"THE MOLTEN CHALICE" Outline

This is my working outline for the manuscript I’m calling “The Molten Chalice,” formerly “The Poetics of LIturgy.” The title change became necessary when the concept left the rather conventional assumptions of my unfinished Doctor of Ministry degree at Meadville/Lombard Theological School. (I accepted a Master of Divinity and left.) Because of recent theoretical developments in the study of human experience, especially memory, identity, sensory processing, and shifts in consciousness such as dissociation, the issue has become something that precedes any definitions of “religion,” thereby evading the dogmatic and institutional attempts to capture and prescribe liturgy, but without excluding any one culture’s understanding of what is true and proper.

This approach does not prescribe, though it might diagnose. One could easily use it to invent liturgies -- structured events that change consciousness -- maybe intended for the new emerging world-view that is revealed by scientific advances in fields that study the origin of life or the extent of the universe. It is easier to rationally consider these changes than to internalize the emotions they can stir up: feelings of loneliness, vulnerability, and raw fear. But sometimes joy and release. Liturgy could help. I suggest that we must shift from individual performance as the key to salvation in order to move to participation as fulfillment, not just in human life but in all being. We are a dance and should glory in it.

But what keeps us from dispersing into a fog of madness, a frenzy of destruction? That’s the chalice. The hotter the fire, the stronger the chalice must be. (The crucible in a bronze foundry is made of graphite, the material of pencil lead.) If the chalice breaks, there is local damage, then dispersal.

Come to that, what protects the liturgist? The short honest answer is “nothing.” What helps is having done the task of one’s own internal sorting, very much like Clinical Pastoral Education http://www.acpe.edu/ ; a secure and stable community; quiet and solitude -- sometimes these things vary for individuals. Mentors. A good education helps, not necessarily academic. Be prepared to take a hammering or to accidentally cause great harm. (Or to WANT to.) Do not expect fame and fortune. Do not expect a free ride. Expect to be hurt. It is an intimacy with all the hazards.

The ancient and definitive formation of a shaman is through destruction (being melted down) and reconstruction (casting). Death, replacement of bones with quartz, ability to revisit the place where the dead are, ability to keep one’s seat on a winged horse. This is the huge shadow on the wall behind ministers and doctors.

More practically, the liturgist must have a good understanding of the existing structure of the consciousness of the individual or community, a strong ability to summon and manage the necessary resources, and a clear goal of where to move the consciousness of the people involved. Where you are, where you want to go, and how to get there.

I. INTRODUCTION

MANAGEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The subject is how to manage a time art that deeply affects consciousness, not an historical or aesthetic ceremony, though the latter can approach that and should not be excluded.

How sensory information codes memory

Memory is identity

Mystical binaries

WHY MOLTEN CHALICE?

The UU connection (include Abraxas?)

The relationship between container & contained (start with first one-celled life)

What can contain the Dionysian?

The limits of where I will go in this manuscript.

The role of the classical: Greek myth and theatre.

FOR WHOM IS THIS THEORY MEANT?

Anyone designing an event meant to shift consciousness who wants to take that beyond the conventional routine.

PERIPHERAL ISSUES:

IMMANENT v. TRANSCENDENT

Transcendent sees sacred power coming from the outside, some superhuman source, and immanent sees it as welling up from inside being-itself, especially “nature.” They do not cancel each other.

THE DARK SIDE

No morality to consciousness itself, though the latter contains the former and will shape it.

Forbidden imagery can come from the culture or from personal experience.

Evil is human. The cosmos is neither good nor evil -- simply IS.

ENTHEOGENS & disciplines of pain, deprivation

Peripheral.

THEONEUROLOGY

Peripheral.

LITURGY AS HEALING

Peripheral.

THE SHAMAN: ECSTATIC DISSOCIATION

The Shaman is a liturgist, but the liturgist might not be a Shaman. The difference is what consciousness is shifted and to what extent.

The accidental Shaman: what if some deep consciousness breaks through ?

II. STRUCTURES

THE OLD RABBINICAL STORY OF THE CLEARING

BOUNDARIES/SAFETY (Chalice)

Sex, birth, death, shedding/transformation, bonding are natural processes that can be aborted by interruption. If they are incomplete, they can be troublesome.

THE BRAINSPACE WORK FLOOR (Flame)

The clearing in the forest, the kindling, the story

Gendlin’s focusing with imagery

Surfacing what is subconscious

APPROACH AND LEAVING: the nature of the limen

Alone or together

Permission

Familiarity

Trying to stay

Leaving too soon

Erasing by submerging in the unconscious, the “trash” of the brain

Obsession/repetition as attempts to solve

THE BASIC TENSION

Dilation of the spirit: the worst (confession) and the best (pardon)

Dimensions of the loom: from me-sized to the universal

ARC AND BEATS

Mimesis: is every mimesis pornographic? This is a new idea I’ve just encountered in the environmental movement. It is almost Islamic, the idea that any depiction of God diminishes Him and likewise any depiction of anything at all is a diminishment, just as pornography diminishes sexual experience by removing intimacy.

“Arc and beats” are narrative vocabulary.

III. CONSCIOUSNESS

PLATE TECTONICS OF CONCEPTS: human universals

DEEP CULTURE

First

Most persisting

CULTURAL VENEER

Good taste

Legality

intelligibility

Cultural control of venue and experience

Economics

IV. SENSORY

SENSE MEMORY AS PROCESS

Sight: possibly a force for evolution

Sound: some say it’s the last sense to leave

Smell: direct access to the brain

Touch: the infant’s love

Taste: the lover’s nourishment

Movement: dance and gesture

Posture: one’s stance toward life

MATERIAL CULTURES AND ECOLOGIES

Weather, food, clothing, family members, shelter, tools

V. EXAMPLES

Community: UU In-gathering at Leadership School

Kinds of ceremonies: Blackfeet Bundles, Horn Society, Healing, Place, Vision Quest

Classical mass: Dom Gregory Dix

The Unmoved Mover: Marriage to a dead groom

Primal: Cassowary imagery in New Guinea

Ordeal: Andes cannibalism

VI. DISCUSSION

VII. APPENDIXES