A WEEK WITH STEPHEN D. LONG- day 4

STEVE LONG ON LITURGICAL TIME:

Radical Orthodoxy talks about "the liturgic turn" not "the linguistic turn." The social and political context that will help us understand God and being is found in worship and liturgy, not language.

Liturgy gives us a different sense of time. Modernity mathematizes everything. Everything becomes a point on a grid—the clock—the time—tic-toc. I hate this clock. I get up early to read, and I can hear it tick. That's just so fake. That's not time. Liturgy says there's a different time—we're in advent—a new year has already begun. In the center of the liturgy is an event that already happened, but happens again and again so it has a circular motion. One of the more radical things the Church could do would be to recover a sense of liturgical time. That would mean doing away with things like The Fourth of July, Mother's Day, all of those secular "liturgical" times that churches who think they are being faithful, but really they're not, bring into the church.

MY THOUGHTS:
by adhering to Liturgical Time the church claims it's allegience to God and not the world. I like the idea that as a community the church re-tells and relives the stories that have been passed down through scripture and tradition as the seasons and holy days roll around each year.

I know that my life has been shaped and formed by the rituals and practices that have come directly from living within "liturgical time".