The Turning Point of Reformation Sunday

Fifteen years ago, I celebrated Reformation Sunday in a chapel at Mepkin Abbey.  Let me be clear:  I may have been the only one celebrating.  We had no red paraments or stoles, and nobody wore red.  We did not sing "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."  We went much further back in church history chanting Psalms the way that people have for several millenniums.

I was there with a Lutheran and an Episcopalian.  The Lutheran was relieved to have a reason not to go to the high church celebration that her congregation planned for Reformation.  She said she was in the mood for the severe honesty of the Psalms, not the self-congratulatory language that often crept into Reformation Sunday.

I was happy to be able to get to the monastery.  I'd fallen in love with the work of Kathleen Norris, and I wanted a taste of what she experienced at a different monastery.  Of course, I discovered her work years after I moved away from South Carolina, where I would have only had to travel 10 miles to discover Mepkin Abbey.  In 2004, it took a plane ride.

I've since traveled back many times.  The monastery has changed, and I have too.  After that first trip, I felt transformed.  Re-entry was tough, and I yearned to go back permanently, even as I knew it was impossible.  I know I'm not the first person to fall in love with an object we cannot have, but I don't know how many people fall in love with a monastery.

As I reflect further on that week-end, I realize it was a confluence of holidays.  That year, Reformation Sunday fell on the actual day that Martin Luther nailed those theses to the door:  October 31.  Of course, it was also Halloween.  I remember sitting on a bench where we could see across the river, and I realized that we were watching children trick-or-treating.

At one point, my friend and I walked as late afternoon was shifting to dusk, with Spanish moss hanging down off the majestic trees, and we saw two monks walking ahead of us.  They looked as much like ghosts as they looked like monks.

It was 2004, the year of a big election which was just days away, and one of the monks asked if we were going to vote.  We assured him that we would.  He said, "I hope you vote for the right one."

I've always wished that I had engaged him more, asked him to elaborate, but in those days, I worried that engaging with the monks would seem disrespectful, especially if we talked about politics.

I think that it was that visit when one of the older monks prayed that our nation would wake up to realize how morally wrong it was to send our women to fight in wars and that we would soon bring them home.  I thought about how that might have once offended me, when I was a younger woman, but as an older person, I found it touching, even as I might have prayed that we bring everybody back from a war.

Looking back, I am shocked to realize how much longer that war in Afghanistan and Iraq would last.  I am shocked that we still have troops in both countries and that it feels more like a pause than an end to those conflicts.

On Monday, November 1, I realized that the chapel had changed.  It was All Saints Day, and we gathered in a dark chapel lit by candles that morning.  There was a framed print, and I'm almost sure it was John August Swanson's River of Souls.  At that point, I'd never been part of a church that used art in that way.  We had flower arrangements and banners that had been made decades before I was born and paraments and music.  I had attended churches that changed the paraments as the liturgical seasons changed, but that was it.

That week-end, and the visits I would make later combined with Create in Me retreats, ignited a yearning to be part of a church where we did more with the various elements to deepen worship.

In a way, I am now part of a church like the one I envisioned.  It's far from ideal--I'd like to have more of a team of people who inspire each other.  I miss the interactive services that we used to have.

But at least I have a pastor and  church members who are open to these ideas.  There's no altar guild with a stranglehold on the sanctuary.  Most of the church seems to support the idea of creative elements in our church--or at least, there's not a lot of active opposition. 

There are advantages to being part of a very small congregation.

This afternoon, I will have my own celebration of Reformation.  I'm going to finish my application to the spiritual director certificate program.

Maybe 15 years from now, I'll look back on this Reformation Sunday and think about the turning point of a different Reformation Sunday.