping in community help you to make

sense of your place in the world and form your way of life?

Data Collection and Analysis

During the research data collection phase of the project, the group session and the individual interviews were audio recorded and transcribed soon after they occured to ensure accurate records were made, including noting aspects of non-verbal

76 communication. During this phase, some short follow-up interviews were arranged for the purposes of clarification.

An important element of any qualitative research is triangulation, an image drawn from navigation indicating that it is impossible to get one’s bearings from a single point of data (for instance, a landmark on the horizon) but with two or three an accurate reading is made possible. In this project, data triangulation was achieved by comparing information gleaned from the different kinds of sources—the focus group discussion, the semi-structured and open-ended individual interviews, as well as the journal responses to a common set of questions—providing different angles to view the participants’ stories and re-storying journeys. Further, by involving a colleague from the Orthodox

School of Theology at Trinity College to sit in on the focus group discussion, a measure of investigator triangulation was achieved, offering me a different perspective on the discussion and the ideas and themes that emerged so that some elements of the interaction that would otherwise be missed could be picked up.

Following the data collection phase, the narrative data gleaned from the group session, interviews, and journal entries was entered, organised and coded using MaxQDA qualitative data analysis software. The analysis encompassed both narrative content— including vocabulary, symbols, characters, plots, and themes—and narrative forms such as genres and rhetorical devices. The findings of the study are covered in the next section.

IV – Results of the Study

Stories and Themes

In this section, the findings of the narrative study conducted with Holy Myrrhbearers

Orthodox Mission are presented in two ways: (1) a thematic analysis of seven common threads and narrative elements discerned within the discussions with the project participants, and (2) a more holistic analysis through the coherent retelling of the stories of three of the participants. These two aspects of narrative analysis are brought together to evaluate the credibility and applicability of the thesis that accentuating the narrative elements of the Divine Liturgy would inspire worshippers to reflect on and re-narrate their lives according to the story of God as a precursor to fuller Christian formation.

My role as researcher was to adopt as open a posture as possible in listening to the participants’ stories in order “to give people the space to name their experiences, theologies, and practices in their own words.”177 This facilitated a process of

“ethnographic listening, puzzlement, and investigation for new knowledge.”178 My approach throughout was to listen to the participants’ stories for plot twists and turns, for stories of discovery, for dramatic testimonies of conversion or more evolutionary tales of coming of age in mind and spirit, of reframing of thoughts, of people grasping for truths about themselves, the world they live in, and their place within it. With little prompting, this reflection naturally turned around the participants’ experience of liturgy,

177 Moschella, Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice, 165. 178 Ibid.

77 78 the foundation of our communal life. Out of that process the following stories and themes emerged.

Story I—Alexandra

Having grown up in an agnostic Russian Jewish home, Alexandra came to faith in Jesus

Christ and was baptised in the Orthodox Church in her late 20s. She recounts the story of her conversion as moving in a highly embodied sense from a “closed story” to a radically new life of freedom.

Alexandra had “no spiritual experiences whatsoever growing up,” as her family’s

“fundamental stance was anti-God.” They were culturally conversant with religion, including making trips on holiday to visit churches or , but “there was never any connection for us. The same applied to anything Jewish, because we didn’t believe in

God—not just didn’t believe, but God was actually the main villain or bone to pick.” She recalls having had a sense of her own life goals and purpose only within a closed framework of existence, both “longstanding images of how my life would proceed or what I wanted to achieve” and some changing ones that “provided a more or less coherent structure to my life.”

When she began to explore her curiosity in Christian faith and attended her first

Orthodox liturgy, she “had really no bearings.” Many people remember their first experience of Orthodox Christian worship in terms of its aesthetic impact or some ritual particularities, but Alexandra was immediately struck by the whole new story told by the

79 liturgy, “so radical and so unlike anything I’d ever experienced.” It was particularly arresting that the end of that unfolding story transcends this life:

We all live with some image of the future and some hope of working toward it. The incredible change is when your end goal is no longer in this life. Certainly, we participate in the kingdom in this life to whatever degree we’re able to, but the fulness is after. So the end goal is now not within. Suddenly life becomes completely free. There is a radical difference in how you perceive your whole life.

This deep perception of radical new life in Christ put Alexandra on a collision path with her parents. They might have coped with her newfound faith had she decided to keep it private: “Why couldn’t you just stay at home and pray, if that’s what you want to do?

Pray to your God. Why do you need to go to church? Why do you need to make it communal? Why do you need to make it external?” They might have been content with her being a cultural Christian, taking her existing life and adding a thin gloss, a few themes that might be more specifically Christian. They might have accepted a little adjustment here or there, rather than a radical change. But the striking confrontation

Alexandra had with the narrative of liturgy provided her the opportunity to perceive the far-reaching implications of her nascent faith.

In recounting her journey, Alexandra highlights the importance of embodying faith. This began with growing up in a family that professed agnosticism, but effectively lived atheism: “If you live as an atheist—in other words, if your life and your world are empty of God—you are an atheist. You enact atheism. No matter what you think you may believe, you embody atheism, and therefore you are an atheist.” Her move towards faith was initiated by an attempt simply to live a more authentically agnostic life: “I had to become a true agnostic—meaning I was truly willing to consider and go down that

80 road—and to start reading the works of theists with a hermeneutic of consent, asking what it is they are trying to say, how is it that they see, think and try to live.” And this properly embodying agnosticism led to her considering prayer. Indeed, she marks the beginning of her faith in Christ by the first time she prayed: “That was the first time it moved from the purely intellectual into the body. It was an act. I’m going to get down on my knees and I’m going to do this thing.” This has underscored for her the significance of physical action within liturgy: “The more you do it bodily, the more spirit and matter are reintegrated.”

The importance of faith lived in the body continued to play out in Alexandra’s journey towards baptism. She had already formed her initial impression that her life was going to be radically different, that the old story and purpose had faded away. Something was going to replace it, but she did not yet know what: “Before my baptism, I didn’t even know who Christ was. It was this bizarre thing: I am going in this direction and I actually have no idea what I’m signing up for here.” What sustained her was a growing sense that she had exchanged a private and individual story for a communal one:

The incredible thing about having the kingdom as one’s purpose is that it’s not a private purpose. Unlike the plethora of this-worldly ends that different people may hold, which even when quite similar are ultimately different and individual, when your telos is the kingdom of God, is Christ, you are no longer an alienated individual pursuing your own ends, but a co-traveller with those who are journeying to the very same destination. I think this is at the heart of why the sense of alienation we live with as modern men goes away when we enter the Church. It’s also perhaps why a certain sense of unity and community can exist even for those who haven’t yet been baptised or chrismated but have entered the community and have started to reorient themselves toward the telos of the kingdom.

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Alexandra had arrived at church thinking herself intellectually ready to be baptised, but without the courage and resolve to embody that choice. She soon realised that there was actually no such thing as believing before fully entering and becoming part of the community, not theoretically, but practically, bodily:

What is disembodied belief? Like my dad’s purported agnosticism, what can it mean to believe something if your life, your actions, your body—that is, your very existence in this world—enact something different? Is this not an impossibility? We cannot believe until we do, and what we do is worship God in community; we do the liturgy together and thereby we believe.

The full embodiment in Christ of course takes place in communion, which she admits to not having understood before her baptism, but it actually begins with entering our local church “with the specific people who make it up” and coming to believe by embodying

“the life of the kingdom in the doing of the liturgy.”

Alexandra describes her baptism too as a re-embodying experience. She had long lived with a sense of division between outer and inner, body and soul, matter and spirit, and from her conversion she became conscious of a wrongness she had always felt about it. It was not a moral wrong as such, but a sense that the separation was unnatural and unpleasant, and it was at the heart of so many difficulties and so much negative outlook in life: “I started to be more aware of it: here is my body; here is my mind or heart. I felt there should be a bridge, but they were in different realms. Either I’m acting in the world or I’m in my head, and there’s just this duality and I have no way of bridging it.” It was not until after her baptism that she learned how to integrate these two realities:

Upon my baptism it wasn’t an instant integration but rather a progression towards it. Giving birth to Esther really accelerated that. I suppose that was a very “in body” experience. But this has been a journey of re-inhabiting my

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body, re-embodying myself. But certainly reintegration. And obviously where that reintegration is experienced most perfectly is in liturgy where you’re doing it. You’re doing the prayer.

This reintegration was mirrored in a perception of the two tiers of heaven and earth, the kingdom and this world, coming together. Whereas before she had “experienced the kingdom in little flashes” and in “glimpses of something beyond my old world,” but still inhabited a “completely two-tiered world,” after baptism her “whole life became integrated.” This sense of joining the previously-stratisfied tiers of heaven and earth is an ongoing process for Alexandra: “Obviously, it’s not perfect and continues to grow, but I no longer see the world as just this world and the kingdom somewhere else. There is now an interpenetration and intermingling.”

Theme I—The Setting: Participation in the Liturgy

The focal point of Alexandra finding new and integrated purpose is her participation in the Divine Liturgy at Holy Myrrhbearers, which she calls the “single unambiguously right thing I do.” Trying to live God’s will brings a great deal of uncertainty, but coming to church brings with it “a sense of total rightness, and an absolute, unquestioning stillness.

My mind and heart are totally at rest.” This sense of being at rest in the liturgy is echoed by many of the participants, for whom church has become a welcoming setting. Setting is the first of the seven cross-cutting themes identified in this study.

From his first visit, though he had only limited previous Christian experience Vlad remembers feeling completely “at home in the services.” Louise agrees: “It’s a healing place. I don’t think anybody who walks out of that door is unchanged.” For her the liturgy

83 conveys peace in a way that is “really thick”: it can be felt even by those who are only visiting and not yet participating, those “who poke their heads around the corner and stay only for a minute.” The healing is manifested in an inexplicable sense of well-being, according to Mike: “I feel better at the end of the service than I did at the beginning.

There’s something in the liturgy that’s very deep and profound. Not all of it can be articulated and understood fully by me, by people who go.” Hélène, who grew up in the

Soviet Union in the 1960s and recalls being bombarded in her youth with the incessant propaganda of the communist “grand narrative,” highlights the peaceful freedom of her experience of the liturgy: “There is a freedom, and you are not forced. You have a choice.

You are invited to participate in the faith. It’s done in a much more humane way.” Several participants indicate that it is not always easy following through on a commitment to get to liturgy, but as Mike says, “I’ve never left church regretting that I’ve gone.”

