Brennan Manning tells the story of a monastery that attracted the most gifted, competent monks. One small monk couldn’t relate to the dignified holy worship of the other monks. He felt inadequate. He’d been a common circus performer.
Feeling inferior and alone, whilst the other monks were celebrating high mass each day in the sanctuary, he’d go down into the crypt and performed his circus tumbling act before the statue of the Virgin Mary. No one missed him. He was a nobody.
One day another monk, coming down to the crypt to fetch candles, witnessed the small monk’s tumbling routine. Scandalised, he rushed off and told the abbot; they agreed to return the following day.
Together they watched the little monk doing his tumbling act before the statue of the Virgin. The informer was increasingly outraged; the abbot held back.
The tumbling ended. Mary came off her pedestal, held out her hand, and blessed the small monk. The abbot turned to the informer saying, ‘More real worship goes on here than occurs in the sanctuary upstairs.’
A few years ago, our church bass guitarist moved away, leaving me an old bass guitar of his. I started to learn, playing in church services …trying to play the right notes (but not necessarily in the right order!) …aspiring to be a fourth-rate bass player.
Yesterday morning, before church, the band was practicing and I was picking out the bass line, when I had a flash back…
I was a small boy in church. At our morning ‘Breaking of Bread’ service we always sung acapella. Dad would pitch the starting note of the hymn, and then, singing from his hymn book (music edition) he would sing the bass line…
And there was me, seventy years later, picking out a bass line. Things had come a full circle. And in that moment, this fourth-rate bass player was aware that he was that little tumbler doing his best, being blessed by his God, and there was small but real worship.
malcolmsmusings.org 