Liturgy

Henry All right. In this episode, we’re going to be discussing ritual and liturgy and maybe the role that that has in faith and open source.0:00

Nadia I still don’t really know what liturgy is, so we should talk about what that is first.0:09

A liturgy is basically a ritual, specifically a public, communal, religious ritual. The etymology from greek means “work of the people”. A book I read recently that I liked was Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices for Everyday Life. Also relevant is You Are What you Love by James K.A. Smith.

Henry We’ve (laughing) chatted about it before, but one way of thinking about it- it’s used in a religious context and it’s practices or habits or things that you engage in as a group of people, that bring you closer to God or something like that. But you can apply it more generally to things that you do as a community that bring you towards the goals or visions that you have of that group.0:15

Nadia So what’s the difference between liturgy and rituals?0:47

Henry Oh, I think they’re basically synonymous.0:52

Nadia Liturgy’s a cooler word.0:55

Henry I think one maybe distinction might be that, not that it has to be as a community, but you can have your own individual rituals and liturgies but I think there’s something to be said about doing it together in a group. So I say worship or communally worshipping has its own benefits. And so I guess the first thing we can talk about is why we do these things in the first place, yeah?0:57

Nadia I have a thought on that, no doubt I meant something else. So I went to this dinner conversation thing with this game developer yesterday who was talking about religion as- and sort of like religious- I don’t know. We just got into a big long conversation about religion, ‘cause I guess the game he made is related to religion, and one of the interesting things we were talking about as it relates to both religion and the research creative process, ‘cause it was a group of research people, was this feeling that for some people in religion, they are seeking an answer? So he had this image of a labyrinth and you’re kinda going around this labyrinth and eventually you get to the middle and you’ve found the answer.1:25

Nadia He’s like, “For other people what’s really exciting about religion is that you go through this labyrinth, and inside the middle labyrinth is another labyrinth is another labyrinth,” or whatever, so goes on into infinity. That, yeah, for some people they’re very intrigued by religion as a thing that can never be fully understood and that’s, I guess codified to some philosophy he was talking about of people who can only define God by what it is not and not what God- that idea of just being, you can kind of, if you can ever really define God then you’ve confined God into reality? But you are always kind of seeking this infinite, ineffable thing. Which really resonated with me, both in terms of spirituality but also in terms of my day to day work.2:07

Defining God by what he is not is apophatic

Nadia So anyway, I was thinking about that in relation to, well then given that you’re on this very long, uncertain process and you never know what the answer is going to be and there’s no endpoint and that’s kind of the point of religion, is that you’re not supposed to ever be able to find an endpoint, at least in the way that I like to think about it, I was thinking about the role of liturgy and rituals and habits and the act of doing that collectively with other people, as a way to sort of ground yourself in reality or find something concrete in a world that is inherently not at all concrete. Does that make sense or am I totally stretching the logic here?2:56

Henry No. (laughs) Not at all.3:37

Nadia You’re in this process that is ongoing forever and ever and it may never end so the one way to bring yourself back into the moment is to have habits that you’re doing. And then doing those habits with other people is also an extra way of grounding yourself, and this sense of, you’re in it with someone else. You’re walking the labyrinth with someone else besides yourself.3:40

Henry I totally resonate with the, it’s kind of like making what you believe or- you’re making that concrete. You’re doing something bodily instead of- ‘cause research or thinking about God, it’s mostly intellectual, but having a habit, it turns it into something that involves your body and with other people.4:02

Nadia It made me think about the act of maintaining an open source product or participating in community. There is no endpoint to it and I feel like open source gets caught in this metaphor between is it a job or is it a hobby? And I know that it can be useful sometimes to frame it as a job to show that, yeah you’re doing all this work, but unlike a job there’s- you’re not getting paid and there’s no endpoint or whatever. But I think a hobby, you’re not really thinking about, am I doing this for the next two to three years or something? I feel like people kinda think that a little bit about their jobs, of how long am I gonna be there and whether that timeframe is long or short, you kinda have a sense of it? But I don’t think people often think that about an open source project. You’re just kinda doing it because it’s what you do.4:24

