"As for worship, every simple act of helping, serving and loving others is the essence of worship"
One can serve, act, love, help, and so forth with or without worship. I suggest that the meaning of "worship" is lost when we use it to mean everything and anything--just as the meaning of "love" is dissolved in the same carelessness of usage.
"When we risk we live"
We also live when we don't risk. Careless risk-taking is a prescription for a truncated longevity. A certain amount of risk is intrinsic to existence. But only the frightened and the foolish court it. It is a simple truism that the greatest risk takers generally repress the deepest and most profound anxieties and fears.
"Risk is being and becoming one and the same in the present moment"
And here I thought it was drawing to a soft 18 against a ten...
"The absense of risk is the essence of evil"
There is nothing evil about safety. Sometimes it is boring, but evil is more related to danger (risk) than it is to safety. Normal people try to minimize the risks they dare in pursuit of their goals. One of the prime goals of normal people is to provide safety and security for themselves...and for those whom they love.
Extravagant or divine "love" can be experienced as worship--yes. But worship generally assumes an inequality of value and is therefore (in normal persons) reserved for a "relationship" with a supernatural being. Leaving aside the question of how harmful this may be, there is certainly no serious argument whether placing a person on a pedestal, as in "worshipping"--may be other than unhealthy and unwise.
"My/our former big/fat Tabbycat, Ida, sitting and purring in my lap was an example of love in ACTION."
Somehow I think that equating the (sometimes) profound depths of human love with the rather mindless purring of a cat is disrespectful and flippant. Cats do not purr for any human reason. They often purr when they are afraid or injured. Even when they may feel an "attachment"...mere "attachment" does not convey the full compass of what we contemplate when we refer to "love".
One can only know the good and the beautiful and the comforting where one admits and sees the ugly and the hateful and the dangerous. We don't ignore the contemptible and dangerous anymore than we ignore the hole in the ground. We walk around it and avoid the risk..or we fill it in and remove it altogether.
"Worship" contemplates an essential inequality between the subject and the object. It paves the ground for tyrants, and it exalts the mind-set of slavery and worthlessness. It ought to be restricted to the Gods as it intends. It ought not to be slobbered about. |
