thread: 2007-01-10 : Some questions about worship
On 2007-01-18, Ian Burton-Oakes wrote:
I'm of the mind that it can only be prayer or worship if it is intended to address some mystery larger than yourself, something that doesn't quite fit nicely into any boxes, that gets a cool name like God, Gaia, G-d, what have you because those carry with them the appopriate ambiguity. Thanking cows, tofu factories, even the sun pure and simple, is good mindfulness, but that alone I would not call prayer or worship.
(Of course, that doesn't mean it isn't prayer or worship for anyone else at the table. When I have been at a local Episcopalian Church, I say the words to prayers, but I'm not really praying or worshipping. At best, I abstract enough to get to a sort of appreciative mindfulness. Most of the people around me, though, are praying, are worshiping.)
Not that there aren't tons of reasons to invoke things like the cows you eat in your prayers, but unless they are invoked in a way that makes them part of a broader spiritual mystery, they then become idolatrous—be it in the golden calf sense or the if you see Buddha on the road sense.
I take the idolatry to be taking a particular object or objects for the divine mystery itself. If you aren't even invoking that category in the first place, then I have a hard time calling idolatry. And, honestly, I'm not sure idolatry itself is really that big a deal when it happens from time to time, so long as the object of idolatry does not become habitual.
As an aside, on the whole Judaism chord, one thing that has often struck me as important to appreciating modern expressions (plural) of Judaism is the diaspora and midrash. Diaspora because it lies at the root of a lot of diversity (and unity) within the faith, midrash because it gives amplitude to biblical text without actually adding to the most essential kernel of the Torah. It's a really admirable and sophisticated approach to textual reverence. But, hey, that's just my goyishe .02;)
