Praying the “Wild Spaces” as a Way of Strengthening Prayer in
Worship
by Daniel Benedict
(This article is an adaptation of a blog I did in August of 2006 at http://strongcenterwidehorizon.
blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html.) I begin with a dream fragment not included there.)
How inclusive and "wild" should the Christian assembly's prayer be? In most churches I
visit I am struck by the meagerness and narrowness of the assembly’s prayers—
whether or not they are “liturgical” communities. (I will say that those who are liturgical
generally engage in a form of encompassing and expansive intercessions, but even so
they may not consistently pay attention to God’s heart of love for life in all its forms.)
Liturgical worship or not, the circle usually seems quite small: family, relatives, friends
we know, the bishop and our pastor/priest, and maybe our troops or hurricane victims.
Seldom are there voices raised for the people caught as victims of war, poverty,
genocide, AIDS, addiction, prisoners unjustly convicted, the mentally ill and those who
“care” for them. I seldom hear prayers offered for people in their daily life and work:
school teachers, nurses and doctors, insurance agents, utility workers, and contrarians
in law, media and entertainment. Even more infrequent is there a voice beseeching
heaven for the earth abused by human over consumption.
Prayer connected to the “wild spaces”
Liturgy as cult practice must connect with our shadow side; that is, liturgy must attend
to the prophetic voice. Cultus and prophets have always been in an essential tension.
Without cult, the prophets have nothing to rail against. Without prophets, the liturgical
cultus becomes a wasteland of self-absorption while pretending to be worshiping in the
name of God. This interdependence and interaction is what I so often find missing in
much of the worship in which I participate. Either the prophet is unleashed and the
liturgy dismissed, or the warm familiarity of our liturgy or “our praise and worship” is
piously savored and the prophets barred at the door. I feel it is safe to say that is more
the rule than the exception.
The prophet’s are the heralds of the “wild spaces.” Wild spaces are where one does
not fit the white, male, Western, heterosexual, youthful, educated, able-bodied, middle-
class and successful definition of “human being.” (See embedded image above.)
As a retired, aging, increasingly less able-bodied male, I am discovering that I less and
less fit this mold. The parts that no longer match the hegemonic definition is my “wild
space.” Last August (2006) I walked up from Pike Place Market to my lodging in
Seattle. I saw lots of people whose humanity had little overlap with the hegemonic
definition. Big wild spaces! (By the way, I came across this concept in Sallie McFague’s
Life Abundant--Fortress Press.) Can those wild spaces enter our attention in liturgical
prayer? Will our churches find ways to pray the wild spaces?
Watch out for them! They will destabilize your status quo. Wild-spaces open windows to
see Western culture from different perspectives and invite us and our congregations to
reconsider what our culture holds up as “normal” and “ideal.”
What is so much of the struggle in the North American churches and culture about? It is
about God’s inclusion of the bits and pieces of being “created in the image of God” that
the hegemonic definition does not include! (“No, Virginia, I am not only referring to
sexual orientation!”) This struggle is concerned with the prophetic breaking in upon the
coziness with which we like to tame the liturgy. The liturgy itself is not tame; indeed, I am
convinced that the God who breathes it into us and empowers its enactment is wilder
and more dangerous that our captive imaginations will allow. Remember Annie Dillard's
comments about how worshipers act like they are arranging deck chairs on the Titanic
when they should be putting on crash helmets and launching the life boats?
Paying attention to God’s open door
Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, the consensus document of the World Council of
Churches, summarizes this well when it says:
The resistance to the salvation of God's world—this world, this whole world, this
beloved world—requires that worshipers pay attention, not only to the central things
(the canons of people, materials, and practices that constitute our life in Christ), but to
God’s open doors and to the wild spaces to which we tend to be blind and deaf.
Reflection and Practice
Copyright ©2007, 2009 Daniel T. Benedict, Jr. Local church leaders may reprint any or all of this page for non-
profit use as long as the following copyright notice appears: "Copyright © 2007, 2009 Daniel T. Benedict, Jr. Used
with permission." No part of this article may be reprinted for profit or to appear on another website without
permission of the author. Other websites are welcome to link to it.
Worship
by Daniel Benedict
(This article is an adaptation of a blog I did in August of 2006 at http://strongcenterwidehorizon.
blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html.) I begin with a dream fragment not included there.)
- Solemn Procession: Intercessions From the Soles of Our Shoes
- The procession moved around the church grounds
Over pathways of tamped earth and crumbled bark.
The priest had no censer in her hands—only
A white grainy composite found in the hills near the church—
A composite of crushed shell, coral and ancient plankton,
Which she rubbed and crushed with her hands,
Letting the sprinkles of ancient life
Fall to the pathway.
And the people followed barefoot.
Next came a deacon with some brown peat moss
Finely diced, mixed with sand and earth. It had
Come from the church supply house, marked
“Ceremonial Intercession Dirt” with the instructions,
“Scatter in procession, the congregation following
So it sticks to the soles of their feet.”
And the people followed barefoot.
Next in the procession, A soldier home from the war
In Iraq had a ceremonial “salt” shaker filled with ash
Gathered from a burned mosque where twenty-eight
People died…
And the people followed barefoot.
And at the intercessions the deacon stood and said,
“Sisters and brothers, let us pray from the soles of our feet
For the mercy of God…”
And the people prayed.
How inclusive and "wild" should the Christian assembly's prayer be? In most churches I
visit I am struck by the meagerness and narrowness of the assembly’s prayers—
whether or not they are “liturgical” communities. (I will say that those who are liturgical
generally engage in a form of encompassing and expansive intercessions, but even so
they may not consistently pay attention to God’s heart of love for life in all its forms.)
