Christmas Eve (Christ candle)

Introductory rights

In reframing the liturgical season, we have for the last four weeks performed rituals to decenter us. In so doing, we have transformed the season into a time of waiting and preparing ourselves to a renewed commitment to the practice of subjectivity. We took a step back from ourselves and considered how our religious beliefs function in our lives. Let us remember that the natural world around us comes to life through death. Let us begin to allow life to break us. Like Mary’s body faced entropy to create life, so to, do we face death to enter in. Only with the emergent Holy Spirit can we find the courage to face this abyss.
 
 
Opening prayer

Oh, Master of The Real, grant that we may never seek, so much to be consoled as to be alienated. To be surrounded by a void than the totalizing force of some solid understanding. It is in the living out of this alienation that we come into the death we are all already living. Make us a channel of this alienation. Unfurl our hearts and open our minds so that we may hear the good news, anew. The good news that God is dead. Let us prepare ourselves for the enigmatic and contradictory birth that divided God into this Holy Trinity. The birth that broke the ideology of the monotheistic God. A God that could only be viewed as an almighty being. For through Christ, you went from one, to not one. A split and divided God. This is the message of the birth of Christ; that we are to hold God as otherwise than being. We cannot overcome this alienation. It exists in everything. One can only embrace this contradiction. And in so doing we bring our broken and contrite spirit to enter in, to this Holy Trinity.  

Thanks be to the contradiction of the Holy Trinity
 
 
Christ Candle

O split and divided God, whose birth tore through the ideological veil of Mary and Joseph. The flame we light tonight will represent our desire to intimately know this same spiritual death. The ideology we have, comes with power over us. To understand how the death of our big other brings us new life, we write our beliefs on a piece of paper. Instead of lighting a candle, we set flame to the corner of the paper. Let us sit and watch the words of our perceived understanding burn. And as the flame goes out, let us sit and slowly allow ourselves to plunge into the darkness of our contradiction. A place where there is no belief. A place where we are divided and alienated from our ideology. For in this place, we enter the event horizon where we enter the abyss.  

Thanks be to this alienation

 
Let us pause here, in this dark place. Perhaps a little longer. And longer still. Instead of thinking of what you think you know, stay with the anxiety of what you do not know. Move from this external desire toward your own internal contradiction. The place within you where you acknowledge you don’t really know. Instead of going with the tendency to make a whole of these two things, move into the contradiction. Negate what you think you know with what you don’t know. This, the negation of negation can bring forth something new. Advent, through the lens of death of God theology, can offer us another way to see ourselves and the world around us. To become aware of the contradictions inherent in everything.

Thanks be to the negation of negation
 
 
The collect.
O split and divided God, this flame that has gone out represents our desire to tarry with contradiction; to truly dwell in a place of alienation. Help us, during this season to remember the true meaning of readying ourselves to participate in the negation of negation. Give us the courage to move into this decentering and grant us the estrangement this practice brings.
 
 
Benediction

Contradictions and unknowing exist all throughout the universe. Let us consider that even the absolute might realize its own incompleteness. Let us engage with a religion where God through Christ comes to know that God is riven with unknowing. That not only do we commune with others who lack, but with a God who might lack as well. And that when we serve the god of our beliefs, we serve and love what we think we know of the God in The Real. In truth, we don’t know, and perhaps neither does God. Let us all take a step back and sit in this alienating thought. Let us experience the unknown of Das Ding and be transformed by its sting.

​Over the last few weeks these liturgies have evolved. They have become more eloquent and less liturgical. Though they follow the same form, the words within the structure have loosened and moved more freely. I hope you have enjoyed these little practices. On Christmas Eve I will publish the final rite. 

Introductory rights

In the spirit of reframing the liturgical season, we look to advent from a more radical perspective. In so doing, we transform the season into a time of waiting and preparing ourselves to a renewed commitment to the practice of subjectivity. To take a step back from ourselves and consider how our activities and roles contribute to our identity and meaning. Today we take a closer look at the epistemology of love.
 
 
Opening prayer

​May the network of the Holy Spirit move us, and may we be filled with jouissance while we wait for the decentering to begin. Let The Real be at the center of all we do during this special time of the liturgical year.
Thanks be to The Real
 

Love Candle

On this the fourth Sunday of Advent, we light the candle of love. We light this candle, and set flame to desire. Jacques Lacan a psychoanalyst from the late 20th century so eloquently wrote that love is giving something you do not have, to someone who does not want it. At first this statement confuses us, but when we really think about putting our finger on our needs and wants, do we ever really know? We are born into an enigmatic abyss. Our cry a guttural scream to have our needs met. But does the baby know what it needs? Does the mother know what she wants? Lacan continues to write that we are all born with Das ding; a thing in itself we do not know and some unknown dimension of the others desire. In other words, we all go through life trying to give something we do not have to someone who does not want it. Perhaps this may seem dystopic, but is it? Last week we learned from the candle of joy about the need for lack in producing desire. A liminal space where juoissance can grow. Instead of crying amidst the pain of Das Ding shall we learn to rejoice in the desire it brings.   

Thanks be to Das Ding  
 
 
What people struggle with today is the reality of difference. But conflict is good, because the inability to have a disagreement, is war. We all know we are supposed to love each other, but it’s decentering, disturbing, and easier to not. Jacques Lacan, described love as making a harbour for your lovers lack. According to the book of Corinthians, the boats in the harbour of love have names like patience, kindness and long suffering. These are relevant but many of us set sail and leave this harbour. We’re quick to judge others but want them to be patient with us. We call ourselves compassionate, but find ourselves surrounded by the boundaries of our life raft all alone in the middle of the ocean. We can no longer play dumb. Let us confess that none of us really know what we want. Let us see the truth that we dine on broken promises and drink to our fading dreams; and that although adults, we are still crying like babies marked with a perceived sense of loss and filled with a yearning for something we can never get back. It’s impossible for the baby to return to the womb. And epigenetics shows that the environment isn’t as perfect as we so often think. We kid ourselves that we can ever get back to wholeness and completeness; for it may never have existed in the first place. Entering the abyss and tarrying with the lack is where we find emancipation.

Thanks be to the lack
 
 
The collect

Tonight, we come seeking the abyss. We come to create spaces of lack so that we can enter into this abyss. We bravely move into the subjective destitution that follows. The ontological death of the subject to allow the birth of something new. Instead of cancelling others, let us move into the keeping of relationship. Let us remain open to the abyss of the other. And let us tarry with the lack that exists there. We long to be transformed by the lack through relationship.
 
 
Benediction

Many of us participate in religions that promise a return to some lost state. A future bliss of oneness with God. A belief that helps us endure our suffering here on earth. Others of us demand of God experiences. Whether mystical, spiritual or oceanic, we look to these mountain top experiences to cover over the lack. But what if we looked to the very thing we avoid? What if we entered into the abyss. What view might we find there? Let us find the courage to enter in the unknown and become lost. Many believe that entering into this place will cause death. It might. But the death will be ontological. The gods of your big others will come crashing down and you will enter into subjective destitution. A place where you will strip away a lifetime of ideology and dogma. This is the place where you will find the purest forms of love and grace. Where there is hatred, let us bring love. Where there is injury, let us find pardon. And where there's doubt, let us find true faith. May we be a channel of love for another’s lack.