Although the setting of the Divine Liturgy is restful, peaceful and healing, it nevertheless expresses movement and change. Alexandra explains: “From this place of rest and stillness I can enter into the flow of living water.” At Holy Myrrhbearers worship takes place in the borrowed space of the chapel at Trinity College without a full programme of iconography or the shape of a purpose-built Orthodox building, emphasising for several participants that they are sojourners on the move. The “more stripped down” and “uncluttered” liturgy—to use Max’s words—together with the extended length of the chapel suggests pilgrimage and purpose and highlights the shared purpose of the worshippers. Even if it is not always entirely clear what it is, the sense of purpose is “palpable” and expressed in an ever-evolving worship, which catechumen

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Christy describes as “a spiral pattern in the service that circles back and is familiar and grounding and yet always evolving.” The pattern picks up different tones, she says: “I have attuned my ears and senses to pick up how the mood begins morose and minor, then it builds and become celebratory, in two hours celebrating the death and resurrection of Christ.” For Hélène, having not been a churchgoer in her childhood in the

Soviet Union, the journey of liturgy consists of being attracted to and drawn along by a

“very powerful mystery” along with “a group of people who are together with you.” The shared aspect of the journey is frequently cited as all-important for the participants in terms of their own involvement. Louise explains: “attending this church and community has introduced me to worship as worship is truly meant to be—worshipping in a community as it was intended right from the beginning. We are all together.” This provides a tangible reminder that our own lives are part of a larger narrative, as Mike says: “Coming to church and worshipping in community reminds me that there is actually a much bigger story than just my own.” Even Christy, as yet not fully a member, can already say: “I am part of the congregation, connected to people in close friendship. I always have such a good feeling when I come in and sense these are my people. That’s something I didn’t have with other Christian experiences. I’m embedded. I’m in it.” And for her, it is above all the shared destination of the community that provides a sense of belonging: “I’ve tried to really grasp that this is the kingdom, right here. And coming in with that, that’s pretty profound.”

In addition to this sense of shared journey and purpose, a number of the participants indicate that they experience time differently in the Divine Liturgy. The

85 setting of the worship creates a special, intimate time, a καιρός (or “opportune moment”) that is distinguishable from the χρόνος (“chronology”) of ordinary life. For Hélène, the

Divine Liturgy “creates a magic moment of truth and I feel carried away to those ancient times when Jesus was preaching and teaching.” Alexandra is brought in liturgy back to the time of her baptism and is “submerged again in the baptismal waters to rise out of them united in a single body to the very people I see around me.” For Yuri, all space and time collapses in the Divine Liturgy:

Not only are we singing the same words together as a local community, and not only across geography into other communities and sharing the same worship—but also across time. It’s not just us doing our own thing, it’s like I get to be united to people across the world, and I get to be united to people across time.

He emphasises that this experience of time is a special gift: “I think it’s especially important to say that we get to, because not everybody gets to. This is a privilege.”

Christy highlights her sense that liturgy makes “every day a special day.” Keeping the cycle of church feasts and commemorations now shapes her concept of daily life: it is a

“really interesting way to interrupt time and join a bigger story.” For her, coming to liturgy and being joined in the worshipping community by saints from all ages

“transforms our understanding of time and everything.”

The collective experience of the worship setting being marked by physical actions is also mentioned by most of the participants, who highlight how crucial such bodily action is to keeping them on the shared journey. Jamie recalls that when his mind wanders simply “smelling the ” or “looking at the icon of the Theotokos” will bring him back to himself and bring tears to his eyes. Although ritual action has been

86 new and somewhat foreign to her, Christy points out how it has drawn her in: “I like that it’s very participatory and embodied. Although that was really weird and uncomfortable to me—crossing myself or bowing, or singing in a dialogue—I liked that the most. It was the most different from any other experiences I’ve had. It’s very engaging.” In her own journey of faith, Alexandra recalls how earlier attempts to pray before joining the church were like an unpleasant “out of body” experience: “I started doing Orthodox morning and evening prayers a year before I started attending. I liked that, but there was something missing. It was out of context. Coming to church provided that context.” Praying communally provides an “in body” experience, both within her own body and the body that is the liturgical assembly. “Now when I say those prayers at home there is that sense of being part of the body, it’s not just me doing my private thing.” Bringing together the embodied action within a comfortable “at home” setting means that the ritual action is perceived as not overly “put on” or “stylised,” or as Jamie puts it, “overly scrupulous.”

Participants comment on there being something quite real and human about the worship. Christy remembers experiencing the kiss of peace on her first visit and turning around and meeting Hélène: “We bopped cheeks, and both laughed. That’s my first time when someone connected with me right away. Even though she has a long history in the

Orthodox Church, we still both felt new, and kind of braved the coffee hour together.”

Embodied ritual action thus layers the foreign with the familiar, as Christy says: “It’s unlike the rest of my life and yet feels very natural. The structure, bowing, prostrating are helping to humble me. I feel very connected to the parish’s community, unlike connections I have had in other places or groups in my life.”

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The worship setting at Holy Myrrhbearers may invite embodied action that is more real than simply “religious,” but it is nevertheless characterised as a serious undertaking. Alexandra notes that “when it comes to the liturgy, the depth of my inner participation is absolutely directly linked to how I’ve prepared for it.” She bakes the bread for the eucharist each week, and welcomes how she needs to reorganise her life during the week “with the expectation of going to church for liturgy on Sunday.” Indeed, for her the concrete action of baking bread is significantly more effective as a form of preparation for the Divine Liturgy than the appointed preparatory prayers. Recent convert Calum also comments on the serious character of the worship itself:

When I first started coming, I was struck how everyone was serious and honest with the faith, without being pretentious. Often where there’s seriousness and respect but they do that from a perspective of—not necessarily looking down on you but—kind of going “I get it.” Whereas everyone here seemed to be engaging and respectful yet with everything that would happen they were happy to share it, and they were happy that you got to be a part of it, even though you might have known absolutely nothing.

As one who is not yet a full participant, Christy notes the effect that the serious business of liturgy has on her: “I do sense that I’m apart, aimed in the same direction but separate from the other parish members.” This carries with it a sense of depth that invites further involvement: “I don’t feel excluded, but I discern the difference: I can’t get the whole experience, I’m not yet whole. It relates to not partaking in the sacraments but also a feeling that I don’t yet believe what everyone else does or at least not to the same depth.”

This means that liturgy (as suggested by the word’s actual etymology) is something that needs worked. This is one thing that attracted Vlad from a more “passive” experience of

Christianity: “I like the fact that you have to ask, you have to work for it a little bit.” The

88 work itself highlights that it operates on a wider stage than our own lives: “In the liturgy, you can take a more active role, whether singing in the choir, setting up and turning down, serving, reading, and even standing, going in procession. You’re participating in something that’s a little bigger than you are.” The work need not be “showy,” however, and several participants highlight that the liturgy privileges not the “dramatic or impressive,” but rather those who are quiet, consistent, supportive, and self-sacrificing.

This reflects in a profound way the steadfast and loving ministry of the myrrhbearing women after whom the mission is named.

The setting of the liturgy at Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission is also not seen to have hard edges or boundaries. Several participants mentioned the “open” liturgy and the fact that people tend to just wander in off the street or (often wearing slippers) from within Trinity College. They also recalled the time when the service began with a procession outside and a father and son encountered the assembly and then followed it into church for most of the service. As Nicole comments, “In a mission parish and this one in particular the kind of boundaries between what is church and what is the world is porous. There are a lot of tourists who come into the chapel while we’re doing liturgy. I think that’s a cool thing.” The setting itself also extends beyond the Sunday worship into the time and space of those who have participated in the worship. Echoing others, Louise notes that throughout the week “I’m waking up in the morning and I’m singing these songs.” Alexandra exults in her two-year-old daughter singing the hymns and mimicking the ritual actions of the service, including censing, or baptising and communing her toys.

Christy notes how the liturgy extends beyond into time afterwards and into her whole

89 life: “the liturgy, the fellowship hour and my daily prayers, and all my life—to me it’s all one big thing altogether. A very positive thing in my life.” Louise adds that “it’s not stretching it in any way to say that slowly when you come you want to participate more.

Something will snap into place or will hit you during the week.”

Theme II—The Characters: Identity Formation

In the course of their discussions participants also reflect on the formation of their sense of self in worship, on how they are characters bidden to and developing within the narrative setting of liturgy. If the setting of the Divine Liturgy could be construed as

“home,” then that character development is often described as “returning home” or, in

Yuri’s words, “coming back to home base.” That “home base” is one’s true self, he says: “it is a kind of return to yourself, as well as a return to God and his community.” Calum highlights the significance of this identity formation, recalling the “unsettled self” he had for many years before entering the Orthodox Church: “I thought that I’ll arrive at what’s important. I’m not going to chase it but I’ll keep going until I find it.” That changed when he became a member of Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission and he “open-heartedly embraced a liturgical way of living.” He became an soon after his reception into the church, serving with a respectful and careful deliberation about movement and action, and being willing always to adapt. And this pattern has now become fundamental to his sense of identity as he lives his life as a liturgy, carefully considering his words and actions in the world and his life choices. He has a sense of who he is. It has given him a new sense of purpose—specifically, the goal of becoming a farmer and living a quiet,

90 rural life—within what he describes as a “fuller” life: “A lot of Orthodox Christians describe Orthodox liturgy as a fulness of the spiritual state and the best way of worship.

If this is true, what is the best way to live the rest of our life? We have to explore that, because not everything can be the actual liturgy itself.”

Many of the participants express that the liturgy evokes a similar kind of soul- searching about their identities, though it was often told as a work in progress, especially—somewhat paradoxically—for the older members of the community with the wisdom of life experience. Louise says: “I am 63 and have yet to fully make sense of my place in the world or how my worshipping in community shapes my way of life.” Lara echoes this sentiment: “Who am I? At the age of 66, I thought that I would have figured it out.” Lara’s husband David across a long career as lawyer and judge has noted that people behave and speak—and ultimately have a sense of who they are—within the context of their own convoluted life story: “This is who I am. This is what I’m living out.

This is where I’m going.” The key for someone to change their personal identity is to change that story, but in his experience David has seen just how difficult this is:

Unfortunately, we’re usually fighting shadows, because we don’t know the baggage that’s in their head, all of the little traumas. About the big traumas, we probably have some idea. But the little traumas, the stuff that really hurts, they can’t explain because they’re beyond words. You see this in a lot of marriage situations. You marry somebody and you’ve just married every problem in their family. They’re going to react to it and you’re going to pay the price.

Some of the problems participants identify in sorting out their true identity based on the negative stories they are currently living include that we are merely what other people say or think of us, that we are what we have or what we do, or that we are nothing more

91 than our worst failings. Lara laments how her upbringing placed her in a “rigid role” based on her parents’ and siblings’ defined expectations of her, even though she told them: “This isn't who I am.” She articulates her own experience of this universal problem of identity:

When you go out into the world, you carry your assigned role, your baggage, with you. Subconsciously, you act out this assigned role, so others see you in a limiting way. It is frustrating. Does any one really know another person’s true self? How can I communicate, when words fail? How can I courageously break out of my assigned role and reveal my true self?

