I’m out of pocket this week while we are on our mission trip in Kentucky. I thought a good idea for posting this week would be to share with you some of my favorite passages from the different books sitting on my desk. It is in these passages where I found myself being hooked by the ideas and concepts contained within their pages.

I hope that these quick takes will encourage you and connect with you in some way this week. Enjoy.

Our final passage this week comes from Mark Galli’s latest, Beyond Smells and Bells: the Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy.

We can only become one if there are really two to begin with.

The same dynamic is at work in worship. Like most people, I’m desperate for intimacy with God, so my instinct os 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 ptayers and songs generate. I sing a “worshipful” song, and I get “worshipful” feelings- and I assume that’s God. Do this habitually, thoughtlessly, prayerlessly, and it’s easy to end up with a relationship with a glroified self.

But the liturgy puts the brake on narcissism right up front. When we are forcefully reminded that we are not worshiping an idealized form of the self, but a God “in heaven,” a “holy” God, a genuine Other.

At that very moment intimacy with God becomes possible. The possibility of mistaking God for the self has been taken off the table. Now a human self and the Devine Self- utterly unlike each other- begin to relate to each other. Union can come of these two.