Acts of worship (I’m specifically speaking now of worship through sacramental expression) are most fully about reclaiming memory.
When we remember, we connect, we pray, we offer, we delight, we repent, we appreciate, we hope, we help.
We all suffer from an amnesia, or loss of memory, that keeps us distant from our original Relational Center, and that ultimately destroys our right-relatedness to the rest of creation – both animate and inanimate. The term “anamnesis” is a term that speaks of an intense experience of memory that virtually places us as an actor within the story once again. We long for such an experience as this when it comes to our origin story. As Madeleine L’ Engel said, “I can’t wait until I remember how to walk on water.” Worship hearkens back to that state of affairs, and moves us in a circular destiny toward our original meaning.
When we worship, we remember who we are, our context in this vast universe, and our responsibilities born of our stewardship vocation before God. When we worship, we delight in the correct center of universal reality – an eternal Person.
To create these liminal spaces, these threshold venues of connection again to our gifted past as we connect to the One who tethers us to that past, is the role of the one who purposes to lead others into worship.
We are MemoryBearers, ThresholdCrafters, EdenReminders – when we lead worship.