Listening for Liturgy’s Strange Voices in Speech-Saturated Public Spaces
Note: I am giving the Aidan Kavanagh Lecture at Yale’s Institute for Sacred Music next week. This is a draft of the introduction to my presentation. Or perhaps it is a draft of the preface to the introduction, the primary word here being draft :).
Is that true? Really? Come on, now. That’s a Babylon Bee article, isn’t it?
I can’t believe I just spent that much time reading that post.
How many views did I get? Only half as many “likes”? Why didn’t those other people “heart” my photo?
It’s noisy out there. And in here (in my head). So much static. Interference. Meme-omic chatter.
Permutations and op-ed combinations “to infinity and beyond” (or so it seems).
Anybody and everybody talking about anything and everything on any and every platform.
Traffic honking. Politicians fili-blustering. Information speeding down super-spyways.
News headlines blaring. Guns firing. Sirens wailing. And people too.
It’s noisy out there. And in here (in my heart). So hard to know what is real. Authentic. True.
I think part of the noisiness is because so many of us are searching, hoping, longing, yearning for, even scrambling for–something. Maybe we long for what my mama used to call the “gospel truth.” Of course, she didn’t realize that her use of the phrase harkened back to a time when to tell the “gospel truth” meant to speak a “truth” as undeniably believable as, well, you know–“the Gospel.”
Let’s Google that. Google what? The “Gospel truth.” What is the “Google truth” about “Gospel truth”?
Truth that is undeniably believable? Undeniably believable for whom? And which Gospel? Aren’t there four in the biblical canon? Four perspectives. Four voices. Four contexts. Four portraits.
Gospel truth. From the Old English, God (good) spel (news) truth? Good news truth. Good tidings truth, as some dictionaries suggest. I like that. But who talks about “tidings” these days except at Christmastime?
And where do we look–or listen–for good tidings truth in today’s speech-saturated public spaces?
Thus the title for my presentation–When Wisdom Is Silent: Listening for Liturgy’s Strange Voices in Speech-Saturated Public Spaces.
I am curious–ironic, isn’t it, that “curious” is from the Latin, curiosus, or “careful,” from cura, or “care”–I am curious whether and how worship practices can infuse speech-saturated spaces with good tidings that disrupt the clang and clamor of the truth and knowledge power-brokers-that be. How can our liturgies be places where estranged voices can be heard and respected as proclaimers of good tidings wisdom?
[An aside–a comment, if you will–curious is related to curate which is from the Latin, curatus, which means “to take care of” which also means “spiritual guide or priest.” I Googled that, btw. A curate is a priest? To curate the truth is to “priest” the truth? Is that true, really? How does liturgy curate truth?]
Over many years, I have pondered the relationship between Wisdom Woman and the Strange Woman in Proverbs. They both call out in public places. One is praised; the other is vilified. Is it possible that liberating and healing truth is both wise and strange? That God is both wise and strange? And how do we have ears to hear either through the cacophonous discord of our public speech-making?
Thus ends this prefatory draft. Stay tuned. I know I am. Indeed, I wait in hope for the next words and sentences to be revealed…
Salt 