On Harvard and Home

(Cross-posted here).

Ever since I graduated in May, I have received all sorts of congratulations on my achievement. These congratulations have all been sincere, much appreciated, entirely understandable, and yet (I have felt) out of place – out of place, for the simple reason that graduation has affected me more like an eviction notice than like a major accomplishment. Indeed, graduation has seemed quite literally out of place in my life: an out-of-place displacement of me from my place at Harvard, an unnecessary rupture in the pattern of my life for the past four years.

For the past four years, after all, Harvard was my home. It was not just the place where I went to school; it was where I slept, ate, and prayed; it was where I thought I belonged. Despite all its many sins, absurdities, and hypocrisies, it was a place that I loved, and continue to love.

Now, however, my time at Harvard is up. Without any say in the matter, I have been asked to leave, have said goodbye, and have left – not my school, but my home. Where, then, is home? I have thought about that question a lot in the past several weeks. Clearly, home is no longer Harvard; graduation took care of that. But it is also true, though perhaps less clear, that home never really could be Harvard anyway. Harvard was never intended to last forever – never intended to be anything more than a stepping-stone. Life at Harvard was designed with an endpoint, even if that endpoint seemed impossibly far-off to my freshman eyes. Harvard, then, was never my home; I was just a-passin’ through.

It took some time for me to accept that fact. Once I did, however, I realized that the same could be said of anything in this life – for life on Earth, like life at Harvard, was never intended to last forever. Life itself was designed with an endpoint, even if that endpoint seems impossibly far-off to youthful eyes; and so home – true Home – cannot be found here. This world, like Harvard, is not our home; we’re just a-passin’ through. We graduate from college, but we graduate from life, too.

It is said of the biblical men and women of faith that they admitted to being strangers on the earth. This fact – that they were strangers on the earth – is, no doubt, a theological fact. But it is also a straightforwardly biological fact; it is a fact grounded in the well-worn axioms that everybody dies and that nothing lasts forever. The truth is that the faithful departed were not strangers on the earth because they were faithful, but because they were mortal; and so we mortals, too, faithful or not, are all strangers on the earth.

Where, then, is home? Where is Home for us strangers on the earth? The answer comes in the form of a question from the same old song, "This World Is Not My Home," to which I have referred: "If Heaven’s not my home, then, Lord, what will I do?" Heaven must be home – because Earth cannot be. Heaven must be home – because only in Heaven will we not be strangers, pilgrims, outgoing graduates, long-term guests at a hotel. Heaven must be home – because only in Heaven are we not just a-passin’ through.

Earth is not our home; it was not made to be our home; it is not eternal enough to be our home; it is not good enough to be our home. Those are facts. The difficult thing is to admit to those facts. Doing so is what distinguished the faithful men and women of old: not merely being strangers on the earth, but admitting to being as much. In the end, their act of faith was simply to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that they had not yet reached Home.

Harvard came and went in the blink of an eye. Returning there (as I have repeatedly since graduation) produces in me the sobering sensation of being a stranger in one's own home, a unique brand of homesickness which is at its core a longing for eternity – a longing for an as yet unreached Home. Returning, consequently, makes me miss Harvard, but it makes me miss Heaven more.

I am, and each of us is, a stranger on the earth; I have not yet reached Home. These are difficult facts to admit. But they are also beautiful facts to admit, for they speak of a beautiful Home: the Home which we have desired (knowingly or not) our whole lives, the Home made for us and the Home for which we were made. Harvard is slowly receding from memory and sight, as will any and all of my earthly homes. But that is all right, if Heaven is my home. And if Heaven’s not my home – then, Lord, what will I do? "The angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door, and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore."

The Great Iconoclast

From C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed.

It Shall Not Be Forgiven

Very interesting.

The Hound of Heaven

The Hound of Heaven


Francis Thompson


I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat - and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet -
'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.'

I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside).
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of His approach would clash it to.
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be sudden-to Eve: Be soon;
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover-
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue;
Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet:-
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat-
'Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.'

