[February 2005 journal entry]
A close friend asked recently during a dinner conversation, “Doug, what is ‘worship’? What is it for you?” This question followed her observation that ‘worship’ for her had to do with awakening, becoming spiritually conscious, being aware. After expressing appreciation and interest in her way of nuancing ‘worship’, I explained that I associate ‘worship’ with awe (reverence, intense admiration, devotion, deep love), suggesting that awe overlaps with and perhaps expands on her ideas re ‘worship’. I acknowledged an aversion to the word ‘worship’ because of (1) my reservations about the underlying anthropo-, socio-, and cosmomorphic ‘God’ language that is used uncritically in ‘religious’ gatherings, (2) my dissociation from the fundamentalist/evangelical theologies that surround the ‘worship’ experience in most liturgies, (3) my rejection of the ‘I am weak and helpless’ spirituality so widespread in ‘religious’ gatherings, (4) my opposition to the diminished attention given the depth/breadth of human suffering in virtually every ‘worship’ service I recall. My ‘awe’ stems from seeing into nature (micro and macro) and from seeing into the human story (capacity for construction and destruction, for the beautiful and the offensive). My ‘awe’ is very active, seeking, expressive re nature and the human story. My ‘awe’ becomes still, quiet, wordless beyond nature and the human story (thus my resonance with the liberal Quaker tradition). Resolved to be ‘with the world face to face’, I strain to see rather than close my eyes. I stand rather than bow. I do not surrender my inner-independence, my self-reliance (see the ‘Foolishness’ section in Bonhoeffer’s December 1942 ‘After Ten Years’ essay). I always have my copy of Peterson’s translation of the story/play Job with me when I attend a ‘worship’ service inside the ‘religious’ sphere.
