Last evening the members of Lindisfarne were invited into our weekly Zoom chat. As we were getting started a new inquirer asked whether we knew of any Eucharistic gatherings in their geographical area. Their question opened up a curious dynamic that may be unique to a community like ours.
For most of us, the act of Christian worship, and particularly the Eucharist, is intended to be done with others. The tradition I was trained in specifically forbade clergy from celebrating private communion services, and mandated that the service of worship itself be open to the public - no one could be barred from attending.
But I, for one, came to Lindisfarne as a refugee from congregational life, both as a member of the clergy and as a worshiper in the pews. The usual forms of worship hadn't fed me for a long time, and that turned out to be true for others in LC as well. While community is essential at one level of our Christian life, the form that it takes in most mainline denominations these days does not seem to touch the soul very deeply. Everything from too much noise to committee recruitment seems to open up a chasm across which we simply cannot go.
Turns out, many of us - especially during the pandemic - have become more or less solitaries, worshiping God in the holiness of our hearts, missing things like visits to monasteries or the chance to welcome a few beloveds into our homes, but not yearning for a return to organs and trumpets and floral arrangements and vestries and altar guilds. For better and for worse, we seem to be a community of solitaries, with some of us connecting via our technologies of choice, but embracing the opportunities for prayer, meditation, and sacrament in our separate, dispersed circumstances.
There is something important that binds us. It is our shared embrace of the Rule and Understandings of the community. We are solitaries bound by a common life of prayer, study, work, and rest; who seek God's truth wherever it may be encountered; who cherish the Celtic expressions of the faith along with the inclusive language that is a mark of our prayers.
A community of solitaries? Well, I won't speak for us all. But it is worth contemplating the dynamic of 'together' and 'apart' as it is lived in a community like ours.
Many of us belong to some fellowship of like-minded believers. While the group provides much camaraderie and support, it is not the group that brings about our spiritual illumination. As you note, “the form that [community] takes in most mainline denominations these days does not seem to touch the soul very deeply.” And so, we proceed as solitary wayfarers on “the flight of the alone to the Alone” (Plotinus), and it is within the intimate relationship between God and our own soul where enlightenment is to be found. However, by walking the path jointly with others, we share that same path as "a community of solitaries." Alone and together, we journey toward God, on the mystical path that lies within our souls.
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