Resonating with Hélène’s evocation of a transformational process within liturgy that is invitational, “not forced” and “more humane,” Lara desires to “figure out my role freely, without someone else imposing one on me.”

The journey of discovering one’s true identity is seen as a process undertaken in common, as members of the worshipping assembly discover their own individual lives are part of one collective life. This shared identity is manifested in the common life of the community, according to Louise: “To me, it’s very obvious that those who belong to this community are really sharing their membership in the whole body of the church. We are individuals but we are also the body of the church of Christ.” Alexandra recalls that upon her entry into the church, “I suddenly lost that sense of myself as dissociated from the world, like a lone agent with the life I had set up and the people I had various relationships to, but no sense of real unity with anyone except my husband.” Moving from being an individual to the member of the body immersed her into a wider story with new meaning, purpose and identity: “I had a feeling of deep gratitude toward my new brothers and sisters in Christ because I could see clearly that I would not yet be in

92 the church were it not for their loving presence in my life. They allow us the courage to embody our faith, to enact the kingdom.”

The strength that comes from having a community in which to sort out personal identity is cited by several of the participants as a key factor in their own sense of self.

Calum notes that by joining the community he was “grafted onto something strong.

Without a strong trunk every branch will break or wither, yet with a strong trunk every branch will flourish and flower.” He admits his “own story” is just beginning, but he draws strength from the fact that he “is woven into not only something greater, but something beyond the past and present” and that “provides more than enough for me to continue on in my story, and work to improve it.“ Contrasting her “very different” experience at Holy Myrrbearers with other communities she has been involved in, Louise draws strength from the authenticity of her fellow members, people who are sincere in their search for their true selves: “We have a very special congregation of people.

Everybody’s already knocked at the door. They’re wanting the door to open. They know the importance of their faith. It’s not a religion. I think most of the people I know at the church are genuinely, authentically present.” And it is the way that search is carried out within liturgy, within the collective story of a sincere community of faith, that ultimately carries the day and offers us the freedom to extricate ourselves from the negative scripts and stories that play in our minds. Lara says:

During worship, more than in any other circumstance , I feel free from my personal “baggage,” free to safely stretch my boundaries by trying something new or different, free from expectations that might be imposed by others, because everyone is joined together to focus on one and only one thing: worship. Regular attendance in church allows a sense of

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freedom and connectiveness to spill over into other aspects of my life, when I am dealing with persons outside of my worship community.

This freeing of the self from old narratives and reforming personal identity is neither instant nor easy, but rather a process of insight and self-discovery as Calum notes: “I would not yet say I know who I am, but I certainly have gained perspective on how I am and how I fit into stories and the world.” Alexandra underscores this “ever-becoming” identity of the person we are called to be in liturgy: “There is no longer me-alone, no longer self apart from others, no longer self apart from God. I am now always me-in- communion, and I am here to realise that relational life in the particular circumstances of my story.”

Theme III—The Author: God as Playwright (and the Play)

Closely linked with the narrative reshaping of identity within liturgy is coming to terms with God as author and content of the wider story, the concept that all life is ultimately participation in a story told by God. We come to the liturgical assembly as individuals but, wrapped into the community of faith and the wider church, we can begin to sense that we belong to a larger story. It can be a struggle to discern and understand this, though, as Hélène asks: “As a protagonist, do I control my life, or is it that all I do is feel and observe? Clearly, I don’t have an answer.”

The answer begins perhaps with recognising God as principal agent and ultimately the author of the story of all human life. The Divine Liturgy begins with the deacon saying, “It is time for the Lord to act,” and as Max describes, the principal agency of God himself is underlined by the very fact of the eucharist itself: “humanity can’t make

94 it all the way to God. He actually has to act. I think that the eucharist really emphasises that, because it is the action of God to save us.” And for Calum, it is important to stress that this action of God in the eucharistic liturgy is for all people: “the liturgy is the communion of all. It’s everyone, all tied in fully in a tangible moment and experience.”

God is the author and ground of all—the fulness of “natural” life and embracing “past and present”—and we all “have a beautiful place within that narrative.” The story authored by God is not a foreign story, but rather our true story, the way we are supposed to live.

Jamie finds this both “encouraging” and “stabilising” that we are all intersecting parts of this “great narrative of God which we would simply call ‘reality’.” Picking up this idea that living the story authored by God is the most “natural” way of being a human being— in essence, as Aidan Kavanagh frequently says in his lectures, “doing the world the way it was meant to be done”—Louise wonders about drawing in her friends:

We want to be able to provide help. It’s a tough world out there. Nobody promised anyone a rose garden. It’s not like we’re able to provide answers to somebody, but everybody wants to help somebody else. If we understand that every part of the liturgy is reflective of what creation is all about, what the Bible and gospels are all about, about Christ and what he wants for us, what really is important—if that’s all in the liturgy, why wouldn’t somebody want to participate in that?

Christy notes that before coming to the Orthodox Church she was unable to live

“according to a unifying story,” but found herself “on the margin of the story or on the outside looking in and wanting to know how to get there.” This desire for this natural fulfilment of human life in the story of God Max likens to what Augustine describes in his

Confessions: the life story we live in liturgy is our true home and joy because the desire for God has been there all along. Christy adds: “Thank God, I have become captivated by

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God’s story and my potential place in it and have rediscovered Christianity with a new faith and openness.”

In telling their own life stories, participants often express this notion of divine authorship with subtle shifts in speaking about who is guiding the narrative of their lives.

For David, a health scare was the catalyst for rethinking who was in control: “I realised that I was part of this story somewhere but I wanted to understand how and what my overall purpose was in it.” Through that he has come to understand that “we are the pot and God is the potter.” During the focus group, the exercise of speaking about stories using the nesting matryoshka dolls really struck Jamie: “That was a game-changer for me, just to contextualise our lives. We are part of God’s story.” For Jamie that means transcending his own “individal ego story”: “We’re so individualistic in our modern society. But this is our story together. At Holy Myrrhbearers, we have a story together.”

He notes that liturgy can be twisted by individualism too, that we “need to be conscious” that “it’s not just me trying to get grace from God.” In this regard—and in a rare passing reference amongst all the conversations to the practices of liturgical celebration at Holy

Myrrhbearers compared to the way that the Divine Liturgy is celebrated in other

Orthodox churches—Alexandra points out the importance of highlighting our integration into the wider of story of God in the liturgy:

The way the Divine Liturgy is usually done elsewhere, it’s very easy for there to be a disconnect between my personal piety and real life. I go to church because I’m a Christian and that’s my duty, and here’s what happens at church, the liturgy, and this is what needs to happen so we can have the eucharist, and we’ve done all that, so now back to normal life. It’s very easy to have that separation. The liturgy becomes its own separate thing. The way it’s usually done it’s very easy for it to be a thing “up there,” a thing that you come and partake of as a separate reality, and then what

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you have in your private life is different. Whereas to me we have this integration because of the focus on who God is and what he does and why he does it.

With respect to the potentially competing narratives in our life—including the “cultural liturgies” like the shopping mall, a temple of contemporary consumer society—the participants all show concern with the scourge of this “individualism.” Accepting God’s authorship is thus most concretely expressed in realising we all belong to one shared story. Jamie was struck by this one time during the Divine Liturgy hearing the words of the epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit: “Send down thy Holy Spirit upon us and make this bread the precious body of thy Christ.” Jamie says, “I realised it was about the whole community, not pietistic, individual me. But by partaking of the sacrament we become made into the body of Christ.”

Our immersion in the story of God is directly connected to the narratives of the scriptures, the church’s canonical repository of stories of human and divine life woven together. In the changes of liturgical celebration at Holy Myrrhbearers, bringing the scriptures to the fore has been one of the guiding principles of renewal, including restoring fuller biblical texts within the liturgical hymns and lections. While only occasional mention is made by the participants to the specific elements of liturgical celebration and wider use of the scriptures in our liturgy, they nevertheless express an identification with the biblical stories. Louise, who sees herself in every “story told by

God,” is a case in point: “I am the woman at the well, the woman accused of adultery, the woman touching the hem of Jesus’ cloak. I am Lazarus. I am the prodigal son—or rather daughter. I am Jonah. I am like the Jews wandering for 40 years.” Yuri muses that if the

97 point of our coming to liturgy is to become more like God, then “have we really met God if we haven’t heard more fully from his story, from his word?” Part of what liturgy is all about is hearing the biblical story of God, particularly his love towards us, so that we can come to know him and become more like him. It works on us gradually, Alexandra says,

“like a river that washes over you and leaves silt and it gradually builds up.” The silt is

“nutritive,” she adds. With every liturgy we go to and every sacramental participation in the life of God, we should leave with another layer of silt across our whole life. This experience of the “building up” of the story of God within her has been particularly helpful since having her daughter, which has left her less focused than before:

It’s even more obvious now being imperfectly focused, or really sleepy, or distracted, and I’m drifting in and out of the liturgy in a way, and yet its effect on me has been by no means slowed down. Sadly the things that are typically omitted from the liturgy [but we have renewed in our mission] are specifically those things which would enable that greater understanding of the narrative of God’s story and our story in relation to it and our participation in it.

Mike makes a similar point, noting that he is often faced with mental distractions throughout the liturgy, but that the one part of the Divine Liturgy that always draws him in and speaks compellingly to him is the anaphora, the great eucharistic prayer encapsulating “God’s story from beginning of creation to his future kingdom, and describes all that God has done for us—and for me as an individual.” Mike is particularly struck that “despite my failures, God has included me in his story and has done everything that is vital for me to have life and have it to the full with him.”

It is above all to God’s love for us that participants return again and again in the discussions, highlighting the ways in which participating in the Divine Liturgy enables

98 them to see this. Louise says that any story God tells “would be told with compassion, and an understanding that I am trying to be who he has created me to be.” It can however take a “very long time” for “someone to really accept how very much he loves us despite our unworthiness.” To allow God to be author and wider story sometimes means to learn “to shut up,” Jamie says, to be quiet and still and secure in God’s love—to “be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46.10)—and to be thereby less inclined towards other competing and negative narratives based on the “toxic, internalised, shame-based attitudes and feelings” that we have towards ourselves. Mike describes the same thing:

When my heart is open to God, I feel as though God understands every part of me and my story—the good, the bad, and the ugly that I have lived through in my own journey. And yet, despite whatever I have done or who I am, there is a sense that God fully accepts me and loves me unconditionally, that he is on my side.

