Note (1/22/10): I'm actually not sure when I wrote this particular paragraph, but found it saved in a draft post that I never published in 2006 during my year in Nebraska. I just picked an arbitrary date in February (since there were no posts for February) and posted it, retroactively.
I used to think that the mainline churches, with their traditions and liturgy, provided more trappings and distractions from the presence of God than the more stripped down, low-church churches, where there was nothing to fall back on if you weren't having a direct personal experience of God at any given moment. Now, however, I realize that the liturgy and the ritual and all the other elements of the service, while they can have the effect of distracting us from God's presence when they become too rote, too repetitious, can also serve to hold us, to carry us through those times in our lives when we do NOT feel the presence of God. Those times in our life when we seem to have more questions than answers. Those times in our lives when everything seems to be falling apart, disintegrating into chaos. At those times, the liturgy will hold us. We will still recite the same words of the Nicene Creed, still celebrate the Eucharist, still be assured of God's grace and forgiveness to us. When we can do nothing else, when we cannot bring ourselves to pray of our own volition, we can go to a church and recite the words and kneel and go through the motions, with the hope that in the doing, these things will become real to us.
