On Worship -- the Personal

Ms. Kitty has posted a very good quotation from the Rev. Tom Schade about Worship. I liked it, especially the last paragraph:

My sense is that we have placed our focus on the community building purpose
of worship as primary, and down graded the personal to the secondary
priority. And the result is that the communities we build, and the worship
services that celebrate them, become arenas for people to play out their
needs regarding themselves in community: their need for power, their sense
of exclusion, their desire for self-expression etc. The result is an
inwardly focused community about being a community.

I really agree with that ... and then I thought, "but wait!"

(Edited before posting: The problem is that I then tried to anticipate how others whom I know would interpret the above. Always the first wrong step.)

... Because I also worry about some of our "personal" worship services. The ones that, as I joked on Ms. Kitty's blog, are the Omphaloskepsis Services. (omphaloskepsis: the study of one's navel.)

Now, if you've read this blog for more than 2 seconds, you know that I am certainly guilty of a heavy amount of navel-gazing myself. So, why do I shy away from it in a Worship service?

I think that it's a matter of "bad" navel-gazing services. The ones that I've walked away from feeling that they promoted a focus-on-self-to-the-exclusion-of-all-other.

I think some of the best Worship services I've participated in are the ones that have caused me to look inside, face some things about myself.

Aha! she says, thinking as she's writing. Perhaps that is the difference. The service that causes you to look inside and face things about yourself, versus the service that talks about how great you are, and how any problems that you have, come from the outside. The way you were raised. How others treat you.

This is ... still ... unformed. Still thinking. There's something ... on one hand, there are the personal worship experiences that allow me to learn more about myself, and to feel a connection with the rest of humanity.

And then there are the services that seem to encourage a self-centered feeling, with "me" as the center of the universe.

Ugh ... this is making my head hurt, and you are certainly welcome to just STOP READING NOW.

Because I'm not opposed to giving time to the self. The DRE-BFF and I had a talk last week, about how often our services are on Great Grand Issues, but if you talk to people, what causes them stress and fear are the personal, "small" things -- too many charges on their credit cards, too much weight on their body, too much clutter in their house. Not enough time. And we agreed that there need to be more messages helping people to negotiate all of this.

I feel like I'm looking at a painting, squinting, and saying, "I don't like it. But I don't know why."

(Apologies to both Revs Kitty and Tom for looking at the Mona Lisa and writing a review of the bit of gray fluff attached to the frame. But it's helping to clarify some stuff in my head.)

See ... omphaloskepsis, party of 1.