Nadia And so yeah, that, I think, not even just maintaining, but participating in open source, community can be sort of this things that goes on forever until maybe there’s a moment where you’re suddenly disillusioned or you just wanna kinda move on and do something else. But you don’t really know when that moment is coming.5:27

Henry Yeah, I think that’s a good observation. And I guess maybe that goes back to that episode we had about commitment. It’s like when you’re doing open source, you’re not thinking like, oh, I’m only gonna commit- or work on this for a few weeks or months. It’s like, I am not really sure about what that future looks like. Right now I’m gonna work on this and even for what I’m doing now it’s like, in flux. And maybe it’s a lifetime, maybe it’s a few years, you don’t know.5:47

Henry And especially in faith, yeah, you’re not going into it trying to think like, I’m gonna- unless you’re starting off, you’re like, “Oh, I’m gonna try this thing.” Once you’ve committed you’re like, “Okay, this is something for life.” And I really like what you said about how the pursuit of it can be mysterious and infinite and yeah, it is interesting. I’ve heard that before of people trying to define God by what He isn’t? Or religion and stuff like that, it’s more of a mystery? Yeah, I’m not sure, but it is interesting to think of it in that way.6:12

Henry I guess, as a Christian, a lot of is that we can’t really know God fully, but we can know Him truly, and so we do have what we need to know about Him but it’s kind of like a- our whole lives can be devoted to learning more and more, to get deeper and deeper into who He is and who we are.6:47

Nadia What do you think about liturgy and open source, or in your faith, what are examples of things that you would do?7:14

Henry So I guess we can just start with even, I would say habits in and of themselves are everywhere, right? So it doesn’t even have to be an open source or faith but if you have a goal at becoming better at something. Maybe it’s sports. So then you practice playing soccer or something. Or if you’re trying to do music or art, you’re practicing drawing or playing an instrument and I think people recognize that it takes practice, it takes habit, it takes a certain level of commitment and it doesn’t seem that it should be any different in spirituality or in open source.7:22

Henry It’s interesting because, especially in, I guess seems like North American Christianity, there’s a- almost an allergic reaction to this idea of ritual where the problem with habit is that we tend to think of it as a form of obedience which we don’t really like, and submission, and this idea of repeating things seems very vain and dead and lifeless because you’re not- maybe you’re not really into it or maybe you feel like you’re earning something and it’s insincere? And so I guess it’s interesting to kind of push back on that and be like, well it’s an opportunity for you to be involved with people and that act itself kind of changes and shapes who you are and what you think. …8:02

Nadia Is there a way to be with people without a sense of ritual or habit?8:56

Henry Hm. I guess I would say that it’s implicit or maybe you don’t think about it but I think the things that we do turn into traditions. Like maybe, I think especially with kids, once you do something two times, they want it, it turns into its own tradition. And I don’t think it’s any different with yeah, well what we’re doing now. So an example of something in religion, so in Christianity you know, a common thing that happens at least in a worship service is we call it a call to confession. And so during a service, whoever’s up there will ask the whole congregation, all the people there, to kind of confess their sins to God, and then after that there’s also this thing called an assurance of pardon.9:00

Henry And so it’s an opportunity for everyone there to kind of think about what’s been going on that week or things that they’ve done that they shouldn’t do or things they haven’t done that they should do and just reflect upon that, because throughout the week, maybe you just don’t have an opportunity to do that, or you’re just so busy you can’t? And I think it’s a space, it’s a time where everyone can act the same where, we’re not saying that we’re better than anyone. And then after that of course there’s, simply just saying that I did all this bad stuff, maybe you feel guilty. After that is the assurance of pardon, that God forgives what you’ve done, and I think after that it’s a sense that forgiveness is possible. And doing that every week or in that kind of sense is important to your spirituality.9:55

Nadia And so I guess I’m just thinking, more generally beyond that of what happens when habits start out as a sort of comforting thing that you do to ground yourself or make the undefinable feel real, but at some point become counterproductive in some shape or form. And even open source, I was thinking about, and I know some maintainers who are stressed out about the- maybe community or governance aspects or just something contentious and they’ll kind of just merge small pull requests to feel better about themselves which is a nice thing to do. Or I guess even beyond faith or open source, you don’t feel like doing your big work project so instead you do your email or something like that. Maybe I’m stretching the metaphor a little bit far here but yeah.11:30

