I was thinking that I was just going to delete the previous post; it was too dumb. We all forget things. But then I started thinking how this is like my "forgetting" with the hymnal. Habits just don't go away easily. I know there's road construction, but nevertheless I keep driving on the road I normally use. I know the words in the new hymnal are different, but nevertheless I keep saying the old words, no matter how hard I try not to. Just the other day in Bible class, we were praying Ps 46 out of the hymnal, and I noticed the words were different. I concentrated on saying the right word. My eyes saw the right word. My brain was attuned to the change. But even so, my mouth just couldn't say "The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress." (Sheesh, even when I try to type it, I start typing "refuge" and have to go back and erase.)
I feel like a little kid learning to read. When a child is struggling to decode the words, the reading comprehension isn't really there. That's where I am with the new hymnal. When there's so much attention required to try to wrestle the right word out of my mouth, I miss the message of the hymn or the collect. I think it's called "losing the forest for the trees." But maybe in a few years I'll be back in the forest rather than clumsily bumping into one tree after another.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
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Susan, I'm a creature of habit myself.
ReplyDeleteWe form habits because verifying even the simplest of actions takes work. If we had to recalculate the consequences of every step we take, we would waste minutes just getting out to the car.
So it is that we are accustomed to liturgy or hymn text or (if you're perfect pitch) a memorized key. We really have to step back and see whether the new things we are singing are really kosher. Change is cool once in a while because it reminds you why we do the things we do, but constant change leaves one uncertain in one's abilities.
Did that make sense? :)
Lately, I've found myself starting the corporate confession with the wording of the LBW, which we used for about 12 yrs. Ack! The tunes from the Luth. Service Book and Hymnal are ground into my mind forever --that was the liturgy I used from birth to 9th grade. For about 6 yrs we alternated each week between LW and TLH. Now we use LW exclusively. I can't take this anymore. What am I going to be saying when I'm 103 and can't wipe myself ?
ReplyDeleteYes, Dan, it makes sense. Same as when I started grocery shopping, and had to figure out which brand was the cheapest, or read the labels to find out which items were Real Food instead of all chemicals. But now I know, and by habit I grab the same old things. It saves a lot of energy.
ReplyDeleteY'know, now that you've phrased it the way you did, I realize something. Pastors will sometimes talk about one of the reasons contemp worship is bad. We spend our Sun morning evaluating what we're singing and what we're praying, to know whether we can say "amen" to it. And when we're evaluating we aren't praying. But right now we're all kind of in a position where we're evaluating and getting used to something new.
Went to church tonight up in the city. Larry Rast preached. At the party afterwards, he started crabbing (good-naturedly) about those people changing the words to his hymns! I agreed with him, but he's used to LW and I'm used to TLH, and so we're both crabbing about different changes. I think the book is too like LW; he thinks it's too like TLH. LOL -- it provided good perspective for me.
And Polly, I agree. We keep getting "improvements" instead of leaving things as is. I am now on my fifth version of Psalms 1 and 23: KJV when I was little, then RSV as a school kid, then NIV as a young adult, then over a decade of NKJV, and now we've got ESV. If only I could believe that this is it, that they're done, and this is what we'll have when we're 103. But I can't believe that they won't find "something better." I really would like to stick with NKJV, expecting that in 20-30 years we'll be using that one. But there's no telling what will be the next change, so trying to anticipate it probably wouldn't work.
I keep telling myself that the people who worked on LSB had a no-win job plunked in their laps. They weren't the ones who started tinkering with liturgies and Bible translations. That Pandora's Box was opened decades ago. Now the men who worked on LSB were stuck with people like me on the one hand and people like Larry Rast on the other hand! There's no way to bring unity back to the synod without messing up people's words every which way. But the only option to this hymnal is to leave us divided on our words. That's not good either.
At times, though, I think this going into a period of evaluation is good. It makes us think about what we are saying, as a corporate body and individually.
ReplyDeleteWhen my husband was on vicarage, they did a Bible study on the liturgy....over and over again we heard "I've been doing this for ______ decades and I've never really thought about what it meant. When a part of the liturgy works its way into the sermon, my husband often gets that response. What I also like about LSB is that with the references in the liturgy, people are encouraged to look it up (though with congregations addicted to their bulletin inserts, its going to take a lot of work to get them there!)
It does make it hard when you do have the liturgy pretty much memorized and there are new words. I have dealt with that going from my college congregation (TLH) to our seminary congregation (LW) to our first call (LBW which evolved into mostly LW) and now TLH and LW depending on whether we have an organist or not. Now lets not forget to throw in catechism changes, etc.
As good Lutherans, change makes us cranky....just like when someone sits in "our" pew.
Maybe it will be good for our 103 year old minds that we have been kept on our toes....in the end, whether or not we fall back into an older version, I'm sure that the pastor praying with us will deal with it well.