Joy Unspeakable III and the Freedom to be Church

Dear People of God: If you will indulge me just a couple more days, I may be able to put this poem down!?:) I keep spinning off into what Holmes calls the "Cosmos interwoven with mystery".

In the third stanza concerning joy unspeakable for the Desert Mothers and Fathers, I became fixed on the phrase: "freedom from 'church' as usual"

Joy and freedom are closely related. And while many of us are mourning our Sunday actual gatherings and certainly the loss of physical bread and wine being consecrated and placed into our hands and mouths, there is a certain joy unspeakable running beneath the surface which allows us the freedom to worship in new ways, new rhythms, new language. When time is suspended as it often seems to be these days, there might be an authenticity and genuineness about our worship which is being recovered. In that deep authenticity is a sense of the divine and a question which is something like the psalmist: 

How can I praise God in this strange new land? 

Holmes seems to point us in the desert to an authorized improvisation which feels liberating and not self-conscious. 

I imagine God smiling at how much we are discovering our creative selves and keeping the love of God and each other at the center. 

So perhaps there is a joy in the release of old expectations and the trying on of whatever form of prayer calls to you. Blessings on your being church today!