Coming to accept this unconditional love in turn leads to our own ability to express compassion for others, as Louise says: “I recognise that I am human just like everyone else—no better, no worse.” Mike agrees: “It is in those moments that I realise I want to live differently, or at least strive to be the person God envisions me to be, even though I don’t always know exactly what that means or looks like.” Since God authors our story, it must be a “sacred story,” so Vlad feels a responsibility “for ensuring my story is the best that it can be with a good ending.” That includes being “more empathetic towards others, since their stories are also told by God and so are just as important as mine.” This interweaving of sacred stories, of all the disparate threads of our lives, into the love story told by God, represents the very fulfilment of our life as human beings, Alexandra concludes:

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In the story told by God every one of my personal stories finds its end and fulfilment. Every thread I've ever followed, dark or light, is woven now into the tapestry that depicts God's story in Christ. The Jewish people are woven into that tapestry too, and every ; and all my brothers and sisters in Christ, whose threads I only just barely recognise but who are thus inextricably linked to my life, my stories, distinct and yet essentially woven together into one glorious image. No single story is meaningless, useless. Everything finds its place and participates in the radiant narrative of God's love.

Story II—Yuri

The son of an Orthodox , Yuri has spent his life with liturgy “just there.” As early as he can remember, he always went to church, and he began serving as an altar boy at the age of four: “I didn’t go joyously or somberly. I just went. It’s just what you did.” There was a turning point in his understanding at around eight years of age when a new family came to church and he was joined in the altar by another boy of his age. He remembers excitedly describing the Pascha service to the other boy and telling him how great it was.

Looking back, Yuri reckons that he had become a full, embodied and occasionally enthusiastic participant in the liturgy long before he had ever thought about it: “The liturgy was innately part of who I was, and then later in my life, I tried to find out why.”

The act of receiving communion has always been central to Yuri’s experience of the church. One of his earliest memories of participating in liturgy was liking communion, “just because it tastes good,” and always looking forward to the next time he could receive it. He credits the “palpable” character of the eucharist, and the sense of community it engenders, for its drawing power:

Every time I have communion I’m not necessarily feeling on fire with the Spirit. Sometimes you just do it because you just do it. But I’ve noticed

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especially in times where I haven’t gone that the power of just that simple act has been missing. There’s something about just eating together. Also just coming together is big part of it.

This focus on the shared meal and of belonging to one another means that Yuri tends to prefer smaller liturgical assemblies to large cathedrals, and even “aesthetically poor” liturgies to those carried out with great pomp and circumstance. In the smaller and more homely environment, with “barely any voices to sing,” the “dressings of liturgy” are peeled away and a real community emerges: “there’s nothing else, just you and those few people. It’s very immediate. When you’re having communion, it’s with those people. You can name them all.”

Yuri shares an avid interest in drama, particularly improvised theatre, with his wife, Nikyla. When he speaks about the virtues of a smaller and more personal liturgical setting, in addition to the intimacy of communion, he privileges the heightened sense of communication that can emerge: “often it’s just you singing the words, and maybe one other person trying to sing along with you. And it really makes you want to pay attention to certain words that you may not hear in a big choir setting.” When they started dating and he first invited Nikyla to the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, and she asked him what she should expect to experience, it was this shared performance and communication that he emphasised:

I knew that she was into musicals and that kind of thing. I said, “Imagine a musical, but there are no spectators and there are three characters or rather three voices. There’s the voice of the people, the voice of the priest who is dialoguing with the people. But we’re also dialoguing with God, and God’s voice is there too. So all these three voices are interplaying together in one musical. And there are no people in the crowd. Everyone is on stage.

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In this drama where there are only participants and no spectators, Yuri reckons, “there’s a method to the madness,” and having grown up with liturgy his whole life he is keen to understand it.

Yuri turns to metaphors to help explain liturgy’s importance to him. He thinks of it as a “lightning rod” and a “pivot point.” Above all, though, it’s “home base”: “When you’re playing tag, that’s the safe . Then you can go out and do your thing. But you always need to come back.” He admits there are times when he has missed going to liturgy for a while, and “then the whole frame of who I am starts to unravel.” When that happens, he begins to doubt and may begin to lose his faith. At that point, many people would conclude they could not return to liturgy and communion until they had regained their faith. They become uncomfortable with the dissonance between what they are meant to be singing, saying, and receiving in church, and what they really feel inside. But for Yuri, the real discomfort comes in external life, and home remains the liturgy:

Even when I had times of serious doubt and questioning in my early 20s, I still went to communion and I felt comfortable doubting because I was coming to church and having communion. I knew I could go out and question whatever I wanted to, because I knew where home base is.

Yuri views participation in the body and as a “spiritually sustaining, lifegiving power” at the heart of the liturgy; the whole liturgy is a “big gloss on the eucharist.” Even though “most of the time I don’t feel very spiritual when I receive it,” he reiterates that it is the matrix from which his true life is born.

Yuri draws attention also the power of stories within the liturgy. Among his favourites is the book of Jonah, the story of the prophet who tries to flee from his calling by God only to be thwarted by being swallowed by a whale. Outside liturgy, he admits

102 that such stories bring up many questions about historical and literal readings. But when proclaimed within the liturgy among the people assembled together to worship God—in the case of the book of Jonah, on the Eve of Pascha before the tomb of the Lord, typologically pointing towards the descent to the depths and resurrection of Christ—all doubts fade away and the “stories come to life.” He likens the liturgical experience of such narratives to the kind of concentrated “in the moment” experience that occurs when playing a sport:

In football you line up in your position, the play starts, you do the play. Then the whistle blows and the play’s over. It has a concrete beginning and end. And when you’re in the play, you’re not thinking, you’re just doing— because you’ve practised it enough. I’ve had experiences where you’re in the play, then the whistle blows and it’s over, and you’re walking back to the bench, and you say “Oh! I hurt my arm!” You don’t notice it in the play. So sometimes I feel like liturgy’s like that—where, if you’re in the moment when you’re reading those readings, you’re not in a scholarly mode.

The experience of narratives within liturgy is thus another way in which it is “home base” for Yuri, making him comfortable going out into the world with his doubts and asking questions, only to return again to church, where the scriptures are opened and proclaimed and the underlying story of God is revealed. And when compared to other, rival stories, Yuri says this story disclosed in liturgy is much more interesting: “I’ll sometimes talk about competing ideas of Christianity or worship with some friends, if

I’m feeling bold enough. I won’t describe them as bad or good, but I might say things like

‘Oh, that sounds boring’.”

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Theme IV—The Plot: Facing Complexity and Struggles

The doubts expressed by Yuri in his story are not unique. None of the participants voice any notion that participating in the Divine Liturgy would ever bring easy solutions to their lives. Lara’s evocation of our “universal experiences” despite our individual stories is representative: we all have “joys, sorrows, friendship, love, compassion, betrayal, fear, the loneliness of being misunderstood, the struggle to find true identity, a hope and longing for a better world where everyone feels at peace, ‘at home’.” There is a lot of agreement that liturgy does not hide us from these struggles, but rather sharpens our focus on them. Hélène contrasts the experience of the liturgy with the naively “optimistic propaganda” of her communist youth: in liturgy, “you won’t always feel good” and more attention is paid “to the difficulties, contradictions and even the hurt” of life. Mike echoes this sentiment: “I came into Orthodoxy because I love the liturgy. It has a depth and a beauty to it that no other form of Christianity has that I have encountered. The answers are more real.” In its narrative invitation, the church actually asks us to look more deeply at reality, to see that we are suffering more than we realise and that life is even more painful than we think.

Although there are no simple answers given, the Divine Liturgy does not just leave us with an honest appraisal of life’s complexity and suffering. Instead, as Jamie says, by grounding our own stories within God’s we are helped in “simply dealing with the unpleasant aspects of my and others’ specific ‘sub-narratives’, that is life.” As human beings, we are often trapped by a “freeze frame” mentality, where we suffer something and we assume it will always be this way or that there is only one way of looking at it.

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The more we can actually connect with one another and with the larger story that God wants us to belong to, the more things can start to fall into their proper place. We get our true bearings within God’s story—a story which has as its central narrative, Yuri recounts, a “God who is there before us, who has descended to hell, and that’s where we encounter him.” The hope we have in Christ emerges not by denying suffering, therefore, but by facing up to it. Liturgy is not about “coming to church to ignore your sufferings for a while,” it’s about “bringing your sufferings, and looking at them more deeply in the group, where together we will find God in the midst of the darkness and the suffering and everything.” This sense that not all is right with the world, but that God being faithful to his covenant promises will see that put right, and in the meantime will share his love with those who draw near to him and one another, is the overwhelming view of the liturgical narrative among the participants.

In the face of life’s struggles, simply being together as a community is seen as a great source of strength and comfort. As Hélène puts it, it is “a journey that you embark upon willingly, that you have a choice to take together with others.” Nicole recalls a time when this was particularly meaningful for her:

One time when I came I had had a hard week with some particular struggles. I came to liturgy with a lot of dark thoughts, thinking that no one else knows or is going through anything nearly this difficult. I was envious comparing myself to other people as human beings tend to do. During coffee hour I ended up sitting down with a few people and it just so happened that we were all going through the same types of struggles that week. It made me realise that even when you don’t even realise how connected to people that you are, you are almost going through the same stories. I also realised that other people are willing to struggle and not pretend as though they’ve got it all together. I think that’s something unique about our community.

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According to Hélène, the “warm-heartedness” of worshippers in the community and their “genuine kindness creates a wonderful, comforting feeling that lasts after service and helps to deal with all kinds of difficulties in life.” In such a community, people are allowed to be comfortable with doubts, as Mike explains: “I do feel more free that I don’t have all the answers. I do feel more that God is okay with that. I can just treat the other person as if I don’t know, because actually I don’t know everything.” For him, the liturgy does not exist to provide any easy answers, but rather to convey God’s unconditional love. “I feel accepted by God, and that he understands my story, even though it may be chaotic to me, and I don’t know where I’m going or what’s happening or why I am here.

That at the end of the day helps me to keep going.” Sometimes liturgy can be just about

“hanging on.” As an example, Mike cites things like “failing health, unmet expectations, or prayers that have seemed to go unanswered,” which means that “God all of a sudden can seem distant and remote.” In such circumstances, it can become very easy for real doubts even in the existence of God to creep in and gradually take over. “Yet, even here, the story of God’s people, the Israelites, reminds me that my human experience and questioning

God is not unique. Their story reminds me to trust God in those difficult moments.” And ultimately, “there is hope because all things will be reconciled under Christ.”

Participating in the Divine Liturgy can also provoke inner conflicts as it invites us to look harder at our lives, including the hidden places of our hearts, and our relationship with God. Christy, though still a catechumen, has noticed this experience of “conflict and discomfort” in liturgy:

Some of this comes from my experience coming into conflict with ideas that persist from my childlike understanding of God. When those old

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conceptions bubble up, I immediately react to them as silly and ridiculous. I then experience a little battleground in my mind. It’s frustrating to have experienced what I have and learned what I have the last year or so and still confront and not be able to get past these. I ask myself, “Who is God? Why did he create the world and man? How did God have a Son, what does it mean that he did that? What does it even mean that he loved us so much that he sent his only Son?” And on and on. One thing I’m discovering is that I don’t think I have the slightest sense of what that nature of love truly is, means, or can create.