Nadia I guess sometimes habit, the feeling of a habit or being in a ritual can feel comforting but then at what point does it feel like maybe it does start to feel dead or fake or something like that?12:21

Henry Yeah that’s really good and even what you said, I literally did that and I think at my first talk I said that (laughs) I did that, where I was so scared of doing what I should be doing that I decided instead I’ll just do the easy things just so I could feel like I’m doing something. I guess it kind of feels like a throwing out the baby with the bathwater kinda thing, where I think most of us understand that habits can lead to the sense of going through the motions kind of thing and that that is bad and it feels insincere. But I don’t think it should make us turn away from engaging in habits, just because it can turn badly. It’s like we should learn how to embrace them in a way that helps us.12:39

Henry I think maybe it’s discovering that, whether or not we believe that, we are engaging in habits anyway and so it makes sense to me that we should intentionally be aware of the habits that we have and then create or engage in habits that shape us in ways that we want to be, or the people that we want to become. And maybe- oh, sorry.13:35

Nadia I guess, my question’s more in terms of heuristics, how would you know that a habit that maybe started out great is not actually beneficial?14:05

Henry Hm. Yeah, I guess it simply just takes reflection and looking back on why you’re doing this habit in the first place, and maybe doing it in community will help because people can keep you accountable. They’re like, “Hey, I noticed that …” Or, you know, sometimes it’s, maybe it’s obvious to other people that you’re just going because, just because. I think another part of it is we have this sense that, oh, habits are truly about obedience and kind of this thing that we do from the bottom up, that it has to come out of us, and that means that is a sense of effort and duty. And I think, especially in the faith context, that we should think about, you know, our worship and our liturgy in a top down kinda thing. And so what we can say there is, God is giving us these practices so that we are shaped into His image.14:13

Henry In a similar way, for any habit we have to believe that those things actually, if they’re forming us and shaping us then it’s not just expressive where we’re like the primary actor, but we’re being acted upon. We’re being shaped and formed. And so if we think- otherwise it- it is a form of what am I doing, and having to feel like. It’s almost a sense of control in that way and I think learning to kind of let go and being okay with, if the outcome isn’t what you thought of, that you continue to stay committed to that. ‘Cause I guess I’m saying that the habit itself helps you believe what you wanna believe. Like, the act of doing it. If that makes sense.15:17

Nadia Mmm, say more.16:09

Henry Yeah, so instead of believing our way to becoming good people and just thinking through it, we do habits because doing them helps us to do something, and I guess it’s just an admission that you can’t think your way to being a good person, or think your way to accomplishing these things. You have to do them, and so I think the act of going through that habit will make you want to do it more.16:13

Henry So in open source, we have this initial motivation to contribute for that reason, but the only way that’s sustained is if you’re continuing to do it. And so I think, through the practice of doing open source I learned to love it more. If it was just me thinking about it I don’t- or maybe there’s something different about just, like if you told someone about doing open source versus them actually engaging in it, or telling people about Christianity but then them not actually being there in that worship service.16:49

Nadia Okay, yeah. So from everything that you just said, I think I have a similar takeaway but a slightly different way of phrasing it. Which is that, yeah, habits or rituals or just even culture, it’s not something you can really think your way into so it’s not bottom up in the sense, bottom up meaning it originates in my individual desire and then I decide to do it. But I also don’t think it’s necessarily top down and I think this is maybe just a difference in spiritual beliefs or philosophies where I guess I just don’t really believe there is a top down, but more that, if God is something that is within everyone then it’s more of a truth that is held self-evident. And yeah, God or a higher authority or whatever is something that we’ve all sort of collectively created through our actions. It’s almost like (laughs) an efficient market or something where- yeah, a market based God.17:23

Nadia That’s a heretical, odd statement to make, but yeah. Just the idea that we’ve all sort of collectively created it. Maybe software is a better example of this (laughs) of this, yeah, the code base is the collection of all the different contributions, but it’s not that the maintainer decided to make it, and it’s also not one contributor decided to make it. I think the distinction is important for me because my fear of any sort of top down is that a bottom up individual can leverage the idea of top down to say, well, I’m the ultimate authority here, which I think we’ve talked about in the authority episode. So I want it to be this sort of, I guess more decentralized self evident behavior where no one can say, I am the one. We do this habit because God said so, but really it’s that I personally kind of said so and I’m just picking and choosing.18:34