Liturgical worship or not, the circle usually seems quite small: family, relatives, friends
we know, the bishop and our pastor/priest, and maybe our troops or hurricane victims.
Seldom are there voices raised for the people caught as victims of war, poverty,
genocide, AIDS, addiction, prisoners unjustly convicted, the mentally ill and those who
“care” for them. I seldom hear prayers offered for people in their daily life and work:
school teachers, nurses and doctors, insurance agents, utility workers, and contrarians
in law, media and entertainment. Even more infrequent is there a voice beseeching
heaven for the earth abused by human over consumption.
Prayer connected to the “wild spaces”
Liturgy as cult practice must connect with our shadow side; that is, liturgy must attend
to the prophetic voice. Cultus and prophets have always been in an essential tension.
Without cult, the prophets have nothing to rail against. Without prophets, the liturgical
cultus becomes a wasteland of self-absorption while pretending to be worshiping in the
name of God. This interdependence and interaction is what I so often find missing in
much of the worship in which I participate. Either the prophet is unleashed and the
liturgy dismissed, or the warm familiarity of our liturgy or “our praise and worship” is
piously savored and the prophets barred at the door. I feel it is safe to say that is more
the rule than the exception.
The prophet’s are the heralds of the “wild spaces.” Wild spaces are where one does
not fit the white, male, Western, heterosexual, youthful, educated, able-bodied, middle-
class and successful definition of “human being.” (See embedded image above.)
As a retired, aging, increasingly less able-bodied male, I am discovering that I less and
less fit this mold. The parts that no longer match the hegemonic definition is my “wild
space.” Last August (2006) I walked up from Pike Place Market to my lodging in
Seattle. I saw lots of people whose humanity had little overlap with the hegemonic
definition. Big wild spaces! (By the way, I came across this concept in Sallie McFague’s
Life Abundant--Fortress Press.) Can those wild spaces enter our attention in liturgical
prayer? Will our churches find ways to pray the wild spaces?
Watch out for them! They will destabilize your status quo. Wild-spaces open windows to
see Western culture from different perspectives and invite us and our congregations to
reconsider what our culture holds up as “normal” and “ideal.”
What is so much of the struggle in the North American churches and culture about? It is
about God’s inclusion of the bits and pieces of being “created in the image of God” that
the hegemonic definition does not include! (“No, Virginia, I am not only referring to
sexual orientation!”) This struggle is concerned with the prophetic breaking in upon the
coziness with which we like to tame the liturgy. The liturgy itself is not tame; indeed, I am
convinced that the God who breathes it into us and empowers its enactment is wilder
and more dangerous that our captive imaginations will allow. Remember Annie Dillard's
comments about how worshipers act like they are arranging deck chairs on the Titanic
when they should be putting on crash helmets and launching the life boats?
Paying attention to God’s open door
Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, the consensus document of the World Council of
Churches, summarizes this well when it says:
- E26. As it is entirely the gift of God, the eucharist brings into the present age a new reality
which transforms Christians into the image of Christ and therefore makes them his effective
witnesses. The eucharist is precious food for missionaries, bread and wine for pilgrims on
their apostolic Journey. The eucharistic community is nourished and strengthened for
confessing by word and action the Lord Jesus Christ who gave his life for the salvation of the
world. As it becomes one people, sharing the meal of the one Lord, the eucharistic assembly
must be concerned for gathering also those who are at present beyond its visible limits,
because Christ invited to his feast all for whom he died. Insofar as Christians cannot unite in
full fellowship around the same table to eat the same loaf and drink from the same cup, their
missionary witness is weakened at both the individual and the corporate levels. [emphasis
added]
The resistance to the salvation of God's world—this world, this whole world, this
beloved world—requires that worshipers pay attention, not only to the central things
(the canons of people, materials, and practices that constitute our life in Christ), but to
God’s open doors and to the wild spaces to which we tend to be blind and deaf.
Reflection and Practice
- 1. If you were asked by a Christian from another church to describe the prayer
segment that could be called “intercession” in your congregation, what would you
say? As you describe it, what do you affirm? Find yourself wishing could be
improved?
2. How do you respond to the notion of “wild spaces”? What in your life does not
fit the “white, male, Western, heterosexual, youthful, educated, able-bodied,
middle-class and successful definition of ‘human being.’” Look at the graphic and
the tensions that it evokes. Can you imagine your congregation willingly opening
itself to God’s open doors to all sorts and conditions of people? The creatures
and the earth God made that we take so for granted and consume so
voraciously?
3. How will worship around central things in your community enact God’s open
doors this coming Sunday? What formation and preparation of the congregation
is needed to help them pay attention to their wild spaces? The wild spaces of
people they know in their neighborhoods? Work places? In their communities
and in the wider world? In the wild spaces of plants and animals wholly different
from ourselves whom God created?
4. Try you hand at writing a prayer of intercession that includes people and
needs reflect the wild spaces. Or, take one of the forms of "Prayers of the
People" from the Book of Common Prayer (for example, p. 387) and with each
intercession add more specific expressions that push the envelop out to include
those God loves but whom your congregation often overlooks.
Copyright ©2007, 2009 Daniel T. Benedict, Jr. Local church leaders may reprint any or all of this page for non-
profit use as long as the following copyright notice appears: "Copyright © 2007, 2009 Daniel T. Benedict, Jr. Used
with permission." No part of this article may be reprinted for profit or to appear on another website without
permission of the author. Other websites are welcome to link to it.
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