I did not grow up with liturgy. The closest thing was probably the occasional corporate reading of
scripture from the back of a beat-up hymnbook with a busted spine, where at
least you could be sure everyone was looking at the same translation for once.
Agreed, that’s not very close.
The Upper and Nether Millstones
Of course there were always very sincere, older, conservative Christians around who prayed out loud in
religious clichés so hackneyed and distinctive you could see them coming
several sentences in advance. But that’s not really liturgy either; it’s more
like chronic failure of imagination. My brothers and I would mouth these pieties
to one another as they rolled off the speaker’s tongue in amusement at our own
rather profane cleverness in anticipating them.