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Feb
09
2012
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Posted 98 days ago ago by Marcia McFee  7 Comments
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Words, Words, Words
When I was in college, I played the role of Eliza Doolittle in the musical My Fair Lady. One of my favorite songs to sing began with Eliza blasting Higgins and Pickering about their incessant running-on-of-the-mouth. “Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words! I get words all day through first from him, then from you, is that all you blighters can do?!” She finally pleads with them not to tell her in words, but to show her by their actions (I also liked this because I was a Missouri gal from a little town in the “Show Me” state). The ironic and comical thing about that song is that it is a “banter” song, with words tumbling out of Eliza’s mouth in a rush!
But “show me” would also be good advice for many of our liturgies, indeed. We Protestants have given words the center of our attention ever since the Reformation when, at the same time in history, the printing press created much excitement about this form of communication newly accessible to the masses. We’ve even sometimes gone so far as to call the sermon the “meat” of the service with everything else the “preliminaries.”
And yet, in our postmodern age of reclaiming visual multimedia communication, “word-smithing” takes on vital importance. From “sound bites” in advertising to carefully-crafted oration in political speeches, we wonder what role substantive verbiage has in our society. We wonder if we can say something of substance and hold the attention of increasingly attention-span deficient congregations. We do need words. But we need to shift our thinking from words versus visuals and action to verbal forms in the hospitable company of all the arts in worship. And we need to see words as conduits of images and movement.
As I said in the first article of this series, we are all ritual artists who are called to facilitate Gospel storytelling that incorporates all the senses, using all the forms of communication at our disposal. We do this not in isolation, with preachers and musicians and visual/media artists off in their own corners all the time, but as a team who plans together and plans ahead. This is what I call “intention design.” In this article, I begin the journey of looking at a particular art form within that collaboration.
“Wordsmiths” are all those who carefully consider the verbal imagery at play in our worship. These people on the team include not only preachers, but also those who may be writing liturgy, choosing liturgy from various resources, training those who read liturgy and scripture, as well as those who format the words we use on the page or the screen (I know, if you are in a very small church you may be all of the above!). Have you ever considered the administrative assistant who puts the bulletin together as part of the worship team? They are! The way the words we say are presented on the page is also an art form. Any graphic designer will tell you that the way words look will affect the way we experience them. If you utilize projections in worship, this is especially true. Media designers are both visual and verbal artists (well, they are also dramatists, but we’ll get to that in a later article).
So if you have responsibilities in any of these areas, this is your article. However, I want to suggest that all team members will benefit from studying each article together so that we keep gaining a holistic appreciation for each component of this ritual art process.
Creating a Word Palette
Words are visual. The verbal artist is also a visual artist. Our brains think in images. When you have a thought, you aren’t seeing words on a page in your imagination, right? The scene is played out in images. As you read a book or hear a story, your imagination is immediately translating concepts into concrete scenes. So the more concrete our verbal “imagery,” the more readily solidified into our sense memory are the concepts we proclaim. Does this make sense? (“Making sense” is even a term based on how we turn concepts into sensory experiences!)
When we are reading something, such as this article, we have time to pause, read a portion of it again, let it sink in. But in liturgy–a “real time” verbal art–our congregations don’t have that luxury. Words go by, gone from the air as soon as they are spoken or left behind on the written page as the liturgy progresses to the next thing. So liturgy (and preaching) has to be concise. It is more like poetry than prose. It is more like carefully crafted film dialogue where every moment counts. What we create for liturgy and preaching is a “palette” of symbolic, vivid, imagistic verbal expression.
Let’s play with an example created as a Call to Confession for Palm Sunday. Before I began to write, I imagined a palette of colors, so to speak, that came from the context of the story of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. The palette includes not just bright celebratory colors of the parade, but also the fact that participating in this parade was an incredible risk to Jesus and his followers. They knew that this parade was flying in the face of the “powers that be.” At one gate of the city is Jesus proclaiming allegiance to “the name of the Lord”–to the kingdom of God’s justice–and at the opposite gate of the city is Herod’s entourage with the message of allegiance to the “kingdom of Herod” (the Roman empire). This is a palette that includes the murky, deep colors of fear and uncertainty. Standing at the gate and making a decision to march is the image that I settled on as a metaphor for our confession on this day. So the first lines became “Holy God, we stand at the gate, hesitant and uncertain. At times we are unwilling to answer your invitation; slow to take steps into the journey toward your reign. Forgive us, we pray…”
Creating Movement with Words
Verbal arts are also about action. Movement. Transformation. If I had included all the historical information from the paragraph above in the beginning of the prayer, it would have been laborious in this prayer form–leave that for the art form called the sermon where images have time be expanded and explored, opened and examined. Too much in-formation in liturgy makes it didactic and static rather than facilitating trans-formation. Sometimes liturgy becomes a “mini-sermon,” one of my particular pet peeves. Think poetry. We simply introduce an image so that it can go somewhere–we stand at the gate–the threshold of every bold decision we’ve ever had to make as followers of Jesus–and then we get to the point. “Forgive us.” We do this because it is from that point that we can move and be moved. We petition God in no uncertain terms. “Help us… Grant us the courage to join you in the procession…”
Let’s take a look at the movement of the whole prayer.
