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%FORGET IGNORANCE REMEMBER REMINDER WORSHIP SERVICE+991121
%CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS COLLUSION ADDICTION POWERS SIN+991121
%CONCENTRATION CORRUPTION LIMIT BOUNDARY COMPLEMENT+991121
%JUDGMENT CONDEMNATION NATURAL CONSEQUENCES DEVILS+991121
%WORTH SERVICE ADULATION HONOR RESPECT DISCIPLINE+991121
%DISCIPLE FOLLOWER LEADER OBEDIENCE OBEY LAW LORDS 991121
Humans (both individually and as communities) are
prone to forget about their mortality, imperfections,
weaknesses, limitations --- and about their tendencies to
become involved in collusive games of mutual self
deception and various addictions. Some humans
acknowledge such tendencies and form intentional
communities within which they gather regularly to remind
themselves and each other about their mortality,
imperfections, weaknesses, limitations --- and about their
tendencies to become involved in collusive games of mutual
self deception and addictions. Yet even within such
communities --- they manage to forget and transform
their communities into communities which gather
together to celebrate and worship their own:
POWERS PERFECTIONS SUPERIORITY
KNOWLEDGE SKILLS ACHIEVEMENTS
RIGHTEOUSNESS SALVATION MORALITY
ARROGANCE POSSESSIONS ETHICS
LAWS LEGALITIES EXCLUSIVITY
RELIGIOSITY SPIRITUALITY IMMORTALITY
INSTITUTIONS ARTIFACTS SCRIPTURES
TECHNOLOGIES TECHNIQUES SCIENCES
Such communal tendencies compound individual
tendencies through the concentration and corruption of
human powers --- which are affirmed without limits,
bounds, boundaries, checks, or balances. They
thoughtlessly devise and worship collusive games of mutual
self deception --- games which they cannot hear, see,
feel, or touch, taste or discern. They come together
to worship that which imprisons them; doing so as
people who are deaf, blind, insensitive; without
feeling, without taste and unable to discern what is
wrong in their ways, habits, attitudes, assumptions, and
preoccupations. Such people cannot discern the powers
that beings like them are creating and being
victimized by --- as described by Walter Wink in his
book "The Powers that Be".
We need to remember that the word "worship" comes
from the Anglo Saxon word "weorth" connoting "value", and
from the Greek word "skaphein" connoting "to hollow"
something as it should be, as in a simple ship, making it
the proper shape as in "shipshape". Thus "ship" connotes
the state, condition or shape of some thing, and so
"worship" connotes the state or condition of having worth
or value. So a great person was addressed as "Your
Worship" to acknowledge the person's state of being of
high value and worthy of veneration. In financial terms
we ask how much a person is worth --- to inquire about
their state or condition of financial value. Other
things may be worth-while if they are worthy of respect,
honor, and veneration. Thus, to "worship" is to
engage in acts of affirming worth, respect, honor and
veneration. Such acts may be anywhere from informal and
spontaneous; to highly formalized --- according to
formulas which indicate what kinds of acts are themselves
worthy of respect and honor ---as in "high church"
rituals. Thus a worship service is a formalized ritual
in which worshipers indicate their sense that the focus of
their worship-service merits their service, because the
focus of the service is worthy of great respect, honor,
and obedience as servants or disciples.
We worship whatever we most respect, honor, and
serve. We cannot avoid worship. All people worship
whatever they most value, respect, honor and serve;
whatever guides their being and living. Some people
worship quite informally in disparate ways, some in
desperate ways; others in more formal ways which entail
recognizable traditional rituals and forms of formal
worship --- according to respected formulas of how worship
should be carried out in the service of that which is
the focus of the service of worship.
We cannot avoid worship; i.e., worshiping some thing,
person, ideal, value, principles, life-style, paradigm,
world-view, etc. The best we can do is worship in ways
which demonstrate personal and communal integrity --- so
that our affirmations through: speaking, writing, desires,
decisions, actions, habits, attitudes, and setting of
priorities --- are coherent in ways which make sense and
are in touch with what our senses and what sensations
tell us about the world --- and about the cosmos of
which our Spaceship-Earth is a tiny part --- in an
incomprehensibly vast four dimensional space-time
continuum.
(c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in
www.essayz.com Search for Integrity and Honesty
(On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)
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