Vachon Imagined

When we idolize someone, we divide from them.

Taylor Swift, a big one these days. Jesus Christ, another big one. And yes, I just said their names in the same sentence. You will be fine.

The danger of worship is that the moment we place someone above ourselves, we create a separation between ourselves and the thing we claim to love. We turn a living relationship into an object of devotion. We make someone else the embodiment of something we believe we are not.

Children are one of the clearest ways to see this because children have not yet fully learned the language of ego, or plainly put, division. They do not naturally experience everything as something apart from them. Play is not apart from them. Curiosity is not apart from them. Even what we call evil is not yet organized into the same rigid categories. Everything is simply being experienced.

It is I.

Everything is I.

Totally immersed. Totally honest. Totally vulnerable.

It is you. It is I.

This is how life moves, to you through me and back again. It is always doing this. Life is constantly communicating, constantly moving between us, through us, and within us. We simply do not always see it because we are in a hurry. Mostly, we are in a hurry. And because, wait for it, we can be a highly arrogant bunch.

Yes, you too, the girl who just froze when I said that and thought, “Wait a minute. Only men are arrogant.”

Not so fast.

Here is the thing. Heathens and the righteous, believers and unbelievers, the angry and the peaceful, the person who thinks they are wonderful and the person who thinks they are terrible, whatever you say and whatever you think is moving through you.

But when we do not let life move, we begin to identify with the movement.

I am arrogant.

I am angry.

I am wonderful.

I am evil.

I am righteous.

No.

These are movements.

They are experiences moving through life.

Anger moves through you. Joy moves through you. Fear moves through you. Compassion moves through you. Arrogance moves through you. Even righteousness, when it becomes an identity, becomes another movement that we mistake for who we are.

And this is where worship becomes dangerous.

Worship becomes separation. Separation becomes certainty. Certainty becomes judgment. Judgment becomes violence.

We have seen it throughout human history. We worship a person, a God, an idea, a nation, a political belief, a religion, or even our own image of ourselves. Once we make something sacred by placing it outside ourselves, we begin defending it against everything we believe threatens it.

And suddenly, what began as love becomes violence.

Or it becomes something much smaller and much more ordinary, like the endless gossip that makes the front page. We worship celebrities, then we destroy them for being human. We elevate them, separate them from ourselves, place them above us, and then become outraged when they behave like the rest of us.

You never know what worship will become.

Because when you worship, you separate.

And when you separate, you create an “I” and a “you” where life was already moving between the two.

Jesus does not need to become an idol for his life to matter.

Taylor Swift does not need to become a god for her music to move through you.

And you do not need to become a god for your life to matter either.

The sacred is not what we place above ourselves.

The sacred is what we finally stop separating ourselves from.

Life is moving.

It is moving through you.

It is moving through me.

It is moving through all of us.

It is always doing this.

The question is not, “Who should I worship?”

The question is, “What am I separating myself from?”