heavy chance of rain

shoes by Christian Louboutin

She looked toward the rainclouds through the open door of the café and said, “It’s not going to get any better.”

worshipful movements of humans through space, part 6: a genuflection is a stapling

Saint Jerome

by Georges de la Tour

Of sitting, kneeling and standing, kneeling is the most precarious and most difficult to endure. When you are kneeling, you don't forget that you're kneeling. A genuflection stops you in your tracks and freezes your existence. It staples you to the present, only for a moment, then releases you. At the moment of genuflection you are nowhere else but in a state of genuflection, falling from a standing position onto a precariously buckling leg.

worshipful movements of humans through space, part 5: short silent film of a muslim man praying

Photo: Muslim Man Praying

Public Domain

A black-and-white man stands with his hands behind his ears. His thumbs are placed behind his earlobes and his fingers are splayed open like collecting horns receiving an invisible broadcast. His mouth moves as he speaks but only the sound of the projector clacking can be heard.

worshipful movements of humans through space, part 4: mass

Photo: Nynashamns Kyrka

Hakan Svensson

I go to Catholic mass maybe once or twice a year, for Christmas and funerals mostly. When I was growing up, I went every Sunday and on holy days of obligation. Mass was almost as familiar to me as going to school. I went to mass as often as I rode my bike around the block. Now I go so infrequently that I see it from a different perspective, an outside point of view. Last week, when I was at mass, it felt like I was pointing.

worshipful movements of humans through space, part 3: a new religion

Photo: Sky-pointing Grackle

jetheriot

Prayer – like speech – spills forth from humans instinctually, so a society without worship, like a society without language, is difficult to even imagine. Imagine, nevertheless, you are an explorer who discovers a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And on this remote island live a religionless people. As implausible as it sounds, when you ask them about churches or idols or bibles or sacred rituals, the natives give you blank stares. Now imagine introducing into their culture a new ritual, a ceremony of bodily pointing, a turning of the face toward some image or some object, some worshipful choreography. Would you call it a religion?

worshipful movements of humans through space, part 2: a pointing

Egyptian Hieroglyph

Man in Adoration

A man stands on a street corner poking his finger into the air with fervor. His intentions are unclear. He is either using his finger to call attention to something in the sky or else he is doing a kind of dance. Religion can be seen in this way. There is the thing that is pointed to and the thing doing the pointing.

worshipful movements of humans through space, part 1: the human arrow

Photo: Sun Worship in Monatana

Charles M. Russell

Humans hurtle through space making elaborate worshipful movements. As they hurtle, they point their bodies in endlessly intriguing ways. The human body is like an arrow: the tail of the arrow is the soul and the tip of the arrow may be directed with surprising flexibility toward things in its vicinity, earthbound objects like crosses or banners or monuments or books or carpets or clergy or idols. The human arrow is also easily directed toward faraway, more mysterious objects like the sky or the planets or the sun.