thread: 2007-01-10 : Some questions about worship
On 2007-01-12, Mo wrote:
In my very little corner of this very big world, whether or not what you Bakers are doing is prayer or worship is predicated entirely to your conception of what is sacred.
If I were singing the same song in the same manner as you do, and someone asked me if what I was doing was prayer or worship, then I would have to say yes. I would probably bristle for a moment at accepting the terms, but that's because the words themselves still hold the tendrils of different understanding from back in a time where I was a different person, and had been taught to think a different way. Those words still have shadows that don't belong to them, but it's not their fault.
Here, I take particular joy in the sense that the words divinity and divination have a common quality of seeking to them: this sense of reaching for, this veneration and adoration for the More Than. That we can and that we choose to create such beautiful things out of chaos despite the lethargy, apathy, cynicism and distraction that entreat us to not bother - that's the sacred. That despite our limitations we reach and we forge and we create - that's the sacred.
So when you sing to the sustainers, you sing in adoration for the More Than that you and Meg and your boys have reached for and grasped together (or in the sacrifice that others have made to sustain you). You sing in communion for the More that you have built, and in petition that it continue to reach, and in honour, homage and praise for the sacred quality of it. Or, to put it in those words that have shadows for me: you pray in worship of it.
Is it blasphemy? In that context, how could it be? With the reverence it is performed with, and the community it is performed by and lacking any delineation that the qualities of G/god might be something distinctly unconnected to the self, it can't be blasphemy.
Is it idolatry? This is a word that has too much shadow to even come close to. It doesn't belong to me. If I were to push on my belief around it, I might say that formalized religious perceptions of G/god that try and make G/god into a distinct anthropomorphized package are what I might have used the word for, though that doesn't really point to anything helpful.
