Worship
Recently, I’ve been wrestling with worship. I think the heart of worship is the yearning to love. Whether one chooses a god or goddess, nature, a human being (enlightened or otherwise), or an impersonal compassion for all things, this insistent call to love seems to be a fundamental part of being human.
So far, so good. But the problem for me comes in with the subject of forms. In this incarnated world, we mere mortals require forms to hold meaning. (It is said that one may skip both form and meaning and go straight to direct experience, but that’s another topic). Of course, when it comes to the creation of forms, humans are endlessly creative. This is especially true with worship. The religions of humanity are stuffed to bursting with every sort of deity, icon, and ritual ever imagined. But the nature of form is tricky.
Form is forever only a symbol, a placeholder. It is the proverbial finger pointing to the moon. If one focuses only on the form, then the meaning that it is meant to be represented by it is lost. Then one crosses over into literalism and fundamentalism is born. However, if one focuses only on the meaning, then the form stops holding it and becomes lifeless. With no finger to point the way, one enters into relativism, which ultimately leads to nihilism.
My trouble is that I have an extremely neurotic relationship with form. Form offers me meaning, which I find quite appealing. So I stare expectantly at the form and wait for the promised meaning to show up. The form looks nervous, shuffles its feet, and points a little harder. When the form fails to produce meaning, I get disgusted and decide that forms lie and cannot be trusted. Then I promptly get depressed because I can’t find any meaning. So, through a feat of great skill, I somehow manage to exhibit the worst qualities of both literalism and relativism and get all the downsides of both fundamentalism and nihilism without any of the perks (they have perks?).
So, how is the related to worship and love? Well, unless one is quite enlightened, one needs form to worship. We need, quite literally, an object of our affection. Being only peripherally enlightened, I feel this need quite strongly. But given my dynamic with form, it becomes quite problematic. I examine this god or that belief, see that it is “flawed” in some way or another (i.e. demand that it be meaning itself, which it fails to do), get frustrated that I can’t find anything to love, and go watch TV.
So, in an effort to do something different, I’m about to go to a Christian church. I’m not a Christian, but then I’m not a member of any religious tradition, so I suppose one is as good as another. And my friend who is taking me (who is also not a Christian) says that they’re quite liberal (i.e. not literalist/fundamentalist) and very focused on the love (i.e. not relativist/nihilist). Which is, in my humble opinion, the whole point of this undertaking. So if they’re better at this than I am, which seems likely, then perhaps I can learn something from them.
Wish me luck. 