Followup to my last post, about the dangers of becoming "too familiar" with God.

In the book I'm reading, Beyond Smells and Bells: the wonder and power of Christian liturgy by Mark Galli, Galli claims that worship that draws God too near is a worship that is self-gratifying, as opposed to actual worship.

"Like most people, I'm desperate for intimacy with God, so my instinct is to glom onto prayers and songs that make God seem close. But when I begin here, I am tempted to identify God with the warm feelings such prayers and songs generate. I sing a 'worshipful' song, and I get 'worshipful' feelings--and I assume that's God. Do this habitfally, thoughtlessly, prayerlessly, and it's easy to end up with a relationship with a glorified self." (pg 43)

(Mother/anyone my mother sent that article about why people go to church to: compare this with those ideas about who worship is for/about.)

Galli goes onto claim that we cannot really enter into intimacy with someone without acknowledging and loving the "otherness" of them. If we are in a relationship with someone because they are like us, it is really ourselves we are in a relationship with. The liturgy points us back to the God of the prophets - a completely incomprehensible deity. I believe strongly that the nature of God cannot be comprehended by humans, and therefore the Bible is all of our attempts to understand that which we cannot. The idea that we cannot hear the true voice of God because it's too much for us to comprehend is that same idea. Galli points out Ezekiel's paradoxical, random, confused description of God in Ezekiel 1 as proof of this. Clearly, it is the love and mercy of God seeking a relationship that caused him to send his son to earth in human form, a way for us to begin to undertsand. But the liturgy points us to this other. And when we accept a God who is wholly unlike us, we can begin to experience both intimacy and collaboration with God.

And there, my friends, is where I'm going to have to stop for now. I absolutely have a lot of thoughts about collaboration, but it would be too early for them. I'm not yet recovered enough from last semester to be able to talk about collaboration. Later, I promise.

I have started writing again. (Writing things that are not blogs.) I'm considering writing a series of poems based on Bach organ pieces. I want to write a poem that's a Toccata and Fugue. (I LOVE TOCCATAS.) I used to not like Bach and didn't understand why my mother did (well, duh she does, she plays organ), but I think it's because Bach is very intellectual music. I've been hearing some rumors about Sondheim being influenced by Bach, which I could definitely hear. (Ken Medema has a song that has occasional dance breaks to Bach. I love it.)

I had an absolutely lovely night working the concert last night. During sound check, the concert was just going to be one man singing and his guitar. (Well, his two guitars, one plugged in directly to the sound system and one miced.) Somehow, during worship between sound check and the concert, they added another guitar player, a drum player, a sax player, and a harmonica player. We also never sound checked the sax and harmonica player. So it was a slightly improvisatory evening that went very well. Bonded a lot with Rachel, the other female on crew. Estrogen booth!