Take a Bow

A few years ago, while my wife's cousin, and his wife, were visiting, they decided to come to church with us for a Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. For those who don't know, this is a service in the middle of the week, during Lent, when remaining Eucharist from the previous Sunday is offered again to the faithful. Hence: Pre-Sanctified. My Godfather's advice on Presanctified liturgy for visitors is simple. "Get ready to hit the deck," he says. We Orthodox bow a lot already, but during Lent we take it up a notch to several full prostrations.

That is one of the things I like most about Orthodoxy – bowing. It reminds me that even when my heart may not be in "the right place, even when I may be distracted by my kids or thoughts of the coming day, my body can still worship. And usually, where my body goes, the spirit follows.

That's not the way things are supposed to work, I know. Pick up any pop-culture book on spirituality and it will talk about the importance of nurturing the spirit. Spirit first! Then body! I hear that. I think there may be some truth to that. But that's not been my experience. More often than not, I find that bodily disciplines are what nurture the spirit.

I'm actually a little embarrassed by this picture. My "private" spiritual moment was captured and posted on the website of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (during the Akathist to the Mother of God when the wonder-working Kursk Root icon passed through town). But it's already out there, so I decided to post it, too. Because it snowed several inches the day before the icon arrived, and the roads to our church can be precarious when that happens, we held this service in a conference room at the Embassy Suites. It was the first time my wife and I were in church with all three kids (because of sickness and weather, Connor had not even been churched yet). At the end of what felt like a very long time standing in a very hot, small, and smelly room, the last thing I was thinking about was what I should have been thinking about: the Mother of God. I was thinking about my kids, about getting my jacket off, and about the drive home. But when my turn to venerate came, I bowed, and the service changed for me. It was one of the most meaningful spiritual experiences I had to date. The songs and prayers and tears of the faithful that morning gathered together and pressed me to the floor. When I bowed, the service became about the Mother of God – what it was supposed to be about all along.

(By the way, in case you are wondering, most of the women in my church don't normally wear headscarves, but they were asked to do so on this occasion. I think it's more of a ROCA thing.)

To bend the body is to bend the spirit. That is what I like about it. In the midst of all that distracts us, this little gesture says to me, at least, "Quit your belly-aching, drop to your knees, and look at the floor! Something important is happening here!"

Last night I attended the Canon of St Andrew of Crete. It is a service during "Clean Week" (the first week of Lent) that reminds us of the need to repent and to take what we are doing seriously. The constant refrain is, "Have mercy upon me, O God! Have mercy upon me!" And when we say it, we cross ourselves and bow. It's a very physical way of worshiping.

I think that is what I liked about being Nazarene. I remember my very first service, I witnessed a little old lady "running the aisles." Of course, she was quite old. So it was more like shuffling the aisles, but there was something about the simplicity of that gesture that appealed to me.

I look back on that memory with fondness because it reminds me that we are bodies. Worship is not simply a "spiritual" thing. When it comes right down to it, I don't actually think I "have" a spirit inside of me the way a child captures a firefly in a jar. I think (to paraphrase an old teacher) that I, as body, am spirit. This is why we Orthodox "naively" think we can commune with saints by kissing their icons. This is why we think God heals through a relic. And it is why when draw close to the sacred, our first instinct is to hit the deck.