Walking the Labyrinth, June 4, 2009—Today is the feast day of St Charles Lwanga and Companions, martyred in Uganda in 1886; the birthday of Jefferson Davis, first (last, and only) President of the Confederate States of America, born in 1808; in 1989, two events of note: the Communist Chinese government began its termination of the student protests around Tienanmen Square, and Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, died. Pope John XXIII died on the same date, 26 years earlier.
Our spiritual lives, like all the other aspects of our lives, are influenced by what happens to us. We are impacted by things great and small, many of them beyond our control. But the principal influence on our spiritual lives comes from inside us, from our habits and chosen dispositions. Habits, at some level, are choices. When we think of habits we might think of the man who “habitually” shakes a leg when he’s nervous, or the girl who repeatedly plays with strands of hair while she talks on the phone. But habits—good and bad—run deep in us, and can have profound influences on how we live and whether or not we are happy. Prayer can become a habit. How we deal with life’s frustrations is grounded in the disposition of our souls, and that disposition can be formed by habit. Habits of soul can give us stability in a world of uncertainty. The Church’s worship, her liturgy, is habitual. Traditions of worship, Protestant or Catholic, Jewish or Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist, provide stability to religious beliefs and outlooks. This past Sunday, some friends took me to an Eastern Rite Russian church for Pentecost. I haven’t been to a Russian liturgy for years, but you may know that I spent a year living in a Russian Orthodox monastery in New York while attending an affiliated seminary. Over that year I learned some of the basics of Russian and Old Church Slavonic (an early form of Russian which over the centuries has become the liturgical language of the Russian Church) and learned some of the basic chants of the Russian tradition. When we went into St Andrew’s Church on Sunday, I was taken back. The church is not beautiful to the eye: it has 19th century style iconography (bad imitations of Italianate Renaissance figures) throughout the church, old 1960’s style wood paneling, and it’s cluttered with stuff. But when the choir began their chants (they were surprisingly good) and I heard the clack of the censer as the deacon made his very thorough rounds of the church, swinging the censer at each and every icon and person in the building, the years and miles evaporated. I was surprised how much of the old chants I remembered; though Fr Sanchez, one of our group, put a liturgy-book in my hands, I didn’t need it and never opened it. I sang at times, at times I listened silently, and most often my eyes were drwn back, over and over, to an old Russian All Saints Day icon, three joined panels depicting the Blessed Virgin surrounded by row after row of saints, all of their hands upturned in worship. The joy or worship—the freedom to step completely out of yourself and focus on He Who Is—came to me afresh. It came from habit, a habit of a lifetime of worship, most of the time imperfect, but perhaps perfect worship here on earth can only be experienced vicariously, looking at an All Saints icon, knowing that the Day is Yet to Come when we will be “regular and frequent” (to borrow an old Prayer Book phrase) in perfect worship. Our personal habits build our spiritual lives. That’s what a daily walking of the Labyrinth means.
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