Nadia But if enough people buy into the concept then- if enough people are doing the thing because they all find it valuable and it all brings them together then that’s really the answer. Is, do enough people want to do it besides yourself and besides any other one individual?19:32

Henry Yeah so thinking about it in open source is kind of just asking the question, what are we engaging in, what behaviors and what kind of people are we inviting in, and what kind of people are we turning into based on what habits that we have? I don’t know- I haven’t really thought that much about that, in terms of open source, other then just things that I’ve seen in terms of how we use GitHub and stuff like that and that would be, we use GitHub for identifications and Twitter for communication, and how that changes how we interact with people.20:03

Nadia Is that a form of liturgy? Like, the norms around communication?20:50

Henry Yeah, I think. I mean not that- maybe it seems like I’m looking into it but it’s kind of like the phrase, “The medium is the message.” And what that’s saying is that it’s not just the actual message itself that you’re communicating but the way that you’re doing it, the environment that you’re doing it in, shapes the community and shapes what you do. And in terms of notifications and Twitter, it’s synchronous, it’s instantaneous you’re always online and it’s like those kinds of qualities, what does that lead to? And I think when we talk about expectations, it leads to people expecting maintainers to respond immediately or that you’re always there available to talk to people and it’s like, is that something that we want to encourage?20:52

Henry And, there’s no practice that we have that encourages the opposite, which is rest. And maybe this is why people feel so guilty about taking breaks, and it’s like, maybe we should make that a quote unquote ritual. So that people will feel like it’s normal to not be there.21:44

Nadia To the point of the conversation we just had, how would you start a new shared habit, and then kinda more importantly, how do you know that the habit you personally want is a good habit if, I guess, my takeaway from the conversation we just had was that habits don’t start from the bottom up. Wherever else they start is fine but they don’t start from within. You can’t just decide to do a thing. It kinda is like a thing people are either doing or not doing. And so people are just not doing a habit of rest, then how would you start that and how would you also know that, just to play kind of obnoxious devil’s advocate, how would you even know that’s a good habit?22:09

Henry Since we’re talking about rest, I don’t think it’s that hard to argue for that, right? (laughs) It’s not that different from our work culture in the Western world, right? It’s like all about … and I think that’s more just like I realized that we’ve absorbed certain practices from that and it’s kind of in open source as well, and so when I think about- well in the church it’s like, if you go and you’re not feeling it that day but you go anyway and they’re asking you to pray and you’re not … I mean, you can just be silent but then you realize the church is praying for you. They’re singing for you, they’re worshiping for you and it’s, when you’re there, you realize that, you know, I can just be here and listen and be a part of this community and that’s like, in that sense, that’s also taking a break too. That it’s okay if you’re not feeling that day.22:56

Henry And so in open source, well maybe you’re sick or you wanna go on vacation but then you feel this pressure … I don’t know what it means to literally just … I don’t think you can just say, hey. We’re gonna suddenly start doing this. And maybe it is something you decide to do individually and it turns into, oh, I notice that people are doing this. Maybe we should turn this into a quote unquote habit. But I don’t know if it has to necessarily be oh, this is a rule now ‘cause that, maybe it can be natural too.23:53

Nadia … where are values derived from?24:46

Henry Yeah, so I would even say that a liturgy or habit is a practice that helps you embody the value you believe in. So, or it turns you into the person that you wanna be or what you desire and so I think the habits themselves are the way that those values play out in our lives.24:48

Nadia Yeah, it’s like the execution arm. (laughs)25:17

Henry Yeah, and so in terms of religion it’s like, we have our faith and then the way we express that faith is through what we do in our works. And so that relationship is weird because we need both and same with our habits and knowledge. We need to know things but we have to act them out to actually show that that’s what we believe. But it’s really easy for either you to kind of only get into this knowledge mode, where everything is head knowledge, which is necessary, but then also you don’t live it out. Or all you do is just do it and then you don’t even realize why you’re doing it in the first place. So I think it’s kind of this merging of the two.25:18

