What is it to praise?
Only this: bow in awe, then
Live with hearts ablaze!

I must confess, the topic of praise puts me off a bit.  Maybe it’s my personality, and my upbringing.  But I get uncomfortable and avoid situations where folks are singing energetically and waving upraised arms with words like “my God is an awesome God” and “I Lord I praise you so much!”

Yet, there is something real, human, and genuine about the impulse to praise and in the act itself.  So I am trying to dig deeper.  To begin to explore this I looked at the use of the word in scripture and find it often linked with joy, gratitude (the topic of my previous blog!), a sense of awe, celebration of God’s presence and saving actions.  And there is the corollary inner response of humility that often accompanies praise.

I can recognize myself there, particularly with the experience of awe.  This is the kind of experience that takes your breath away – quite literally.  When I look at the images of space from the Webb telescope, I am left without breath and without words.  At most an “Ooh!  Aah!” escapes (and I wonder if “awe” is just a word we have created to point to the almost soundless sound of those two almost breathless responses?).  My deepest response is to bow in reverent silence.

Can you get in touch with your own experiences of awe? What happens within you when this occurs?

Yet somehow, being human, we need to couple the inward experience with outward expressions.  Hence the songs of adulation, the words of praise in so many of the Psalms, the hymns, and in recent years the praise bands in worship.  Though not all those expressions resonate with me (praise bands – not my thing!), they do indicate the range of human response to that which moves us so deeply – our response to awe, gratitude, celebration, and joy.

I wonder if what might be called “the work” of praise is to broaden our vision to see more readily the presence of the mystery we call God in more and more aspects of life – indeed in all of creation when our eyes are wide enough, the way it is with children.

When the inner wells up in you and wants outward expression, what are your ways of offering praise?  What does this look like when you are by yourself, and when you are in community?

One of the things I wrestle with about praising God are the implications that 1) God basks in our praise as though God has an ego that needs stroking, and 2) that the adjectives we use to praise (awesome, glorious, loving, powerful, creative, … add your own long list!) are attributes of God that we, in our enlightened judgement, apply to God.  Neither of these ring true to me.

I think we praise not because God needs to hear it, but because we are moved to do it.  It is our need, not God’s.  And it is a good need on our part.  It seems to me to impart humility and right relationship between God and us, as God’s creations.

Nor do I think God has attributes so much as God is the qualities that we want to attach to God.  Rather than “God is loving,” more truly, God is Love and Love is God.  Rather than “God is glorious,” we may more accurately say God is glory and glory is God. 

This brings me to the connection that at a deep level I sense is going on with our praise of God.  St. Irenaeus (2ndcentury theologian) wrote, in Latin: “Gloria Dei vivens homo.” In English this is usually rendered “The glory of God is a human fully alive.”  When we are moved in awe, or moved by love, or moved to gratitude, we first drop to that wordless inner place, and next move outward in praise.  That outward movement has the capacity to take us way beyond ourselves toward that place of being “fully alive.”  Then, we not only revel in the glory of God, but become participants in the glory of God.  And that is our ultimate work of praise.

Who are you when you are fully alive? Where is God when that unfolds?

May you live with hearts ablaze!

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