Liturgy's Ebb and Flow

“Foot down, hand forward, shift your weight.” These are just a few of the cues often uttered by our tai chi instructor. Tai chi, the ancient Chinese Martial Art, is practiced by millions all over the world as a form of gentle exercise. It is believed to help its practitioners reduce stress, ease joint pain, enhance mindfulness, and improve balance. Tai chi is a series of distinct postures that flow one into the other without stopping. This is one reason tai chi is often called meditation in movement. Whenever I look at a group practicing tai chi, I am mesmerized. The group moves together in a constant flow of perfect synchronicity. The easeful transitions between the postures make the entire exercise look like one continuous movement. The unity of the group transforms ordinary movements, gestures, and postures into something that is powerful and profound. The ancient tradition behind tai chi, the meaning connected to each posture, and the benefits of the exercise help to form and transform practitioners.

Like tai chi, our liturgy is a sequence of distinct postures, gestures, and movements. We stand, we sit, and we kneel. We speak, we sing, we listen, and we remain still in a collective silence. Every moment of the liturgy transitions or flows into the next. The gathering song and the procession into the church flow into the opening greeting, which flows into either the Penitential Act or the Sprinkling Rite, and so forth. We who practice the same ritual patterns in the liturgy, like those who practice tai chi, become more and more in sync with one another.

The scientific word for this is entrainment. Entrainment was first discovered in 1665 by Dutch physicist Christian Huygsen while working on the design of the pendulum clock.

Huygsen placed two clocks, with pendulums swinging at opposite rates, near each other. He found that eventually the pendulums synchronized with each other, swinging at the same rate. Entrainment has been used in everything from astronomy to music. It has helped the scientific world to prove that two opposite oscillating bodies can have enough influence on each other to vibrate in harmony.

We could say the liturgy is a form of ritual entrainment. Our ritual patterns transform ordinary movements, gestures, and postures into something that is powerful and profound. The rituals in our liturgy synchronize us so that together we can be more attuned to creation, to each other, and to God whose very breath began to swing the first pendulum of life.