Henry So I’ll give you an example in faith. And so one of the, I guess, rituals that Christians practice is called communion. People think of it- another word for it is the Lord’s Supper. And in that practice the congregation comes together, it could be weekly or maybe even monthly or once a year depending on how they do it, and you come together and you share the bread and the wine. And I think some people what they do is they take one loaf of bread and then they break it off and they give to everyone. And it’s supposed to represent Jesus’ body and his blood. And so it’s just, this ordinary piece of bread or this ordinary … people are eating together.26:03

Henry But all those things kind of point back to remembering of what he did, and so even the idea of splitting a loaf of bread is interesting because that is instilling a sense of unity and community, where we’re not just doing this as one people, but we’re taking from the one piece of bread. And so when we call the church a Body of Christ, we’re doing it as one body. And I think that’s good ‘cause that kind of pushes against the values of individualism in our society, where we wanna stay as individuals but we’re also connected together. And then also because it’s a habit, the whole point of a habit is to bring us closer to our values, and especially in communion it’s like, hey, Jesus said do this in remembrance of me, then we’re supposed to use that to reflect back on what Christ’s sacrifice was.26:52

And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me. Luke 22:19

Henry And so it’s not just some thing that we do, but that thing should remind us of the historical or previous things that happened, and it’s a way of tying your head knowledge with something that you actually do with your body. And then you can start questioning yourself. You’re like, are we actually united as one body as we do this practice? Do I actually believe what this is saying? So it’s not just doing it.27:53

Nadia But I think there is value in doing it in this sort of ritualistic, intentional way, to say … I mean I was thinking even just in other religions where there might not be as defined of an authority or something like that but there’s still this idea that you’re giving yourself over to oneness or to something greater than yourself or whatever, and I feel like that’s often the role of religion, is to just kinda get you out of your head in general (laughs) and feel connected to something bigger than yourself.28:52

Nadia And yeah. I think we have to balance both, an individual and a collective mindset, but a collective mindset is how we actually get things done in the world, by learning how to coordinate and work together, and so there is something valuable to remembering that it’s not just all about you and it is about what you’re doing with other people.29:24

Henry Yeah I think it’s, throughout the week, in everything that we do I think most of the rituals in society and the habits that we have enforce this idea of that we are the most important person, that it’s about us. And I think that’s why it’s so important for us to have those habits. ‘Cause if I didn’t have those, everything’s telling me that it is about me, though. Even this like … otherwise that religion is basically consumerism and that is just marketing, right? Like everything is trying to sell me something. It’s telling me that, you know, if I buy this my life will be better or that X, Y, Z about my life will be better and in that sense it’s interesting to think of all these things as quote unquote liturgies, and that things that we think are kind of like neutral? It’s just like a product or something. But the whole point of marketing is to get you to feel this thing that, this is important to your flourishing or your thriving in the world and in that sense it’s kind of religious in that way. It’s pointing you to something bigger and it just happens to be it’s through paying for this stuff.29:45

Nadia Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don’t think one is necessarily good or bad. I mean, at the extremes, both sides kinda such (laughs) but yeah, the role of an individual as an agent is to sorta help push the group into a certain direction, and I think that’s a really important role to have. A sense of agency is really important because if you completely give yourself over to collective mindset then you have no sense of agency and that’s not good. But if you give yourself over completely to the idea of individual agency, it’s actually just really lonely. I just think inherently, most people would agree that feeling super, super on your own not tethered to anything whatsoever is a pretty lonely, depressing state to be in.30:58

Nadia So yeah, when I think about the role of giving yourself to a group mindset, I think it’s also almost even just a comforting thing of you’re not alone. Yeah. The comfort part and then also just kinda the coordination, efficiency kind of part of, me too, we- when people work together more things happen.31:48

Henry I think it’s like freedom not because you’re alone, but freedom ‘cause you’re in that group and you’re free within that group to make those decisions that you need to do.32:12

Nadia Thanks for listening. If you’d like to continue the conversation, you can find us on Twitter at @left_pad or @nayafia or on our website hopeinsource.com32:29