The experience of God’s unconditional love conveyed within the Divine Liturgy can actually be difficult because, knowing the darkness of our lives and hearts, that love can be more than we can bear. We can only resign ourselves, as Christy says, “to keep praying, attending liturgy and to have faith that a deeper understanding will arise.” In his own experience of crises and suffering, Vlad has learned through liturgy to reorient himself so that the suffering can lead to growth: “how can I gain the most value out of this bad thing that happened?” In Hélène’s words, the liturgy does not isolate us from the fact that “our life is full of inexplicable unfairness and suffering,” but it wraps this life in a greater story that is ultimately “full of joy and goodness,” and in “this sense our stories are connected to the Story.”

Theme V—The Climax: New Ways of Seeing

This reorientation of suffering is one aspect of the way that worshippers’ exposure to the narrative of liturgy leads to insight and new ways of seeing (which can be likened to the

θεωρία described in patristic tradition). In the Divine Liturgy, Max says, we are helped to

“take a step back” from our “smaller concerns and consider the big picture.” We each come to understand that “my life and problems are caught up in Something that

107 transcends me, allowing me to trust that all things truly do work towards some kind of good.” The mystery at the heart of the liturgy, the eucharist, is a symbol of this new way of seeing. Yuri explains: “Communion doesn’t just proclaim our faith that we become partakers of the body and blood of Christ. We see and know God hidden in the gifts.” This becomes a community “practice” that helps us to redirect our spiritual eyes to learn to see God—not in some other spiritual place detached from this world—but hidden within the frame of this world, within stories of suffering and brokenness. The liturgy can indeed provide a lens to bring the lack of wholeness into focus. Christy explains: “I might feel anxious or despondent in other parts of my life but I wouldn’t be able to perceive it unless I came every week and shared in worship in this community, feeling this glimmer of wholeness and connection.” Worshipping within the community of faith, she says, “I can understand what is missing and know there is a way and people who will support me when I’m ready to fully participate.”

This path towards new insight passes through another community liturgical and sacramental practice, the mystery of . To come to confession is another way we tell our stories in relation to the larger canvas of the story of God. We bring our distorted and self-destructive inner scripts—both our “me alone” stories with all their baggage as well as our false impressions of who God is—and check them against the narrative of God’s covenant love expressed within the embodied liturgical practice of the church. This practice of church confession is far from easy, Max indicates, as it would be much easier to keep repentance “personal and individual,” a private matter between the penitent and God, without coming to the sacrament and the accountability that it entails.

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But Max says: “because I’m not very good at seeing errors in myself, I think that the practice of confession in which I admit how I’m inadequate is important. It makes me more humble, more willing to receive correction from other people rather than being fearful that others will try to crush me.” In confession, moreover, we appropriate the words of scripture or of the saints—again from the wider narrative in which we are immersed—in order to express our repentance. Mike explains how these prayers of the saints resonate with him:

When these saints pray these prayers of confession when they’ve done something wrong, you realise, “Wow, this is a really saintly person and yet they’re articulating in such a way their own shamefulness and darkness.” In a weird ironic way, that almost gives me hope and comfort, because these are the words I need. If this person has done and felt that, and can speak these words of repentance, then there’s hope for me. You realise it’s not just you.

The experience of confession can be transfiguring, and impressive for others in the community as well. Christy recalls coming for the first time to Mattins, celebrated at Holy

Myrrhbearers before the Divine Liturgy each Sunday, during which confessions are heard: “So I came during confession, and I’d never seen anything like that. I was overwhelmed by what I witnessed and, picturing myself doing that someday, I was in tears. It was just so overpowering and so humbling.”

One of the important new insights arising from participation in the liturgical narrative is being seen, not as an individual, but as God sees each of us, as a whole person.

This means being seen by the fellow members of the body “from the end of time,” rather than from our origins or on the basis of our past history and deeds. In the Divine Liturgy we participate in the kingdom and thus experience and enact our true identity as that of

109 redeemed and perfected people of God. This “eschatological ontology,” as theologian

John Zizioulas calls it—this identity and being founded not as we are now in the chronology of our life but as we will ultimately be—is reflected throughout the discussions by participants as they recount their life stories, constantly reinterpreting their past according to where they have now ended up. Unique threads of stories are reworked into a fairly universal pattern in which, no matter what stage someone came to baptism (or returned to it in confession) and to participation in the eucharist, the whole story of their life becomes the story of the kingdom. Max notes that this being seen “from the end” is one of the purposes of the of Christ and the saints in the church, for they

“show that true humanity is actually divine and that we bear the image of God. These are the ideal people.” In the icons and hymns, Jamie says, the liturgy expresses our

“connectedness with the saints” and “with fellow saints-in-making.” Having seen and venerated icons in liturgy, if we then fail to see one another in the same way and instead

“go out and treat people horribly, then we miss the entire point,” Max adds. The expression of eschatological ontology within the icon is not only an ideal to strive for but

“enforces love of neighbour. When you meet someone, it’s God that you are meeting, not just a human.”

However ephemeral our experience in each celebration of the Divine Liturgy of our true kingdom identity, it enables us to re-enter our present life with new insight into how God sees us and thus a new vision for embodying the life of the kingdom. Alexandra remarks that in the liturgy “I am newly reconstituted as a person—again, if only most

110 briefly, my eschatological self—and I can proceed anew with the struggle to live out and enact this vision. It is nothing more or less than enacting liturgy in daily life.”

Theme VI—The Resolution: Enacting Love and Communion

In the Divine Liturgy, the gathered community is not merely given insight into the love of the kingdom, though: God actually draws the assembly into the enactment of that love.

This experience of love and belonging at the heart of the community is the most often discussed topic by the participants in this study. Louise recalls that “the whole thing that smacked me in the face about a month or two after I started coming here is that we really are a body. We’re all in this together. To really understand that is awesome.” Christy agrees that it is all about the feeling of belonging to something, and even without yet being fully received, she still feels like this is where she wants to be. This sense of love and belonging overcomes all loneliness and isolation, as Louise explains:

Worshipping in community has helped me to not feel alone. It has helped me feel loved. This is not to say that I have not felt loved before but it is helping me to better understand authentic love, which is that which we all seek. Here, at Holy Myrrhbearers, I feel part of an authentic community of worshippers, part of a body; a body in the universal church, interdependent on others and all of creation, including those in this world and those departed.

Indeed, many of the participants express that the belonging element of membership in the church is considerably more important than believing, or at least that it is prior to it.

Alexandra comments: “The people who really sense they belong are saying this above all else is my true home and these above all else are my true family, and if anything ever went wrong in my life, the people I’d think of first are here. All my bearings that I’d ever

111 need for anything that happens to me in my life are here.” She is delighted that her two- year-old daughter already “gets this” in a way that adults who don’t commit to belonging could not. For Louise, this profound sense of belonging to a loving community is the answer to what people need: “We’re members of each other. In this age that we’re living in, there are so many people that are searching just for that.”

Asking participants what has drawn them to become members and to belong in this way, I expected them mainly to say they have been attracted by the singing, the beauty of the church, or a certain aspect of the liturgical celebration. Alternatively, if it is not the liturgy itself, I would have imagined that some kind of liturgical support from a member of the community, such as being welcomed to the service, being given a service book or invited to sing or serve, or having been followed up with a phone call or email, would have encouraged someone to join. But the comments focus instead almost exclusively on the time of fellowship after the liturgy. Alexandra recalls that “when I started going to fellowship and receiving the warm welcome from everyone, it was such a quick and natural integration.” Max agrees, saying: “The fellowship meal after liturgy is something that really brings people together. You’re gathering symbolically in the liturgy, but you may not know the other person until the meal afterwards when you have the opportunity to connect. That’s really critical.” If what we have just done together has meaning—if we are members of one another, we commune together, we become one body—that should carry forward into all aspects of our life, but especially a few minutes after at the fellowship hour. Max hastens to note that the “fellowship wouldn’t be the same if you didn’t have liturgy beforehand. That’s important to say.” For Lara, it’s the

112 kindness and love shown at the fellowship that matters most: “the people who come to our worship, when we’re having the social hour, they’re kind. While we don’t all agree on every topic, people are kind and they treat each other with kindness and no meanness.”

It means for her that “they have made a commitment to behave once they walk out of church in a way that is in line with what we hear in church.” There is a strong sense of a community that is not inward-looking or insular, or built around an ethnic or cultural identity, but formed from people from widely different backgrounds and walks of life who are committed to living for one another. The fellowship time is short, however, and

Jamie laments that we are only rarely conscious of just how connected we are as members of one another in this way.

Another attractive expression of this loving community is what some of the participants describe as the sincerity and lack of pretence among the members. This is particularly attested to by visitors, including those who are not Orthodox Christians.

Calum recalls the experience of his own first visit:

I think what really started to cement things for me was that there was a consistency to it that was not only sincere and genuine, but something that as an outsider I could still not quite be a part of but be affected by. That’s not something I’d ever experienced before. I’d been to churches where it was great and I admired it, but it would often be theirs. And there is certainly a line between Orthodox and non-Orthodox at our mission, but I think the exchange is much greater between those two groups.

As a community committed to enacting love, Holy Myrrhbearers has those “porous” edges previously described, enabling people to come and go and yet feel part of the community. There is an ongoing invitation to all without any kind of compulsion. Calum notes how this openness has been particularly impressive upon his non-Orthodox

113 mother: “She admires the church because there’s lots she can do, but absolutely nothing she has to do.” He mentions specifically venerating icons or making the sign of the cross, actions which she finds uncomfortable but she knows that “absolutely no one is judging her about that.” She may come and do what she likes, and people “are happy she’s there and that’s what counts.”

This gentle expression of “love without pretence” is ultimately a reflection of a liturgical vision founded not on a supernatural distortion of human beings, but rather an invitation to live as we have always been meant to do. The liturgy shows what this properly “natural” human life is like—communion with one another, being part of one body, sacrificing our own egos for the other, loving one another, responding to a love initiated and faithfully expressed by God. It is for this reason, Mike notes, that we repeat over and over throughout the Divine Liturgy that God is the “friend” or “lover of man”

(φιλάνθρωπος): “There’s something liturgical about those words that is so meaningful.”

The liturgical enactment of love engenders in response to God’s love a sense of radical non-judgement and acceptance of others, learning to treat them as God would do. For

Jamie, this provides “a great deal of emotional grounding,” and promotes humility and an ability “to truly listen” and “to accept” the views of others, as Alexandra explains:

Learning how to be human in the image of Christ also means learning to see and accept and love the humanness and Christness of others. How to accept an other whose actions do not make my own story proceed the way I would like? Except the other is not only a character in my story but lives in their own story, one they too were placed in by God, and which is peculiarly suited to them. I must not try to impose my story upon the other, but trust God to lead them through their story as I trust him to lead me through mine.

