Beyond Smells and Bells Quotes

“The most carefully crafted language in our culture tends to be poetry. And poetry at its finest moments subverts our best attempts at hiding from reality...

The poetry of liturgy has just this power. The liturgy contains words that have been shaped and crafted over the centuries. It is formal speech. It is public poetry. As such it reaches into us to reveal not only the unnamed reality of our lives but the God who created us...

But even when the words of the liturgy are not literally biblical words, the words, like all truthful words, work on us over time, like a steady, unrelenting stream slowly reshapes the banks of a river. The words do something to us even when we're not paying attention.”
― Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy

“The liturgy is the place where we wait for Jesus to show up. We don't have to do much. The liturgy is not an act of will. It is not a series of activities designed to attain a spiritual mental state. We do not have to apply will pressure. To be sure, like basketball or football, it is something that requires a lot of practice--its rhythms do not come naturally except to those who have been rehearsing them for years. On some Sundays the soul will indeed battle to even pay attention. In the normal course of worship, we do not have to conjure up feelings or a devotional mood; we are not required to perform the liturgy flawlessly. Such anxious effort... blind us to what is really going on.

We do have to show up, and we cannot leave early. But if we will dwell there, remain in place, wait patiently, Jesus will show up.”
― Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy

“In our desire to be real we start thinking that authenticity is another word for spontaneity, as if everything we say at the spur of the moment is more true, more sincere than words we craft carefully. For many, the Freudian slip is considered more authentic than the measured reply. Indeed, sometimes what we blurt out thoughtlessly is actually what we mean and feel. But more often than not, what we blurt out is ill-considered and something we either need to qualify or apologize for”
― Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy

“By participating in the liturgy, we’re doing more than “attending a service.” We are entering a story—a story in which we also play a role. We are the people who have indeed been gathered. We are the people who share in God’s very life. We are the people sent forth to proclaim God’s story and to invite people into the grand story.”
― Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy

“The words of the liturgy, of course, are more than a beautiful tablecloth and flowers. They constitute even the meal itself. This is the feast to which we are invited in the Gathering, at which the host speaks to us in his Word, during which we are sustained by the Eucharist, from which we are sent forth in the Dismissal to gather others into the community of the Trinity and the Church, who now together anticipate the great forever feast in the kingdom that comes.”
― Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy

“As one liturgical theologian put it, “The primary purpose of the Church’s liturgical worship is not to express our feelings toward God, but to express and impress the Personality of Christ upon us.” And therefore the personality of the Trinity upon us.”
― Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy

“THE LITURGY LIVES OUT A STORY IN A STORY-DEPRIVED WORLD. Liturgy is not a once-upon-a-time story we merely watch others perform. We are the characters in this story, actors in the divine drama whose opening and closing has been written by Jesus Christ himself.”
― Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy

“For me, this was the first hint that the liturgy might be the cure for spiritual loneliness. Though I felt inadequate and alone during my prayer crisis, I was not alone. Much of American spiritual life trudges through the muck of solitary spirituality. Twenty years ago, Robert Bellah described this phenomenon in Habits of the Heart, with his now famous description of one woman: Sheila Larson is a young nurse who has received a good deal of therapy and describes her faith as “Sheilaism.” This suggests the logical possibility of more than 235 million American religions, one for each of us. “I believe in God,” Sheila says. “I am not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice.” “My little voice” guides many lonely people to and through New Age, wicca, Buddhism, labyrinths, Scientology, yoga, meditation, and various fads in Christianity—and then creates a new Sheilaism from the fragments that have not been discarded along the way. I love Sheila Larson precisely because she articulates nearly perfectly my lifelong struggle: “I believe in God. I am not a religious fanatic…. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilism. Just my own little voice.” The difference between Sheila and me is that she has the courage of her convictions: she knows her faith is very personal and so hasn’t bothered with the church. I like to pretend that my faith is grounded in community, but I struggle to believe in anything but Markism. Fortunately God loves us so much he has made it a “spiritual law” that Sheilism or Markism become boring after awhile. The gift of the liturgy—and it is precisely why I need the liturgy—is that it helps me hear not so much “my little voice” but instead the still, small voice (Psalm 46). It leads away from the self and points me toward the community of God.”
― Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy