koan on the creekside

i sat on the banks of a creek wednesday as it flowed into the impounded waters of the white river, it's enlarged surface reflecting early springs green leaves and the still-white trunks of the sycamores.

i was reading nikolai gogol's the divine liturgy of the russian orthodox church, and i interspersed bits and pieces of psalms which occur in the liturgy as i read, especially psalm 103. i found myself humming them to melodies from the orthodox liturgy, and i was saddened that there is no community here to sing with.

and i understood perhaps some of how brother andre of taize felt. he stopped celebrating eucharist because the whole church would not celebrate together.

today i am reading s. l. greenslade's schism in the early church (london: scm,1964), which includes these words:

"[the early church] was not undivided, but it was much less divided than we are to-day, and it hated division and worked hard, if sometimes by unhappy means, to heal it. it did so, not because it was uneconomical in manpower or money to have a novatianist chapel and a catholic church on opposite street corners, nor even because disunion was mocked at by the pagan. it was because disunion is in itself sin, and therefore to be fought against." (p. 33)

lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep thy law.