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Lara concurs, having learned “I am not alone, but am connected to every one who is also trying to follow Christ's example, and, with a patient heart, to still see their light when they struggle to achieve that shared goal.” In so many ways the liturgy invites us into the embodied participation of this gentle enactment of love, though not always consciously: it becomes the praktognosia and habitus of which James K.A. Smith speaks. Max alludes to this when he says: “It’s rather difficult to comment on this but I trust that the same basic point—of loving God and neighbour—is reinforced in many ways that I take for granted throughout the liturgy.”

Story III—Lara

Many of those who come to Orthodox Christianity from Protestant backgrounds report being drawn by the corporate worship of the Divine Liturgy that allows them to overcome what they view as their formerly more individualistic approach to worship.

Lara’s story provides an ironic inversion of this stereotype. Raised by her mother in

Eastern Catholic liturgical tradition, she recalls as a child witnessing and participating in the intensity of her mother’s “personal prayers and devotion.” On major feasts, especially at Pascha with more than a thousand people in church, “the smells and bells and lights” left the child Lara almost “in an altered state of mind.” Surrounded by countless people, she felt she never felt more alone, “worshipping with God on an individual level.” She describes it as an “overwhelmingly religious experience,” yet one that left her utterly isolated, “having to fight your way to a relationship with God, amidst people, but not necessarily with them.” This being left alone extended to a lack of any kind of catechetical

115 instruction and being told as a teenager, “Don’t bother the priest, don’t ask questions, just go to church.” Not wanting to “just go through the motions,” she ended up largely dropping out of church.

Lara returned to churchgoing after her marriage, in the Anglican Church with her husband David: “you get a little older, and you realise that you need to experience something bigger than yourself, and bigger than all the people that you deal with in life.

So you feel drawn back to church.” She felt warmly welcomed into the church community and this larger story, expressed through a strong sense of corporate worship: “in the

Anglican Church, you do feel like you’re all confessing together and that was powerful.”

The somewhat uncommon conclusion Lara drew from her experience was that

“Orthodox tradition is better at personal devotion and personal relationship with Jesus, but the Protestant churches are better at corporate worship. It was from my experience as a child, feeling alone with a thousand people in the church!”

It would be years later before her husband’s searching for a richer church life led them to go back to and to experience the Divine Liturgy anew, this time in a community that combined the ancient Orthodox liturgy with a communal spirit of worship, “all joined together and actually moving somewhere, approaching the kingdom of God.” She says regretfully: “Nobody had ever said this is what worship is about. No one had ever explained that to me before.” It was the Anglican experience of worship that had opened her eyes to worship that was not composed of individual acts of personal piety, to worship that was the common work of members of one body, and now

116 she had found an Orthodox community that lived that life too. But her early experience had been “so damaging, confusing, disorienting” that it would take time to adjust.

Thankfully, the move into the Orthodox Church came at the right time for Lara: “I wasn’t the one itching for a change. It was David that was searching. I don’t know if I would have come back to the Divine Liturgy. But it actually worked out well for me and my mother.” Lara’s mother, Anna, was ill and confined to hospital. The return to Eastern

Christianity meant that her mother could receive “communion in a way that she’s used to” and, eventually, “a proper funeral in line with her tradition.” For Lara herself, who was left by her brother and sisters to become her mother’s nearly sole caregiver in the last years of her life, renewed Orthodox Christian faith and liturgical life gave her wells of strength to draw upon. It was an experience that asked profound questions of her.

During this time of intense caregiving, Lara frequently reflected on her relationship with her mother. Anna had emigrated with her husband from Ukraine, and life had not been very easy for her. Yet she endured, which Lara credits to a profound if not always perfect faith in God:

If I had to say who was the most important person in my faith journey, I would have to say that it’s my mother. My mother wasn’t a perfect person. She didn’t understand modern psychology. I’m not saying that my mother was a saint, that she never did anything wrong, but in terms of looking at her perseverance, her endurance, and what was at the heart of it, I would say that it was her faith.

Lara vividly remembers one story from her childhood as testimony to her mother’s devotion. Lara had a lot of respiratory problems and her parents were told that she probably was not going to live beyond age five. People were smoking in the flat Lara’s family shared, in the days before people realised the effects of second-hand smoke, and

117 her mother would ask people to stop: “The child coughs when people are smoking.” She even said to Lara’s father: “Don’t smoke.” But he would reply “Nonsense!” So Anna would choose to bundle herself and Lara up and sleep outside in the fresh air of the backyard.

This act of self-sacrifice made an impression on the young Lara: “I am aware of what my mother did for me. So maybe that’s why I felt when she became old and sick, there was no way she was going to die alone.” Lara’s determination to accompany her mother led her to live for some time at her mother’s side in the hospital: “I’d watch and make sure she was breathing, and I’d hold her hand. There was no way that I’d want her to die alone. I felt quite an obligation to my mother because I know what she did for me.”

At Anna’s funeral, Lara described her mother as someone who constantly set aside her own interests for others—for her own family as a child, then for her own children when she had them. “I always felt: when is it her time to have, to receive? She was always giving, but when is she going to receive? And I can think of the expression, the words that Christ said: The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.” Anna had a

“negative side” and could be “overprotective,” especially of Lara, and she was not the model of the ideal Christian parent raising her children telling them Bible stories on her knee. Yet she was an exemplar of a real, embodied, this world faith, as when she sacrificed herself for her sick child in a Christ-like act, bundling her child up and sleeping outdoors. Anyone who knows Lara sees in her the same self-sacrificial love her mother demonstrated, particularly in the way she looked after her mother in the last years of her life. The story of the mutual love and care of Anna and Lara is reminiscent of the

118 reciprocal icons of the mother of God holding Christ as a child and of Christ holding his mother (her soul depicted as a bundled child) at her dormition.

Lara reports that she sometimes has difficulty relating to God the Father, to a transcendent God—“he’s too remote, and I don’t know what his essence is”—and only really knows God as Jesus. She prays “Maranatha. O Lord, come!” (1 Corinthians 16.22) not in expectation of Christ’s future return but because needs “help and strength now” in his presence as Emmanuel, God with us: “the only God I can relate to is the one who suffers with us.” Her worried tone indicates that she does not grasp how this is a perfectly Orthodox Christian thing to say, that that is precisely the God that we are meant to know, that the only picture we are to have of God is of Christ, the one who descends to hell. “That he would descend and suffer the kind of things that we mortals experience—it wasn’t necessary for him to do that. He wept when people died, and he felt sorry for people. So he didn’t have to come down, but it was a choice he made.” The words echo the way Lara speaks of her mother’s self-emptying love. In her own life and in her own lifelong search for a worship community that embodies the same selfless love of the God who descends and identifies with every aspect of our suffering, Lara shows that she does have clear sight of the story of God.

Theme VII—The Archetypal Story: Following the Pattern of Christ

Lara mirrors her mother’s untiring and selfless giving, always taking the last place, questioning when the “last” would be “first,” pondering with the psalmist how the wicked prosper while the righteous are suffering. All too often she takes up as Christ did the cry

119 of the psalmist, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me?” (Psalm 22.1) But this embodied identification with Christ gives meaning to her life in a deeper and wider sense, as she has become part of this larger narrative of

God who never ceases to be the one who cares, who suffers, and who ultimately will make sense of everything and lift us up. Yuri notes: “If we have lived our lives nailed to a cross, there will surely be resurrection.” That is what the underlying pattern of the story says: the story Lara belongs to does not end on the cross. Everything Lara does as among the most committed, faithful and self-sacrificing servants—at the bedside of the dying, caring for the sick, or at church endlessly serving others— all has final meaning in the bigger story of the self-emptying (κένωσις) of Christ.

Jamie speaks of the “fractality of meaning, how all stories are in one deep sense echoes or reverberations of the one.” Lara herself notes that “there is one universal story, and someone who shows us the way to live an authentic life.” Along with the other participants of this study at Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission, in her reflection on her own life’s story, Lara hints at the way in which, having come together as the body of

Christ in liturgy and having enacted within the Divine Liturgy as far as we are able his self-sacrificial love, we can begin to reshape and re-story the events of our lives to conform to the pattern of Christ. In this process of being drawn into the “U-shaped” paradigm of descent and ascent that is the archetypal biblical narrative—most clearly exemplified in life, death and resurrection of Christ—we see here a practical outworking of Ricoeur’s narrative arc of prefiguration, configuration and refiguration.

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As exemplified in the stories the participants of this study tell, we come to the

Divine Liturgy prefigured with our complex of stories, all the thoughts and contradictions of our life, all the distorted scripts we tell ourselves, all the layers of narrative within us and the communities we belong to. These are often only narrative fragments that hint at and only partially reveal our deeper attitudes, feelings, perceptions, commitments and loves. “I have been formed a certain way, and it affects the way I see things, the decisions

I make, and my values,” Mike admits. Preformed by this tacit knowledge with its distorting perception filters and biases, we come into the liturgy with little scope to experience the fulness of the life of the age to come as it is revealed in the worship.

Indeed, throughout our discussions, none of the participants express the ability to immediately and overtly identify with the whole story of God celebrated in the Divine

Liturgy. Yet they are able to make narrative connections in some of its patterns, with fragments of the narrative of their lives finding resonance within the storied arc of the liturgy, in aspects of particular prayers and hymns. This works especially with the psalms which dominate so much of the Orthodox liturgical tradition, as Yuri explains:

“The psalms often begin with things being wonderful, then they get really bad. Where did

God go? ‘Where are you? You abandoned me. All the evil people are prospering and all the good people are suffering. What’s all that about?’ We can all relate to that feeling.”

Connections are sparked between the storied perceptions worshippers bring of their own life experience and the stories embedded in the liturgy. Louise can thus say “I am the woman accused of adultery, the woman touching the hem of Jesus’ cloak.” Yuri can identify with Jonah when he proclaims his story on the eve of Pascha. And in his own

121 experience of profound suffering Jamie can say “I’ve been to hell. As a state of being, I’ve been to hell.”