Many: O God, we stand at the gate, hesitant and uncertain.
At times we are unwilling to answer your invitation;
slow to take steps into the journey toward your Reign.
Forgive us, we pray.
Help us to embrace the joy and the pain
that comes of following you,
of loving others,
of accepting ourselves.
Grant us the courage to join you in the procession;
the selflessness to lay our cloaks before you;
the freedom to lift our palms to your glory;
and the knowledge that by your grace we are forgiven. Amen.
One: Hear this good news! The procession is ever moving forward.
We can join at any moment. The invitation still stands!
In the name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven!
Many: In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!
Glory to God! Amen!
Notice the format of the prayer on the page. This is a poetic form rather than paragraph form. We often print unison prayer like this:
O God, we stand at the gate, hesitant and uncertain. At times we are unwilling to answer your invitation; slow to take steps into the journey toward your Reign. Forgive us, we pray. Help us to embrace the joy and the pain that comes of following you, of loving others, of accepting ourselves. Grant us the courage to join you in the procession… etc.
While this may save bulletin space, it is a sacrifice. What you sacrifice is understanding–actually taking in the word imagery as it flies by. The first poetic form has one idea per line with subsets of ideas indented, so our brains can take in the meaning of this prayer more easily. Our eyes use the visual format as part of the clues about what we are expressing. In fact, we can also pray this together more easily as we follow the natural pauses created by the lines. We get to feelthe rhythm and movement as part of the meaning of the prayer–the encounter with God–rather than our attention being taken up with the struggle of staying together in unison. Even worse is using ALL CAPS TO INDICATE UNISON SPEAKING. Our eyes use the up and down-ness of letters to instantly recognize words on a page. When you place everything in all caps, you take away this shortcut making cognition even slower. The bottom line is getting to the essence of the moment. As wordsmiths for worship, we write for fleeting moments in time. We don’t write for the posterity of the page, we write for living, active bodies at worship.
Think Like a Filmmaker
When we engage in verbal artistry, whether that’s written liturgy, the preached Word, scripture reading or extemporaneous prayer and worship leadership, we do this in collaboration. Some of my research over the last couple of years has been to find out what I could learn from filmmakers that would help our worship design and leadership. There are many lessons to be learned. One important lesson with regard to verbal artistry comes from screenwriters. When someone is writing for the screen, it is very different from writing a story for print media. As they write, screenwriters see what is happening when the words are being brought to life. They know that the words they write will always have a visual, musical and action component at the moment they are spoken.
When I begin the stage of Shaping and Editing First Drafts in my creative process (see the steps in the creative process in my previous article), I try to see in my mind’s eye what is happening in the worship space. Where is the reader/preacher/speaker in the worship space? What sounds might be accompanying these words? Does this belong in a musical interlude in a congregational song? Is there music or sound effect or silence underscoring this? What kind of speaking voice does this need? Young? Old? Forceful? Hushed? Am I at the pulpit or in the aisle or at the font or table at this point in this sermon? What movement or transition in space would facilitate a deeper understanding? Well, you get the point. There are a lot of things going on while I’m writing.
As I was writing the Call to Confession for Palm Sunday, the verbal metaphor of being at the gate readying for the parade called a specific place in the sanctuary to my mind–the back of the center aisle where the Palm Sunday procession would happen. Usually I’m not a fan of the Confession placed at the beginning of the service (especially when there is communion), but I felt like we needed to see ourselves hesitating at that gate before we could really let loose with our “Alleluia’s.” This imagining began to create a shape for the service, a place in the Order of Worship and a posture for the congregation in saying it. They would have to be oriented toward the “gate,” standing and facing the back. If we couldn’t get everyone back there actually in the narthex waiting to come in (this is the advantage for small churches… perhaps you could do this), at least the leader had to be our representative and stand in that place on behalf of all of us. And when the words “Glory to God! Amen!” were spoken, then we would immediately have much joyous energy bursting forth down the aisle.
This “thinking like a filmmaker” is no less important for the preacher. Even if you don’t plan to literally move from where you stand to preach, the sermon shape itself has movement, has varying dynamics.
Steven Spielberg says that when he is editing a film, he knows that unless he changes the dynamic, the feel, at least every six minutes (no matter how stimulating the dynamic), he will lose his audience. What are the moments of movement in the sermon? For the Palm Sunday service containing our Call to Confession, the image of standing in a particular place is so poignant, I would choose to fashion a sermon that moves from one perspective to another–a narrative form that offers the view from not only the gate, but along the procession, at the side of the road, the entrance into the city. I would choose to actually move myself from one space to another, but you don’t have to in order to invite the congregation’s imaginations to go there.
Friends, the verbal arts are rich, especially in their role in the ritual arts. They are not just recited but they can be seen, tasted and felt. “Words, words, words” have an important and substantive place in the woven tapestry of all the arts in worship. See you next time!.
Marcia McFee, Ph.D., is a worship professor, consultant, designer and leader. She travels extensively in order to teach workshops that are aimed at equipping the local church with resources to create meaningful and memorable worship. She lives near Lake Tahoe, where she regularly holds worship design and leadership retreats. Marcia also provides inspiration and worship design help all year long with the Worship Design Studio Online Worship Design Studio Online.
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