I Love Liturgy!

I feel like I should kinda' balance out the previous post on modern worship with how I feel about liturgy. Somehow in my mind liturgy is a seperate entity from hymns and what not, and I love liturgy, especially Jewish liturgy. There's just something about praying these thousand year old prayers, rich in theology and sincerity with only the hundred or so voices, no instruments. Everytime that I have gone to a synagogue, it has been hard to not get emotional at the ancient melodies, prayers and motions.

I can't really explain it concretely. I've tried several times, but there's something that feels.....right? assuring? comforting? ( None of those are quite it, but will have to do) about seeing and being apart of a room full of people, praising God in one of the oldest living languages that is spiritually overwhelming for me.

There's a time in these liturgies for everything: praising God, remembering commandments, challenging God on the state of affairs here on earth, asking for forgiveness, good health and peace. One of the experiences that most impacted me was hearing mourners say the Kadish (a special prayer for those in mourning). The synagogue silent but for a few voices praying. Not asking for anything but peace and still praising God. You can hear the pain in their voices, the melody the raw openness of it all still gets to me now thinking about it.

As much as I love modern worship music, there is something about liturgy. Honestly, I don't think I'll ever really come back to liking the hymns I grew up with. They bring back too many horrid memories...but liturgy (which I never experienced until I was an adult) I love. I pray different liturgical prayers throughout the day. I love the prayers in the Orthodox Jewish Siddur. I even steal some of the words for my own music.

So I guess maybe the best of both worlds for me would be a liturgical prayer set to rock music. Or maybe a cantor that raps . . . naaah, that's going too far.