01-20-2008, 12:00 AM
Hi Lightly,
I'm going to answer that in a round about way because I have been thinking of something the last few days.
I am a fisherman and have been since I was a very young boy. when you plan on eating the fish they are put on a stringer and tied to a stake stuck in the earth to keep them from swimming away with the stringer.
Invariably some of them die on the stringer. It is both a disappointing and interesting thing to see. The color is gone at death. They are literally gray and lifeless looking where minutes before they glowed with irradescent colors.
When I was about 30 years old my father died and my mother called to tell me. I went to the hospital to see his body and meet with my sisters and mother and brother.
I went into his room and he lay on the bed with his eyes open, which I thought was very strange. I would have thought someone at the hospital would have closed his eyes.
But, I saw the exact same thing in my father's body, especially in his eyes, that I saw in the dead fish on the stringer. I had never before seen a dead body that was not embalmed. But there was a light that was gone from the eyes that I never realized was there before. The difference was like night and day.
I felt no reverence for that body that used to contain my father.
Both my father and the light were not there anymore.
So, yes it is a recognition of something behind the appearance that we reverence and something Divine that we worship. I think it has to be something larger than ourselves for me to use the word worship.
I think I wrote of this before that the word worship has the meaning; "As a dog at his master's feet." This sums it up for me. Others use the word differently. To me, worship is a quiet longing for something or someone greater than ourselves. And a need to be nearer to that. It is magnetism or gravity or love. Or all of the above.Bob
I'm going to answer that in a round about way because I have been thinking of something the last few days.
I am a fisherman and have been since I was a very young boy. when you plan on eating the fish they are put on a stringer and tied to a stake stuck in the earth to keep them from swimming away with the stringer.
Invariably some of them die on the stringer. It is both a disappointing and interesting thing to see. The color is gone at death. They are literally gray and lifeless looking where minutes before they glowed with irradescent colors.
When I was about 30 years old my father died and my mother called to tell me. I went to the hospital to see his body and meet with my sisters and mother and brother.
I went into his room and he lay on the bed with his eyes open, which I thought was very strange. I would have thought someone at the hospital would have closed his eyes.
But, I saw the exact same thing in my father's body, especially in his eyes, that I saw in the dead fish on the stringer. I had never before seen a dead body that was not embalmed. But there was a light that was gone from the eyes that I never realized was there before. The difference was like night and day.
I felt no reverence for that body that used to contain my father.
Both my father and the light were not there anymore.
So, yes it is a recognition of something behind the appearance that we reverence and something Divine that we worship. I think it has to be something larger than ourselves for me to use the word worship.
I think I wrote of this before that the word worship has the meaning; "As a dog at his master's feet." This sums it up for me. Others use the word differently. To me, worship is a quiet longing for something or someone greater than ourselves. And a need to be nearer to that. It is magnetism or gravity or love. Or all of the above.Bob