Ricoeur suggests that, having brought into the narrative environment of the liturgy all these complexities of who we are, the wider story we encounter invites us into dialogue and transformation. Alexandra notes that in her experience of the Divine

Liturgy she is often made to ask, “How does my life make sense in relation to this?” The tentative connections sparked between our stories and aspects of the rich narratives of liturgy allow our own lives to be immersed and finally up-ended within a wider story, as we are confronted with and configured by it. The psalmist who poignantly describes an aspect of our own misery experiences a turn, as Yuri says: “God, I realise that despite all that I see you are faithful. By putting my trust in you, I am brought back up again.” If we have been to hell, then liturgy can tell us something about that. Jamie notes: “God also descends, even to hell. Our story isn’t that God is up here [he holds his hand aloft] and we just have to find our way back to him, but rather God meets us in our suffering.” The wider story is not only expressed in what is said—the antiphonal psalms, for instance, presenting God as the loving creator, who calls to himself a people, who favours the orphan, the widow, the downtrodden, and lifts up those who are bowed down, or the beatitudes extolling faith and perseverance in the face of suffering—but in what is implied, for instance, in a God who listens and cares, as Yuri notes: “We don’t hear God respond but every time we sing ‘Lord, have mercy’ we know he listens.” Crucially, the wider story is also embodied in the movement of the liturgy, as newcomer Christy explains: “after initially miming the exterior, the crossing, the bowing, the standing

122 upright, I slowly am able to participate in that story in my body and hopefully one day in my heart too.” In words and silence, in movement and action, worshippers are drawn into a living participation in the emplotted pattern of Christ’s descent and ascent, his obedient paschal self-offering within the overarching story of God and the life of his coming kingdom. This is how Jamie sees the entire arc of the Divine Liturgy: “God descends to raise us up. I love the resurrection icon, the one where Christ takes Adam and Eve by their hands. I just start crying whenever I think of it.” The liturgy, as Max sums it up succinctly, is ultimately the “story of Christ and our participation in it.”

Having been drawn into the plot of God’s story, where our whole way of thinking and loving begins to be reshaped, we are then refigured, transformed in our understanding and action for our return to life and mission. We come with our experience of death, the tomb and hell, but emerge, as Christy says, from “the incredible humility of confession” and “celebration and participation in communion” having seen

“the true light and resurrection and new life.” We have participated with the myrrhbearers in “attending to the body of Christ,” and now, Jamie explains: “We are the myrrhbearers, the church is the whole fractal and iconic reality. That’s how it all works.”

We have been refigured according to a pattern, and that pattern ultimately is Christ. We are supposed to put on Christ and to live the life of the story of God: “My place in the world is in God,” Max says. And that life of Christ is the self-sacrificial descent and ascent which we see proclaimed in the liturgy in all its aspects—the stories, the hymns, the iconography and “most importantly, the people gathered.”

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The refiguration according to the story of God is an incremental process, the gradual “silting” of which Alexandra speaks. We return to the world having experienced, reflected upon and been to a new degree re-storied by the pattern of Christ, but we find ourselves confronted once again by the challenges and difficulties of the world. Mike describes how he views the process:

Each week is a fresh start, a renewal, a recentring. No matter what’s happened, here we go again and we can reorient ourselves. Whether that means we feel clean because we have gone to confession, or whether it means we’re communing with God at the start of a new week, let’s try to make this a week of striving towards living the way we are meant to be.

For some, the weekly changes are subtle and barely perceptible. Hélène says that

“coming to church and worshipping in community brings strength and peace to my way of life, without drastically changing it.” For others like David, having “lived out God’s kingdom” and “stood before his throne,” having seen the world rightly ordered, the resulting “shift of focus can be startling.” The changes are not principally in thinking differently, but in changes of heart and desire, of unconscious habits of behaviour.

“Coming out of liturgy” for Christy means “more moments of conscious gratitude throughout the day.” For Mike, it means desiring to “go the extra mile with clients” or choosing to do “a difficult thing” for someone else: “I want to do the right thing.” He adds:

After leaving church, I almost always feel better, more whole, recalibrated in a sense, in a better position to try to be a better human being and live out values that are centred in Christ and the Church. The service reminds us we are not only called to live differently in the world as we go through our journey and struggles, but also that God goes with us.

It is not easy, but rather a “constant struggle to try to keep these words within my heart throughout the day or week,” Mike explains. Yet each week, each liturgy, each

124 participation in the eucharist, the stories of our lives are slowly reformed into the pattern of Christ, which is finally the pattern of a true human life. Thus, Max insists, “we become truly human, perceiving God in all things and all things in God.” Alexandra expands this idea of becoming fully human:

I am here to learn how to be human. I am here, exactly where God has situated me, in my life with its particular struggles and its particular joys, to learn through this particular life how to become human. The story God has placed me in is the story in and through which I am to acquire Christ- like humanity, but I can only do this if my story is woven through with God's own story and is seen in its light.

The last word is given to Christy, who only began attending Holy Myrrhbearers within the last year and as a catechumen is not yet a full participant. It is instructive to hear how the worshipping community has changed her life in a short period of time:

My life this past ten months coming weekly to liturgy is noticeably different from before. Practically, it’s an anchor and new beginning to each week. It helps me face life’s complexity. It marks time and is changing my relationship to time. I come together with people I genuinely care for and who I feel genuinely care for me. I feel oriented towards something greater than myself, with the support of the other parish members. I’m formed by the relationships I’ve developed, the sermons I hear and reflect upon, the scripture we read, the hymns we sing, the way I orient my body. It’s slowly shaping me to be more patient, more humble, more understanding and forgiving, more reflective and thoughtful, more present, more hopeful, more discerning, more open-hearted. I’m valuing more and working harder in my marriage. I’m trying to serve God in my work and relationships. It has planted a seed in me to live a life aimed at and in Christ, even though I have only a faint understanding what that means. I’m more grateful and a greater part of me wants to reduce the suffering of others.

This rather sums up what it is all about: the rehearsal of the world and human life that is the liturgy of the church gives way to properly living the liturgy of the world, living with and for others in newly transformed and transforming life.

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V –Application of the Results and Limitations of the Study

Application of the Study

This research project has demonstrated the potential of narrative engagement for transforming participants in the central act of worship in the Orthodox Church, the

Divine Liturgy. It has shown that, by making the latent or overlooked narrative elements of the Divine Liturgy more obvious and embodied, worshippers can indeed be encouraged to reflect on their own stories in relation to the wider story of God.

Over the course of this project, Sunday worship at Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox

Mission has become an increasingly “narrative rich” environment. All the measures described under “Narrative-Focused Changes in Liturgical Celebration” (pp 55-64) for the renewal of the liturgy of the word and the liturgy of the eucharist were implemented.

The new service book was introduced, with its embedded mystagogy of enacted narrative. Sermons and catechetical talks focused on the various layers of our storied lives as human beings and became windows open to the larger story of God in which we participate. Scriptural lections within the Divine Liturgy were extended, an alternative

(from the less-heard Saturday lectionary) cycle of epistles and gospels was proclaimed, and the normally shortened excerpts included in the Divine Liturgy were made more complete. Every effort to highlight and enact the narrative structure of the liturgy— centred around the core sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in the eucharist, an icon of the Christ’s kenotic pattern of life, death and resurrection—was made. Not least, of

126 course, the series of discussions that comprised this project were initiated with the participants who volunteered for the study.

The discussions were open ended, turning around people’s own life stories—their setting, character development, conflicts and plot turns, transformations and new insights. Only some of the initiating questions in the discussions specifically concerned the liturgy itself—though the participants were of course fully briefed on the nature and goals of the project and understood this was the central theme—nevertheless conversation naturally turned again and again to the liturgy, and it was clear that participants viewed their membership in the Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission community and involvement in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy as central to their own story and identity formation. Involvement in the study was not only willingly but altogether cheerfully undertaken, with participants indicating they rather enjoyed the experience of considering both liturgy and life from the perspective of narrative. It was not something many of them had ever considered before, but the ease with which narrative engagement unfolded for everyone involved suggested it was both a natural practice and an already ongoing—if previously hidden or subconscious—process.

A Tentative Model of Narrative Liturgical Formation

Taking into consideration the cross-cutting themes (narrative elements) and stories reported in the last section, a tentative model for the way liturgy may work through narrative engagement to form worshippers can be derived. The diagram on the following page illustrates the model.

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This proposed model of narrative liturgical formation has three phases of activity:

(i) Life Experience Shapes Our Complex Storied Identity (Prefiguration)

The model begins with our human “experience”—with life lived—with all our outward thinking, doing and suffering, as well as our inner attitudes, perceptions and desires.

These all shape the complex matrix of overt and hidden stories that we tell ourselves and one another, which for many of us consist in the main of imprisoning or self-destructive narratives that undermine our capacity to achieve our full human potential. Because these deeper stories are the source of tacit knowledge and precognitive filters, they prevent us from hearing the “good news” of the kingdom whether through explicit church teaching—in , for instance—or in the worship of the church.

(ii) Embodied Participation in Narrative-Rich Liturgy Enables Formation of

Synaptic Connections and Immersion in the Wider Story of God, Leading to

Reflection upon and Subversion of Our Own Personal Stories (Configuration)

If we bring our complex story-laden lives into a “narrative rich” experience of liturgy, there is every possibility that some connections will be made between our life experience and the narrative patterns of God embedded in worship. These connections may rightly be termed “synaptic,” for the spark or impulse that joins the two stories as they come close to one another can be likened to the way that neurobiology describes the synapses which transfer electric activity between two nerve cells. If the stories are not close to one another or if our tacit knowledge and pre-existing matrix of stories prevent us from drawing near, there will be no spark or connection made, and we will remain oblivious

129 and immune to the subversive message of the kingdom. If on the other hand a story told within the public narrative of liturgy comes close enough to a personal story we already believe, then the synaptic connection is made. This is the reason it is essential to bring narrative to the fore within the liturgy in whatever way that is possible, to give every opportunity for the story of God to intersect with the prefigured stories we bring with us.

Having made a connection—however tentative—between an aspect of our personal stories and one of the narrative patterns within the liturgy, we can immerse ourselves in the larger story, that is, put ourselves into that story and let the wider shape and implications of that story influence us. To give a simple illustration (from the psalms chanted at Sixth Hour before the Divine Liturgy when Mattins is not served): if I arrive with a story of deep hurt and personal betrayal, having been let down by a good friend, I might perhaps hear and connect with the words of the psalmist who cries: “It is not an enemy who taunts me—then I could bear it; it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me—then I could hide from him. But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.” (Psalm 55.12-13). But having made that connection, having contextualised my own experience and joined the psalmist’s wider story, might I then not also move with him to trust God and ask him to raise me up, confident in his faithfulness and deliverance

(Psalm 55.16, 22-23)? In this process of immersion and reflection—undertaken both cognitively and also unconsciously in the participatory, body knowledge of enacted narrative—our pre-existing private stories are challenged, subverted and ultimately reoriented so that they align with the authentic kingdom narrative that is God’s story for human beings.

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(iii) Re-Storying into Pattern of Christ and Returning to Experience (Refiguration)

We emerge from such a narrative-rich liturgical experience with aspects of our internal narratives up-ended and rewritten, newly re-authored by God into his unfolding story.

