from soc.religion.quaker
April 23, 2004

It was asked:
"Worship seems to be a common word that comes up in the context of Friends'
Meetings and in Christian literature. This is something I simply have never
understood. Sitting in devoted admiration of anything seems strange to me;
 I guess I just don't have the worship nature imbedded in me.
Maybe I misundertand what people are referring to by worship... Anyone care
to comment?"

I responded
I use the word all the time and I understand what you mean. It
bothered me for a long time, too. Worship conjured up images of
"natives" dancing around idols in the firelight or, as you describe,
admiration and supplication and such. I think that admiration and
supplication are not bad things, and I aspire to be so fully
integrated into God's plan as worms are :=]. I also know a
wonderful Quaker woman who easily convinces rooms full of people at a
time that dancing is a form of worship (although there have never been
any idols around).

Since the word figures in Quaker practice (Meeting for Worship,
Meeting for Worship for Business, Opportunities for Worship) I
wondered about this a number of times and began to see worship as
acknowledging the presence of God, of connecting with God. That's
what I always saw myself doing in Meeting for Worship, and in my
individiual worship, centering on the connection, bringing the part
of myself that is of God forward in my awareness, listening for that
still small voice of guidance, opening myself.

A non Quaker pastor who I frequently listen to on the radio talked
about worship in a way that was so interesting to me that I wrote it
down. He said that worshipping might be praise and singing but that
one worshipped God when one was being devoted to God. Reading
scripture is worship in that one is devoting oneself to the study of
God's word. One is also in worship when one is acting in God's
will--doing God's work, that which God would have done, God's will
(that which should be done to carry out the divine purpose).

This pastor said that worship also included acting in
obedience--willing subjegation to that which, in the sphere of divine
revelation, is right (to borrow a definition from the Lexical Aids of
my Key Word KJV). One is worshipping when one is denying one's
fleshy/carnal desires and acting in a holy/spiritual way ("denying the
world" is a phrase that comes to mind). He added acting with
tenderness and love to the list of things that are involved in woship.

As one is devoteed to God and God's way so one is in worship. He
didn't say it but after I wrote the words down, Devotion, Obedience,
Tenderness, Love--I realized that their first letters spell (in a
different order) DOLT.

I think this is the way people use the word worship when they say that
someone worships money, or they worship fame. they are devoting
themsleves to these things, doing what having or pursuing those things
dictates.

Timothy

"So the first act of worship is simply to offer ourselves, totally and
completely to God...Our second act of worship is to listen to God...we
have not invoked the presence of God nor attractive the divine
attention to ourselves, but prepared ourselves to perceive the eternal
Presence and to give our attention to God..."

Lloyd Lee Wilson
Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order




6:25:15 AM