Presence

So, first I should say that I pray twice a day, or at least that's how it looks to most people. That's to say that I go through a set liturgy of common prayer twice a day (these are not necessarily the only instances of prayer, if "instance" is even appropriate): morning and evening prayer of the Episcopal Daily Office as set out in the Book of Common Prayer, 8am and 5:30pm respectively. We do it five days a week at the church and in the privacy of home (or wherever) on the weekends.

Why?

Well, there are as many answers to this as there are individuals who find it worth asking. One answer is that we are Episcopalian and the Book of Common Prayer is only common if we actually use it and that it provides the Daily Office as a daily commitment to prayer. Once upon a time it was a requirement that priests observe the Office every day, and at the church whenever possible. That has been relaxed, and in fact you might be challenged to find priests who do so. I know of a couple. When, under the guidance of a great priest, I began to learn of the importance of the Office, I found that there was only one church within reasonable distance (for daily attendance) that even said the Office more than twice a week. It just happened that said church was only about a ten minute walk from my house.

It gets better. The only reason that this particular church said the Office twice a day for 5 days per week is because this loony grad student got it into his head that common prayer was important. So he volunteered to his vicar to lead the Office with said frequency. In fact, he did so alone for about a year before anyone started joining him. And about a year after that I showed up on his church step and thereafter reappeared daily. He admitted being a little freaked out that this guy (me) kept coming every day, twice a day. Surely there must be something wrong with such a person (don't miss the reflexivity of that statement!). In fact, C entertained the thought that something was wrong with him for showing up to lead the office everyday.

A word about C. He's not what you might picture a guy who prays a lot. True, he's a New Testament Ph.D. student... but he's also orthodox in his beliefs (more surprising than you might think). And one of the more orthodox things that he thinks is that you can't be orthodox in belief without being orthodox in practice. So, I think he'd agree that the first indication that he's a Trinitarian Christian might be that he walks to the church twice a day for common prayer, often to pray by himself (the Trinity is present in the strangeness of that statement). But he's also a former college athlete, a self-professed jock who didn't start thinking until late in college. He's a big guy, for whom basketball and tennis are the default setting. The only thing that would make him happier than crushing me in each of those sports were if I was much better at those sports and he still crushed me. As it is, he must enjoy it, because we do it a lot and I almost never win. Anyway, C is most likely to show up for prayer wearing athletic shorts and a "Beefcake" t-shirt riding a bike that's much too small for his 230 lbs frame (until I gave him a bigger bike). He has little patience with people, although he's not confrontational. He'd just prefer to avoid people with whom he shares little in viewpoint. He's very focused on three things: the church, theology/NT, and sports (sometimes in that order). But if you saw him, and maybe if you chatted with him for a few moments, you'd swear that his natural setting is in a bar watching ESPN after having spent a few hours at some sports practice.

Not long after I started showing up I learned a group of homeless fellows lived in the church parking lot. When the police came to rid the parking lot of the nuisance the church decided to make an open declaration to both the police and the homeless that the homeless were under no circumstances to be run off the property: they were welcome so long as they obeyed the law. Score one for the church. It's never so simple though. The police still harass the guys because the church is near a strip of retail stores whose business is ostensibly hurt by the presence of the homeless.I guess people don't buy as much crap when they see homeless people.And that's a problem.Anyway, we've gotten to know these guys pretty well. They have their problems, and some have gotten help (rehab, housing, etc.), but the important thing is presence. Our presence with them and their presence with us.

There is a great myth in society that we can apply a label to a group of people and thereby explain the situation, that "homeless" means lazy, addicted, aggressive, and/or deviant. The myth is that somehow this group is inherently different from professionals or middle-class or the rich. So, by being present we haven't really done anything positive, we've just declined to perform a negative action by relegating them, or us, to some defining group. We've just declined the offer to dissolve community. The next step, of course, is to find some community.

C and and I agree on these topics, but we have also struggled to understand how we can be a community with these guys, especially amidst all the anxiety and fears that accompany modern life, especially with a family. Let's face it, inviting a guy in off the street is a completely different action when you have a wife and maybe also a child.Enter M. M has a life story that is too unbelievable to post. Let's just say he has a unique testimony. He's also now a regular fixture at the Office and has cultivated friendships with the homeless guys. M has two advantages over myself and C: 1.) he's single and 2.) he's fearless. His presence has done more than either of us, and it is developing every day. My only caveat is that we have to keep his presence with the guys from becoming a singularity. Certainly M has the ability to be present with them more often simply because he has no responsibility to a wife, but we have to figure out how this all works toward community rather than M's mission to the homeless or as a competitive model where M is better at being among the homeless.

The diversity of our interactions with these guys is a boon.So, to wrap up, the Office is about transformation. It's daily training, daily practice, and daily petition. For some, it is even more important that it is a daily presence. The Office has been forgotten just enough that its observance is almost radical, but the radical-ness only makes the transformative powers more apparent, not more efficacious. So far, at this little church down the street, the Office has done much to transform the lives of a few middle-class Christians along with their homeless friends. It has even begun to have more widespread effects in the community as the transformation of the Office influences community discussions about how to view and interact with its poorer members.These widespread effects are a blessing, and may even be inevitable, but they can never be said to be a goal of the Office. Christians don't see things so linearly. Anamnesis is a better model. The effects are experienced in the liturgy itself, as a presence. Time is compressed into a celebratory moment, and thus causality is indistinguishable in the atemporal moment. In the Office, as an extension of the Eucharist, we have no goals.

It's about presence.

JR

(Written May 31, 2008 and posted at jaxetal.blogspot.com)