Right Brain Liturgy?
by Daniel Benedict

While I did not consciously write Patterned by Grace in terms of what we are
learning about the hemispheres of the brain, I do think that what the book
does for ordinary people is to interpret liturgical prayer more in light of the
right lobe’s functioning than the left. Instead of viewing liturgy primarily in
terms of the printed texts of the rites, I attempted to think more in terms of
images, actions, and whole cloth participation.

In the book I defined liturgy as “patterned communal action in the worship of
God; it is scheduled ritual actions with words.” (Patterned, 23-24) In this
definition the participation is much more than eyes reading words on a page,
ears listening to propositional sermons, and the left hemisphere processing
the meaning of those words.

Closing the performance gap
I will admit that, though many of our traditions (denominations) have vastly
revised liturgical texts that reflect this intent toward broadly patterned
communal action, in actuality many of our local assemblies tend toward a
more narrow focus on words. For example, as of this writing, I am in Japan
and have celebrated Holy Week and Easter with English/Japanese
congregation where the pace of the readings is consistently and noticeably
rapid. Today the reader trotted through the first and second readings from
the printed bulletin as if the only object was to say all of the words clearly and
distinctly in the least amount of time. Many in the congregation were not
listening to the reader and the reading as much as they were concurrently
reading from the same printed text held in their hands! The oral and aural
aspects of what could have been a richly textured narration of Saul’s
conversion and Ananias’ fear of dealing with him were tragically excluded.
Imagination, story and experience were left unexplored and unexperienced.
So, I will acknowledge that there is a performance gap between what our
liturgical books envision and what actually happens. Admittedly, part of the
problem is that our liturgical resources are available primarily in books!

At the same time, I want to be quick to add that many assemblies do “get it”
and are stretching themselves to enact and embody liturgy—not simply read
it! Liturgy today has to do with large muscle activity—standing, sitting,
kneeling, walking, embracing, masticating, and gulping for air after coming up
out of the water. It has to do with experience through all of the senses.
Liturgical action is patterned so it is enacting and experiencing in terms of
holistic (right brain) engagement with what is inward and personal and
outward and social. The pattern is familiar but always playful in the sense that
we seek to attend to the movement of the Spirit and the mystery of grace. In
the play the pattern is experienced creatively and is continuously
reinterpreted by the juxtapositions with what individuals and the community
bring to this week’s celebration.

Words accompanying action
Words are important, but not so much as correct formulaic expressions of
dogma as interpretive keys to the action. “Words” accompany the action, but
they are not the primary consideration as they tended to be in enlightenment
oriented worship from the Protestant Reformation on to the 1970s. Liturgy
today calls for a different kind of literacy than earlier worship. In this
increasingly post-modern era, liturgy involves the “use of symbols and signs
deeply and truthfully lived; with truth telling and honesty about the pain and
tragic dimensions of life in the hope of [knowing] the grace that raised Christ
from the dead.” (Patterned, 24)

What do the words do? Some of the words such as the “Holy, Holy, Holy” in
the communion liturgy connect us to other times and places—both the church
through the centuries and the never ending chorus in heaven. Some of the
words remind us of one another and the drama of call and response, such as
“The Lord be with you./And also with you.” Other words are more negotiable—
that is they are words that are suited to this day or this age, but they are not
perfected or written in stone. They give color, shading, and nuance to the
action in this particular enactment. They will change as suited to the actions in
context from week to week. We can well remember that words spoken are also
actions and they are performative; they do something. When we embrace
each other in the power of the Spirit with the words, “The peace of Christ be
with you,” we diminish the hostility and stress of the world! Or when the
presider (in the United Methodist liturgy) says to the assembly after
confession, “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven” and the assembly
addresses the presider and says, “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are
forgiven” sins are forgiven. With such actions accompanied by words we call,
praise, repent, forgive, profess, renounce, extend peace, give, receive, tease,
remember and much more.

Negotiating right brain patterns
The patterns of liturgical prayer shape us and give shape to our engagement
in all of life. In, with and through these patterned communal actions we know
our story as it emerges in light of God’s story. We negotiate our present and
our future as they are set next to and within God’s story. Here I use
“negotiate” in the sense of navigation and steering around and through the
“realities” that we encounter in daily life set next to Sunday as a little Easter.
The glory of the gospel is that we are not stuck! In Christ’s liturgy we are
invited to entertain and enter alternatives to the current order of things. One
image that comes to mind is that of an icebreaker ship making its journey from
warmer waters into the ice flow with icebergs here and there and then finally
making painstaking progress through the frozen sea to its destination. Living
in Hawaii the image is disturbingly chilly to me, but it does carry with it a sense
of the pressures of opposing surfaces and the cracking and breaking open to
something new. (See Gordon Lathrop’s Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology for
a much more thorough and literate exploration of this hermeneutic of
juxtaposition.)

To use another image, this “negotiating” of our time in God’s time might be
the preparation of a meal. There is the securing of the ingredients, the
pattern of preparation known in the recipe or the head and heart’s riff on the
jazz of food, the mixing and stirring, the time for marinating or rising, cooking,
presentation, and then the conviviality of eating. Here there is the negotiation
of the character, flavors, and possibilities of food, culture and appetites. While
the variables have to be addressed with nuance and appreciation, the
prospect and enjoyment of the meal is cause for both anticipation and delight.
The days of the Betty Crocker cook book (ours is nearly worn out after four
decades) may be numbered. The world of eating on this planet of diverse
peoples and habitats invites bold exploration—but always with a sense that we
enjoy food for nourishment of both our physical and our social bodies. In our
post-modern world, that happens via negotiation of the complexities of the
context; not rigid social and culinary protocol.

So, the right brain is in demand in our journeying, socializing and liturgical
prayer. “In the liturgy we know the Mystery and experience the Mercy’s power
to shape our lives and move us from the old self to participation in the new
creation. In the call-and-response pattern of the church’s prayer, the Spirit
disorients and reorients us, exhorting, cajoling, evoking, and provoking us into
Love’s service.”(Patterned, 24) This takes us far beyond left brain processing
of the words of worship to the Word made flesh and dwelling among us.

Both left and right brain will always have their place in the ways we worship
and enact the gospel. Indeed, from a history of religion approach

“Christianity bested both ‘forefathers’ [Hellenic Orphism and the Judaism of
the Roman Empire] to become the major religion of the West. It achieved this
momentous victory by conjoining the best elements of the older two into a new
religion. Christianity annealed seemingly incompatible opposites into one
seamless creed: numinous rite and written word, mythology and history,
mystery and law.”   

Throughout the history of the church right and left brain approaches have
competed and ascended and descended in importance. We are currently
moving from modernity’s near exclusion of the feminine and the right brain to
embrace them more fully in post-modernity. How this juxtaposition of right and
left, feminine and masculine, numinous and word will play out will only be
known as we continue the journey.

Currently, the challenge before us is to begin to plan and participate in liturgy
in ways that are more right brain; more enactments of the gospel than left
brain analyses in terms of print literate culture. Many of our congregations are
novices at this and hardly know where to begin. Some are quite fluent in right
brain practices that embody the song, story and grace of the gospel. Perhaps
those who are rich in experience and practice of liturgy as patterned
communal action can become “chefs” who invite us to experience the feast
and to taste and see that the Holy One is good in liturgy and life.

Copyright © 2006 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 ©
2006 Daniel T. Benedict, Jr. Used with permission.” No part of this article, with the
exception of  "A Franciscan Blessing" may be reprinted for profit or to appear on another
website. Other websites are welcome to link to it.