Terminal liturgy

I arrived at the airport very early for a red-eye flight the other night, settled into a pizza place for dinner, and opened my book. I adopted that selective deafness one needs to screen out all the background noise in a busy place.

But one of the taped announcements about security penetrated my traveler’s cone of silence.
“Be always vigilant about your surroundings…” said the mechanized voice.

It reminded me of a line I always loved in the Compline service, the seventh and last service of the canonical day as written for the Episcopal/Anglican Church. I used to attend Compline on Sunday nights at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle. (“Compline” is a word born of others meaning “final” or “to complete.”) This was — and probably still is — one of the best-attended services at a Northwest church.

People who never darkened the door of any house of worship came to hear the beautiful, eerie chant in the remarkable acoustics of that huge stone building up on Capitol Hill. It was especially dramatic to hear the service in the fall, when darkness would start to fall during the chant.

I remembered the line as starting with “Beloved: be sober, be vigilant….” but when I looked it up just now, I found I’d done some editing. It actually reads “Brethren, be sober, be vigilant…” and continues: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.”

As many times as I heard it, I still used to wait for the “be sober, be vigilant” phrase with an anticipatory shiver. Thinking about it in the busy airport, I felt the same sense of warning mixed with excitement. The notion that being on one’s guard, being vigilant, can keep evil at bay is an idea I cling to. Not a bad thought before taking to the sky to fly all night, trusting that morning and a safe landing are at the other end.