Guide thou the song I shall sing of thee: set prayers

Sometimes, when folks find out I am a jazz singer, they think that means I make up everything I sing. Over the years, students have told me, in various ways, that they want to sing jazz so as to be relieved of having to learn the melody of a song. We place a high value on personal expression in this culture; we don't like being told what to say, and we tend to think that something spontaneous is more "real". Witness the popularity of so-called reality shows, and radio call-in programs on almost any topic. But there is a power in shape and limits.

I belong to what some people think of as a cold and formal church. As an Episcopalian, I take part in a liturgy that is scripted and choreographed. Some say it is impersonal, and I acknowledge that I have on occasion sat in some pretty chilly churches as prayers were read in monotones or sung so elegantly that they became concert pieces. Annie DIllard wrote:

 I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed. In the high churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked.                                                                                                                

"Come Holy Spirit," we pray, "but not too close. Thanks so much." 

And yet.

There is another side to the issue, and I have become reacquainted with it this week. The events unfolding in Japan while all the usual catastrophes continue their appointed rounds in the rest of the world (New Orleans is still suffering, Haitians are still starving, Qaddafi is still killing his people, and American schoolchildren still can't read very well) are so profoundly overwhelming that I don't know what to say. I can't say anything, I can't contain my grief, and I am all over the place like sheep without a Border Collie. I need form.

So I have been deeply grateful for the set prayers like the Lord's Prayer and the collects, the words that have been used for centuries. They hum in my memory like songs, and like songs, they help me groan and cry, and bring me back to trust and to the calm focus that births action.

Strengthen your servants, O God.