Trinity @ 7 Makes the Headlines!
Church’s Sunday night gathering is more spiritual than religious
THE LOW-KEY, NO PRESSURE SPIRITUALITY OF ‘TRINITY@7’
By Jay Tokasz
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: May 22, 2010, 10:17 am /Published: May 22, 2010, 12:30 am
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of an occasional series exploring the broad and changing spectrum of faith in Western New York. Reporter Jay Tokasz focuses on how area religious groups practice their faith, and how the divine is present –or represented –in various forms of gathered worship.
You may hear a reading of Wendell Berry poetry, but probably not a letter from Paul to the Corinthians. You’ll definitely get a sampling of live instrumental jazz without any accompanying bar chatter. A chorus or pipe organ? Not here. There’s no collection plate, no Communion procession and no sermon, either. Most Sunday evenings, there’s not even a mention of Jesus Christ inside Trinity Episcopal Church on Delaware Avenue.
Trinity’s chapel, with stony pillars and fine stained-glass windows, is as traditional a Christian worship space as any in Western New York. But this particular gathering, known simply as “Trinity@7,” could hardly be described as a religious service.
Organizers prefer to call it “an encounter with God without all the religion.”
And it might represent the rumblings of a post-modern spiritual response to society’s seemingly endless obsession with all things multimedia.
“We specifically say it’s not Christian. There’s not a category for it,” said the Rev. Cam Miller, rector of Trinity Episcopal. “It’s a highly ritualized sort of group meditation. It defies any categories that exist. It was designed to make people who are allergic to organized religion comfortable.”
Trinity, which was founded in 1836, still offers traditional and contemporary Episcopalian services on Sunday mornings.
The church started hosting the weekly jazz sessions about seven years ago, and when the weather warms up, Miller often stands outside to greet visitors. They usually hear about the gathering through word of mouth or from a small ad in a local weekly publication.
Participants are encouraged to listen and contemplate. They’re not called upon to sing or shake hands with each other or kneel or mark themselves with the sign of the cross.
On a recent Sunday evening, more than 60 people settled into folding chairs, their faces illuminated only by a sandpit of votive candles. Gentle breezes from an open window above tickled the flames, making them appear to sway with the rhythm of an upright bass played by John Fadale.
Greeter Tess Spangler handed out programs that included pithy quotes from the likes of W. Somerset Maugham, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Helen Keller. Visitors were invited to sit or stand wherever they wanted, including at scattered cafe tables.
Miller opened the session by imploring a “God of grace, of stillness behind the quiet, (to) speak to us in the space between our breaths.” The short prayer and an “Amen” or two were about as religious as the gathering got — fine for Ron Reczek of Buffalo.
“I’ve been an agnostic most of my life, and I don’t really fit in with organized religion,” said Reczek, who stumbled upon the meeting a few months ago and comes back because it relaxes him.
“Even as an agnostic, I need some kind of spiritual help in my daily life,” he said. “It’s sort of a churchy atmosphere, but it’s not overpowering or overwhelming. You might say it’s seductive.”
The readings began with Berry’s “Practice Resurrection” —a poem that encourages us to “every day do something that won’t compute”—and included writings by Denise Levertov and George Ella Lyons.
Miller provided a 10-minute reflection, incorporating the readings into his own lyrical contemplation on the necessity of good listening in all spiritual practice.
“It’s not about talking to God, about making a list and checking it twice,” Miller said. “It’s about listening. Just . . . listening.”
Miller’s Midwestern tenor delivery was smooth, relaxed, understated — and he just as easily could have been introducing Miles Davis tunes on a nonprofit FM station.
To conclude, he welcomed people to light a candle and make the moment “a time of listening, not for anything in particular, but for what is here within us and around us and among us, to listen not for what we want to hear or think we should hear, but to listen for what is here that we might be able to hear.”
Afterward, over cheese, crackers and wine, Gus Perfect said she felt “more peaceful, more centered” by simply sitting down and listening to what was going on and “being reminded you can do that.”
Teresa Maciocha, who has attended the gathering for years and sometimes serves as a reader, noted a certain “energy” about all of the elements—music, church architecture, poetry, soft lighting—coming together seamlessly.
“Every week, I feel differently than when I walked in,” she said. “It speaks to me.”
But was it an encounter with God?
Participants, many of them still wrestling with their beliefs about the divine, hesitated to describe it in exactly those terms.
“I had a transformation through the experience. I should hold it at that,” said Curt Mott of Buffalo, an Erie Community College student who was visiting for the first time with a couple of friends.
For the jazz musicians, too, the evening offered more than just another opportunity to perform. The intimate setting, coupled with attentive listeners, is “completely the way music should be played,” said Richard Griffo, who performed on saxophone and flute.
It allowed him to let down his guard and have a kind of out-of-body experience, he added. “When I’m playing, I’m no longer here entirely,” he said. “You finally get away from the earth you’re on.”
Krista Seddon, who plans the music with Miller, described playing piano during Trinity @ 7 as “an extremely soulful experience.”
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever done musically,” she said.