I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of man or maid;
But still within the little children's eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
'Come then, ye other children, Nature's-share
With me' (said I) 'your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning
With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,
Banqueting
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured daïs,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.'
So it was done:
I in their delicate fellowship was one-
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.
I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;
All that's born or dies
Rose and drooped with; made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the days dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
These things and I; in sound I speak-
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts o' her tenderness:
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
And past those noisèd Feet
A voice comes yet more fleet-
'Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me!'
Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years-
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must-
Designer infinite!-
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsèd turrets slowly wash again.
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
Be dunged with rotten death?

Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
'And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught' (He said),
'And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited-
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!'
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
'Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.'

Believe It or Not

My favorite parts:

"The most venerable metaphysical claims about God ... start ... from the fairly elementary observation that nothing contingent, composite, finite, temporal, complex, and mutable can account for its own existence, and that even an infinite series of such things can never be the source or ground of its own being, but must depend on some source of actuality beyond itself."

"It is not logically requisite for anyone, on observing that contingent reality must depend on absolute reality, to say then what the absolute depends on...."

"Above all, Nietzsche understood how immense the consequences of the rise of Christianity had been, and how immense the consequences of its decline would be as well, and had the intelligence to know he could not fall back on polite moral certitudes to which he no longer had any right. [...] He understood also that the death of God beyond us is the death of the human as such within us."

(Hat tip to RGD.)

Ichthus Article: Façades

Here it is.

Fish Tank Post: The Man on the Cross

Here it is.

Fish Tank Post: Resurrection

Here it is.

The Sorrow of God

Courtesy of BW3, a beautiful and simple Cockney poem called The Sorrow of God: A Sermon in a Billet. My favorite parts:

But what if 'E came to the earth to show,
By the paths o' pain that 'E trod,
The blistering flame of eternal shame
That burns in the heart o' God?

For the voice of the Lord, as I 'ears it now,
Is the voice of my pals what bled,
And the call of my country's God to me
Is the call of my country's dead.

Chesterton on Christmas

And another one, from Chesterton's excellent The Everlasting Man:

"No other story, no pagan legend or philosophical anecdote or historical event, does in fact affect any of us with that peculiar and even poignant impression produced on us by the word Bethlehem. No other birth of a god or childhood of a sage seems to us to be Christmas or anything like Christmas. It is either too cold or too frivolous, or too formal and classical, or too simple and savage, or too occult and complicated. Not one of us, whatever his opinions, would ever go to such a scene with the sense that he was going home. He might admire it because it was poetical, or because it was philosophical or any number of other things in separation; but not because it was itself. The truth is that there is a quite peculiar and individual character about the hold of this story on human nature; it is not in its psychological substance at all like a mere legend or the life of a great man. It does not exactly in the ordinary sense turn our minds to greatness; to those extensions and exaggerations of humanity which are turned into gods and heroes, even by the healthiest sort of hero worship. It does not exactly work outwards, adventourously to the wonders to be found at the ends of the earth. It is rather something that surprises us from behind, from the hidden and personal part of our being; like that which can sometimes take us off our guard in the pathos of small objects or the blind pieties of the poor. It is rather as if a man had found an inner room in the very heart of his own house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light from within. It is if he found something at the back of his own heart that betrayed him into good. It is not made of what the world would call strong materials; or rather it is made of materials whose strength is in that winged levity with which they brush and pass. It is all that is in us but a brief tenderness that there made eternal; all that means no more than a momentary softening that is in some strange fashion become strengthening and a repose; it is the broken speech and the lost word that are made positive and suspended unbroken; as the strange kings fade into a far country and the mountains resound no more with the feet of the shepherds; and only the night and the cavern lie in fold upon fold over something more human than humanity."

(Hat tip to CDK.)

