THE SUBLIME OFFICE: A LITURGY FOR GODLESS HEATHENS
A QUEER, TRANS CHURCH KID? OY.
I was raised in an evangelical, fundamentalist family — the erstwhile “preacher’s kid.” My father was at one point a minister, my mother, the church pianist, and we children were recruited into the music making “for Jesus” before we even reached the age of our spiritual majority. As queer kid, though, I was very conscious, even early in life, that my identity was not okay, and that I had to hide it at all costs. At the same time, though, the liturgical music of the church was what sustained me and kept me moving forward, even though I felt utterly rejected by the community because of my identity.
Now, as an adult, I still struggle with my relationship to sacred music. Is religious music appropriate material if those traditions have historically excluded us? Are those musical traditions agnostic by default, are we allowed to claim these sacred traditions for ourselves or should we instead create new, queer, traditions out of whole cloth?
LET’S START OVER
While I will always appreciate the artistry of the 1,500 year old canon of liturgical music, the contrarian in me wants to create something that doesn’t make me uneasy and represents the need for ritual without committing to the often problematic requirements of organized religion. And to that end, I am creating (in collaboration with multiple artists), a queer, secular, even occasionally gnostic, musical liturgy.
Humanity has historically marked the passage of time and major life events with music, and for millennia, religious traditions have co-opted those rituals and that music.
I’m taking that back.
WHAT DOES A QUEER LITURGY LOOK LIKE?
The new liturgy is large, encompassing project that has already involved multiple collaborations, and will continue to do so. There are several major works on the horizon, with a timeline for completion in the next three to five years. The sections of this queer liturgy is based on a text by Aleister Crowley, from Liber XV, the gnostic mass (edited here for brevity):
But ye, O my people rise up and awake.
Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy and beauty.
There are rituals of the elements and feasts of the times. […]
A feast for the Supreme Ritual, and a feast for the Equinox of the Gods.
A feast for fire and a feast for water; a feast for life and a greater feast for death.
A feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture.
A feast every night unto the pleasure of uttermost delight.
Using this as a general guide, I’ve loosely structured a project that will contain an array of artistic works, across multiple disciplines — music, text, visual art and movement. Several of the projects are already either in progress and one (the requiem) is completed, though undergoing revisions currently. The rituals are loosely based on holidays, observances and rituals from multiple cultural and spiritual practices.
The Sublime Office: A Secular Book of Hours
The Supreme Ritual — IN PROCESS
A Ritual of the Elements (Earth, Air, Fire & Water)
A Feast of the Times (Spring & Fall Equinox, Summer & Winter Solstice) — IN PROGRESS
A Ritual for the Equinox of the Gods (Extreme Unction)
The Feast of Fire (Reconciliation)
The Feast of Water (Baptism & Communion)
The Feast of Life (Personal & Communal Healing)
The Greater Feast of Death (Requiem) — COMPLETED
The Feast of Joy (Marriage, Partnership, New Commitments)
The Feast of Pleasure (Abundance and Discovery)