Sabbath Devotional :: The Mist of Familiarity

“Life, & the world, or whatever we call that which we are & feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being . . . . Life, the great miracle, we admire not, because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the function of that which is its object.”

This passage, which opens an essay by the English Romantic poet Percy Shelley, has been a touchstone for me since I first heard it in college. There are many things about our spiritual lives, and particularly our participation in church, that can be obscured by “the mist of familiarity.” One of the strangely lovely gifts of our enforced time away from church has been the rolling back of these mists from our weekly ritual of the sacrament — I have been moved to tears each time I have been with fellow believers for the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in recent weeks.

I’m convinced that the miracle of renewal and rebirth and reconnection to our loved communities is available, both on the days when we can see it clearly, and in those times when we merely ache for an elusive glimpse. I’ve been remembering a time when a visit to an unfamiliar ward similarly helped roll away the mists from this loved moment of each week and let me really see what was happening. This is what I wrote about it at the time; I hope it will bless your Sabbath rituals this week.

Last Sunday, I was visiting my brother’s ward, for the blessing of a sweet new nephew. His ward is a funny pie-sliced wedge of city and suburbs, a sometimes awkward mix of suburban apartment-dwelling graduate students and city residents, mostly poor, mostly immigrants. The majority of the members are new(ish) converts, and many of them are therefore adult Aaronic priesthood holders. And yesterday, several of them helped with the administration of the sacrament for the first time. Or, better, yesterday they ministered to us — to me — in the Lord’s Supper.

The first prayer was in beautifully-accented English. I lost track of how many times it started; I only know it was enough for me to hear and feel every word. “O God, dee Eternal Fader” — the repeated invocation more plaintive each time. And when all the words were perfectly pronounced (or nearly enough), there were no 12-year-old deacons lining up in white shirts; in fact there was no lining up at all, just a bewildered clustering around the sacrament table, a lot of whispered instructions, and a few young men leading their elders by the hand to show them which way to go, or, in one case, to steady an older brother who walked with some trouble.

There wasn’t a lot of quiet prayer or pondering among the members of the congregation, either. We were all nervous to see what would happen; maybe a few people were scandalized by the hint of chaos. I was mostly scrounging around for tissues to staunch the overflowing from my eyes. After a few minutes, there was a motley parade back up to the table — servants of God in parkas, kente cloth, a bright orange sweater, and a necktie or two. Another blessing, another confused outpouring of grace, and it was finished. The cloth folded, our brothers returned to sit among us in the pews, as though they had not just been transfigured, as though they had not been — a moment ago — holy vessels of God’s surpassing love.

I used to think that people were all mostly alike, that if we learned the same things, and especially if we belonged to the same church, we’d eventually understand each other well enough to get along, to feel something at least vaguely warm and fuzzy for one another, and that we’d become unified by being more like each other (by which I meant, of course, that everyone would come around to my way of thinking). I thought we could make ourselves into brothers and sisters by force of will (mostly mine). To my shame, I believed that I mostly knew how things should be done. I knew what a well-planned, elegantly executed sacrament service was, and assumed that this was the goal of all congregations. I thought that loving my fellow Saints, especially new-born ones, mostly meant helping them know how to do things the “right” way. Once we had mastered the basics of reverence, I thought, we might touch the hem of God’s garment, might get a staid taste of mercy.

It is not like that at all, not at all. I have nothing to teach, no help to offer. I am small and broken, and it turns out that I know little of love. Yet holiness rains down in wild, pelting torrents, without warning or reason, though we don’t expect or deserve it. Because we don’t deserve it. The mercy seat is right there, in front of us, the table groaning under the weight of Christ’s broken body, His love poured out like water, laughing at those tiny cups as it floods the room to cleanse and heal and refresh, to hold us all in the womb of grace, until we are reborn as true brothers and sisters.