Lewis on Demons

From the Postscript of The Screwtape Letters:

"A belief in angels, whether good or evil, does not mean a belief in either as they are represented in art and literature. Devils are depicted with bats’ wings and good angels with birds’ wings not because anyone holds that moral deterioration would be likely to turn feathers into membrane, but because most men like birds better than bats. They are given wings at all in order to suggest the swiftness of unimpeded intellectual energy. They are given human form because man is the only rational creature we know. Creatures higher in the natural order than ourselves, either incorporeal or animating bodies of a sort we cannot experience, must be represented symbolically if they are to be represented at all....

In the plastic arts these symbols have steadily degenerated. Fra Angelico’s angels carry in their face and gesture the peace and authority of heaven. Later come the chubby infantile nudes of Raphael; finally the soft, slim, girlish and consolatory angels of nineteenth-century art, shapes so feminine that they avoid being voluptuous only by their total insipidity—the frigid houris of a tea-table paradise. They are a pernicious symbol. In Scripture the visitation of an angel is always alarming; it has to begin by saying 'Fear not.' The Victorian angel looks as if it were going to say 'There, there.'

The literary symbols are more dangerous because they are not so easily recognised as symbolical. Those of Dante are the best. Before his angels we sink in awe. His devils, as Ruskin rightly remarked, in their rage, spite and obscenity, are far more like what the reality must be than anything in Milton. Milton’s devils, by their grandeur and high poetry, have done great harm, and his angels owe too much to Homer and Raphael. But the really pernicious image is Goethe’s Mephistopheles. It is Faust, not he, who really exhibits the ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self which is the mark of hell. The humorous, civilized, sensible, adaptable Mephistopheles has helped to strengthen the illusion that evil is liberating.

A little man may sometimes avoid some single error made by a great one, and I was determined that my own symbolism should at least not err in Goethe’s way. For humour involves a sense of proportion and a power of seeing yourself from the outside. Whatever else we attribute to beings who sinned through pride, we must not attribute this. Satan, said Chesterton, fell through force of gravity. We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives in the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment. This, to begin with. For the rest, my own choice of symbols depended, I suppose, on temperament and on the age.

I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of 'Admin'. The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern."

(Hat tip to this blog.)

Sicut Cervus

Palestrina's Sicut cervus, as (spontaneously) performed by the Harvard Glee Club in Limerick, Ireland:

Harvard Glee Club - Sicut Cervus from Umang S on Vimeo.

Fish Tank Post: "The Red Sweater"

Here it is.

Fish Tank Post: Perfection

Here it is.

Cyprian on Joy

From a letter Saint Cyprian wrote:

"This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden, under the shadow of these vines. But if I climbed some great mountain and looked out over the wide lands, you know very well what I would see - brigands on the high roads, pirates on the seas; in the amphitheaters men murdered to please applauding crowds; under all roofs misery and selfishness. It is really a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. Yet in the midst of it I have found a quiet and holy people. They have discovered a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasures of this sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are the Christians - and I am one of them."

(Hat tip to CQOTD. Incidentally, several of the quotations I've posted here before have come from them, and I don't think I've ever remembered to tip my hat to them before! Apologies.)

A Woman's Question

A Woman's Question


Lena Lathrop


Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing
Ever made by the Hand above?
A woman's heart, and a woman's life-
And a woman's wonderful love.

Do you know you have asked for this priceless thing
As a child might ask for a toy?
Demanding what others have died to win,
With the reckless dash of a boy.

You have written my lesson of duty out,
Manlike, you have questioned me.
Now stand at the bars of my woman's soul
Until I shall question thee.
You require your mutton shall always be hot,
Your socks and your shirt be whole;
I require your heart be true as God's stars
And as pure as His heaven your soul.

Your require a cook for your mutton and beef,
I require a far greater thing;
A seamstress you're wanting for socks and shirts-
I look for a man and a king.

A king for the beautiful realm called Home,
And a man that his Maker, God,
Shall look upon as He did on the first
And say: "It is very good."

I am fair and young, but the rose may fade
From this soft young cheek one day;
Will you love me then 'mid the falling leaves,
As you did 'mong the blossoms of May?