We ourselves are thus incrementally reconfigured according to the pattern of self- emptying love in the life of Christ which represents human life in its natural and perfected state. We are given new interpretive lenses for our life, new ways of knowing and relating to others; and deep within we have newly-forged desires that can begin to inform our habits and behaviours to more closely match those who bear the image of

God and are charged with bringing into existence his kingdom, which is the end (or telos) of our shared story.

From each narrative engagement within liturgy we must however return to the world and to experience. In the model this is shown as returning to the beginning but it is a dynamic process in the shape of a spiral. We will return again to liturgy prefigured but having conformed a little more to the pattern of Christ than the previous time, and thus a little more open to the synaptic connections to and immersion within the wider story of

God, making configuration that little bit more straightforward, until finally the process is completed in the fulness of the age to come. This is the liturgical theology that Aidan

Kavanagh describes as the “ongoing process of experience, memory, reflection, and reappropriation carried out by real people in always changing circumstances.”179

179 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 93.

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Limitations of the Study and Further Questions

There is always a risk with any kind of research that you will simply find what you are looking for. That risk is greatly heightened with qualitative studies, all the more so when

I as researcher have carried out a study within my own pastoral context. In what is often called the Hawthorne effect, congregants will not only want their pastor’s research to succeed for his or her sake, but as beneficiaries of the project they will have a vested interest in that happening.180 In a transparent action-research project such as this one— in which participants are not so much the subject of the study but actual co- researchers—this cannot be altogether avoided. It does not necessarily have to undermine the project’s dependability, however, as I have remained aware of the risk throughout and have thus sought to engage the participants in a variety of ways to ensure as far as possible an authentic engagement with the narrative reflection process.

In the end, it is highly likely that all I have shown in this project is that, by inviting people under my pastoral care in Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission to talk about their lives in a narrative sense in relation to the story of God as it is told and embodied in a “narratively-enriched” celebration of liturgy, they have begun to do just that. But that is indeed the point—they are now doing something they were not doing before, this is changing their lives, and it is connected in some way to our celebration of liturgy together. Not that we are reducing liturgy to being instrumental or for something. We do not do liturgy for the purpose of formation or education, but simply as worship of the

180 Sensing, Qualitative Research, 82.

132 living God. This project must not be allowed to inadvertently distort a transformative vision of liturgy into a utilitarian or mechanical view that liturgical participation will necessarily or immediately produce Christian virtue. It remains true, as liturgical theologians such as Aidan Kavanagh teach us, that by drawing the worshipping community into union with God, liturgy should naturally result in the assembly “doing the world” as liturgy,181 reflecting the life of the age to come. Yet, as Kavanagh says, the change precipitated in the assembly can often be “not so much immediately apparent […] as it is long-term, even eschatological.”182 In the compressed timeframe of this project, such long-term effects cannot have been detected, but by making use of a narrative enquiry method, it has been possible to ascertain that the highlighting of liturgy’s narrative elements has had an effect on the participants’ perception of the role of God’s story in the fabric of their own lives, which is ultimately a preliminary step towards any longer term formation beyond the scope of this study.

Could this model of narrative liturgical formation work anywhere, in other

Orthodox parishes with very different cultures or ways of life? Or indeed in any Orthodox church that is not also simultaneously carrying out a narrative-based action-research project? The intensity of the project and the unique environment of this mission—which

I have earlier characterised as an “experimental farm” of sorts—may indeed place limits on the portability of what the study has shown. “This mission is very special,” one of the

181 Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, 173. 182 Ibid., 93.

133 participants told me. “Because everybody seems to be into their faith, wanting to learn more, you talk about things that you have in common more.” Nevertheless, while the methods—including the specific means by which narrative is brought to the fore—may vary, the fundamental principles should indeed hold. If we accept what postcritical thought and the recovery of virtue-based (teleological) ethics have shown, that we are storied creatures whose identity, purpose and habitual behaviours are shaped by narrative, it only makes sense to privilege the enactment of stories if the worship of the church is to be effectively formative. In other parishes, making the liturgy “narrative rich” may involve a different kind of emphasis from what this project encompassed, or indeed measures that were not even thought of here—there is no “one size to fit all.” I cannot even be sure which of the aspects of narrative enrichment that we exercised at

Holy Myrrhbearers were the most effective in precipitating the re-storying that began to take place. But I am convinced that bringing narrative to the fore is essential, as revealed in the powerful testimony of the conversations and stories recorded.

This project is also restricted in scope by its exclusive focus on the Sunday morning Divine Liturgy. A renewal of liturgical celebration that promotes embodied narrative should ultimately encompass the breadth of Orthodox worship including other eucharistic liturgies, the , sacramental services, and festal services throughout the church year. Along with extending the work begun at Holy Myrrhbearers to other parishes, these would be areas for further consideration and study. For now, this study has been limited to the service which is for most Orthodox the main weekly experience of worship.

VI – Conclusion and Potential Benefits

Contribution to the Practice of Ministry

This project began with the hope of finding surer ground for the eschatological and liturgical theology of ministry of the Orthodox Church. According to this theology,

Orthodox Christian worship, particularly the Divine Liturgy, is a participation here and now in the coming kingdom of God. This should naturally result in forming worshippers to live in this age according to the heaven-on-earth reality of the age to come, to live the

“liturgy after the liturgy” in a self-sacrificial life of kingdom-building modelled after the pattern of Christ. The liturgy, forged in a now-lost premodern world, assumes this. And in attempting to recover the transformative power of the liturgy, the leading liturgical theologians of the late 20th and early 21st centuries simply assert this—Alexander

Schmemann drawing attention to the theological meaning embedded in worship (and thus the need for liturgical education), Aidan Kavanagh to the role of the archetypal “Mrs

Murphy” as primary theologian and the experience of corporate worship (and thus the need to attend to the dialectic of the assembly’s prayerful encounter with God), David

Fagerberg to the prerequisite that she be properly “capacitated” for this role (and thus the need for asceticism).

There is no intention whatsoever in this project to take away from efforts to promote catechesis or prayer or asceticism, which of course remain core tenets and practices of the Orthodox Christian faith. But Mrs Murphy has for some time—many centuries even—struggled to connect these practices or the liturgy that emerged in a forgotten age with her real life. Under the weight of modern concerns, not least the rise

134 135 of individualism, she no longer feels the transformative power of the liturgy. There is a missing link between the ritual words and acts of worship that evoke God and his kingdom and her formation within the overarching meaning of that worship. Meanwhile, she continues to be shaped, not by kingdom-oriented worship, but by individualistic consumerism and other formative influences within modern culture. In this context, the experience of liturgy represents at best a temporary private respite and spiritual escape from the world.

The missing link that this project has explored is narrative. As outlined in much of the postcritical thought of the last few decades, we are creatures with story-based identities inhabiting a story-laden world. It is because the narratives we live within have a telos—an end and a purpose—that we are formed, with our myriad of attitudes and behaviours, the often unconscious habits of mind, body and soul, which define us. The problem of the modern era was not that we ceased to be human beings shaped by stories. It was rather that we forgot that we were, and we thus fell prey to a battery of competing narratives that conscripted our hearts and bodies. An eclipse of narrative in liturgical celebration—marked by the suppression over a long period of significant elements of the story of God, both in words and in their enactment in worship—meant that these other narratives were free to leave their mark on our imaginations and bend us away from God and his kingdom.

What this project has suggested is simply this: give Mrs Murphy a more obvious and embodied narrative in the liturgy, and she will not only participate more fully within worship but she will also begin to re-story her life along the lines of that wider story

136 through a process of narrative liturgical reflection. Guided by the telos of that story she will form the virtues, or habits of behaviour and thought that lead towards it—including after all attaining the education, prayer and asceticism promoted by the liturgical theologians. That suggestion has now been given the foundation of a preliminary narrative-based enquiry at Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission and expressed in a tentative model of narrative liturgical formation in this thesis paper.

The renewal of enacted narrative required within this proposed model does not require significantly changing or distorting the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church.

For the purposes of this project at Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission, renewal of the liturgy of the word and the liturgy of the eucharist meant introducing changes in liturgical celebration that revived ancient practices and privileged wherever possible a fuller telling of the story of God and his kingdom. Not all of these changes in liturgical celebration will be possible in other parishes, given their congregational cultures, episcopal constraints or other pressures. Nevertheless, there is ample scope in nearly every Orthodox Christian parish to highlight the story of God through many of the other measures undertaken at Holy Myrrhbearers, including narrative-based preaching, hearing confessions, counselling congregants, and generally encouraging reflections and conversations around the transformative power of the stories we tell and dwell within.

Other tactics that make use of this framework of enacted narrative of liturgy for spiritual formation could also be devised that better suit different contexts. The transformed lives and relationships as told in this study show the potential benefits of such efforts. As one of the participants, Jamie, says: “The more we actually worship God, the more stuff

137 happens to us. It’s like anything that you try, it seems to fail. But if you do it repeatedly, it happens.”

Potential Benefits to the Wider Church and Society

Throughout the modern era, Christians have assumed that human beings are primarily thinking creatures with rational beliefs and “worldviews,” and even leading liturgical theologians, determined to get behind modernity to a more transformative understanding of worship, have stopped short at the recovery of a sacramental worldview. That is no small accomplishment, and much good has been realised in the various stages of the liturgical movement under the caption of a renewed sacramental worldview and the attendant high rhetoric of liturgical theology. But can we yet say that the human being, even fully equipped with such a worldview, is “capable of a liturgical act”?

As assumed by the mystagogical catecheses of the early church that were designed to capacitate newly illumined Christians for worship and by the Divine Liturgy itself, one of the fundamental purposes of liturgy is to connect us on every level of our being to the transformative, rehabituating power of the narrative of the kingdom of God.

In our late modern world, when most of us have been unwittingly conscripted in our hearts and minds away from God’s story into rival symbolic worlds and foreign liturgies, it has become apparent that no amount of good information—not even couched in eloquent liturgical theology—can make liturgy function as it is intended, that is, as the

138 paradigmatic practice that forms us in the virtues oriented towards our proper telos in the kingdom.

This project has demonstrated the practical possibility of counter-formation to overcome these opposing attractions that attempt to divert our desires and love.

Through a renewed mystagogical approach, addressed to the human person today, sensitive, in the words of James K.A. Smith, to both kinaesthetics and poetics, the faithful may be resituated within the ancient liturgies that remain “compressed, performed narratives” capable of recruiting the “imagination through the body.”183 In the unique environment of Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Mission, a parish conjoined with a school of theology, and an experimental farm of sorts, this research has demonstrated for the benefit of the wider Orthodox Church that liturgical renewal need not mean radical reform, but simply drawing attention to the story of God embedded within liturgy and inviting worshippers to embody that narrative. By inspiring people to unpack and rewrite the scripts of their own lives, and allowing God to re-author their stories, the church may recover and express anew the ancient Christian vision of worship that actualises the age to come and transforms worshippers to live within it.

183 Smith, Imagining the Kingdom, 20.

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