Is your heart an ocean so strong and true,
I may launch my all on its tide?
A loving woman finds heaven or hell
On the day she is made a bride.

I require all things that are grand and true,
All things that a man should be;
If you give this all, I would stake my life
To be all you demand of me.

If you cannot be this, a laundress and cook
You can hire and little to pay;
But a woman's heart and a woman's life
Are not to be won that way.

Poem From a Slain Soldier

A poem written by an anonymous soldier killed in World War I:

If it be all for naught, for nothingness
At last, why does God make the world so fair?
Why spill this golden splendor out across
The western hills, and light the silver lamp
Of eve? Why give me eyes to see, and soul
To love so strong and deep? Then, with a pang
This brightness stabs me through, and wakes within
Rebellious voice to cry against all death?
Why set this hunger for eternity
To gnaw my heartstrings through, if death ends all?
If death ends all, then evil must be good,
Wrong must be right, and beauty ugliness.
God is a Judas who betrays His Son,
And with a kiss, damns all the world to hell,-
If Christ rose not again.

Lessons From Monk

There's a great sequence in this one episode of the show Monk.

Monk, a former detective (who happens to be extremely OCD), has been hunting for his wife's murderer. After many years, he finally finds the man (Tennyson) who made the car bomb that killed his wife Trudy.

Tennyson, who is dying of some disease (I forget), is in a hospital bed. He asks Monk for forgiveness.

Monk turns off Tennyson's morphine drip and says, "This is me, turning off your morphine." After a few agonizing seconds, he turns it back on and says, "This is Trudy, the woman you killed, turning it back on."

What a great analogy for God's forgiveness.

Dirk Willems

(A planned college essay that never made it. Dirk Willems is my homeboy. I'm putting it here to contrast ironically with some other posts of mine...)

On May 16, 1569, seven judges sentenced Dirk Willems to be “executed with fire” – burned at the stake. Condemned for his religious beliefs, Willems suffered an excruciating, “lingering death.” According to witnesses, he cried out over seventy times over the course of his passing; an easterly wind fanned the smoldering flames away from his upper body and prolonged his demise significantly. He died mere miles from his birthplace of Asperen, Netherlands.

Unfortunately, none of these facts, in and of themselves, distinguish Dirk Willems significantly. In fact, historians estimate the third Duke of Alba (who ruled the Spanish Netherlands from 1567-1573) slaughtered six thousand Dutchmen over the course of his rule, including Willems; his death, though unjust, was not by any means uncommon. What distinguishes him, then, is something much more powerful and profound: Dirk Willems saved his pursuer.

Imprisoned for his Anabaptist faith, Willems managed to escape successfully; using a rope of knotted rags, he lowered himself onto the frozen moat surrounding the prison and ran. Pursued by a guard who witnessed the episode, he fled across an icy pond (the “Hondegat”) in an abortive chase to freedom. When the guard attempted the same traversal, he collapsed through the thin, waning ice, forcing upon Willems a fatal decision between the guard’s life and his own.

I imagine the brilliant intensity of the moment when Dirk Willems realized his pursuer had fallen. I imagine the commingling of despair and relief as the impossible choice between freedom and surrender suddenly presented itself in stark resolution. I imagine the crisp wintry air, the bitter and desolate wind, the exhilarating dread as Willems slowly turned to face his foe – turning, as he well knew, from life to death. Life foists upon few of us moments such as these, moments that define the entirety of our being, moments of hollow passion and bittersweet release. And so, I imagine, because I cannot see what Dirk Willems saw that day; I imagine, because no one will ever know with what resolve, with what courage, or with what spirit Dirk Willems plunged his hand into the thrashing waters to save the man who would murder him.

Countless men would die for their countries, families, friends or neighbors; humanity has been blessed with an incredible devotion to its kin. But there are only a precious few who would sacrifice themselves for an enemy; they are rare who would die for their oppressors. Yet these blessed few are the peacemakers, the brave, selfless men who we must become if we ever hope to save our foes and ourselves. We can battle for all eternity, we can rage till world’s end, but if we cannot act as Willems did – without regard to self – we will merely war forever.

Dirk Willems died over four hundred years ago; today, his name is largely forgotten. But as long as I can, I will remember him, in the hope that I will someday choose the life of my fellow man over my own.

Worship Is Beautiful

This summer, I traveled to southern Italy and Sicily with my family. While we were there, we were fortunate enough to see dozens of chiese, beautiful and ancient Italian churches.

While we were in Palermo (a fascinating city), we visited the Cattedrale di Palermo (Cathedral of Palermo). Inside, I saw a little old grandmother (I'm taking licentia poetica and assuming she had grandchildren), praying in complete silence. I was fascinated.

Even though I'm not Catholic, I saw something beautiful in that church. I think I would have seen the beauty of the moment in a mosque or synagogue as well, not because I think all religions are created equal, but because the connection between man and God is universal (although it manifests itself in many forms).

This past Sunday (second anecdote, for those keeping score at home), I went to church expecting a normal service. I got what I expected; the service was relatively normal. It began with a rendition of Michael W. Smith's Agnus Dei, a fairly typical (but nice) worship song. During the song, I was looking around and noticed a man in the congregation singing with his eyes closed and arms uplifted.

For whatever reason, something struck me about this man. I'm not sure what exactly it was; I had met him before, and maybe I just didn't expect that from him. (I'm kind of glad I can't pinpoint the reasoning behind this episode; it would feel like unweaving the rainbow to me...)

Regardless, my reaction was simple: I began to cry, first softly, and then to the extent that I had to sit down.

Why do I share these anecdotes? Because I believe there is something beautiful about worship. Reverence - for God, for Nature, or for almost anything - is something we should respect and cherish, because it is something I fear we are losing. Respect is becoming outdated; almost nothing (except for newfangled idiocies like "natural rights") is sacrosanct. "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold..."

Christianity, of course, has been especially hard-hit by this iconoclastic zeitgeist. Just a few centuries ago, the Western World was thought of as Christendom, and the Catholic church (for better or for worse) controlled nearly every aspect of society. Now, popular opinion can often be summarized by Francis Crick's tongue-in-cheek bon mot: "Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children."

I am not by any means advocating ecclesiocracy, or government by the church. (Theocracy, rule by God, is kind of impossible to avoid.) I also agree that Christians are to be blamed for this downfall; if our world is godless, it is because we are ungodly.

But now, a new criticism is being levied against the Christian God. Nonbelievers claim that no truly respectable god would require worship from his creation. After all, the argument goes, why would an omnipotent being "need" the praise of his creation?

Douglas Jacoby's response, in my opinion, is best. It is not God Who needs the worship; we need the worship. God does not want mindless submission, but love. "You must love the Lord your God with your whole mind, your whole being, and all your strength." (Deuteronomy 6:5, NET) What better definition for worship could there be?

Nevertheless, we are perplexed by worship, because we are perplexed by the idea that we should love God. The absence of this ideal - love for God - has affected how we perceive religion, morality, culture, justice, and almost anything else that matters. This absence is, in my mind, the great tragedy of our time (and of all time), because (speaking from experience) I can honestly say there is nothing quite like worshiping, nothing quite like loving God.

From an outsider's perspective, acts of worship (especially the more ritualistic or charismatic ones) can appear superstitious, strange, or superficial. I can understand that perspective because it is often my perspective.

But it should be impossible to deny the singularity and awesomeness of devotion to God, regardless of one's actual religious beliefs. (The best analogy, for the non-religious, would be reverence for Nature.) Any consideration of religion or God must center around the idea of loving Him. The idea that God's desire for worship somehow implicates him as an arrogant or megalomaniacal freak completely belies the passion people of all faiths and all cultures have shared for Him. St. Augustine said, "Our heart is restless until it rest in Thee."

You may not be able to accept that statement, but at least understand it.

(I wonder if any significance can be ascribed to his using a collective heart - "Our heart" - instead of individual hearts...)