love as an act of worship

Loving is spiritual and arguably cannot be separated from worshipping. Byun-Chul Han, author of The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present, notes, “It is no coincidence that the word ‘religion’ comes from relegare, to focus the attention. All religious praxis is an exercise of attention. The temple is a place of deep attention. According to Malebranche, attention is the soul’s natural prayer.” The action of loving requires the constant gifting of attention, whether it be in preparing a late afternoon snack or in the undertones of “I hope you have a good day.” Similarly, the absence of love is the absence of attention in a neglection or disregard, unacknowledgment. Thus, there is no love without attention.

Notions of love as an act of worship saturate the Abrahamic religions. The Lord, Allah, Hashem- all require deep intention and attention from their believers from weekly mass, the daily five prayers, and Shabbat. The Bible states, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and all your soul and with all your might,” (Deuteronomy 6:5), and the Quran, “O mankind, worship your Lord, who created you and those before you, that you may become righteous” (Quran 2:21), and the Torah, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God,” (Numbers 6:8). There is no separation of love and worship in these holy quotes; worshipping is merely love in action through attention. God commands attention through worship, for worship is the testament of love.

Christian philosopher Lactantius believed that ‘religion’ was rooted in the Latin religare, “to bind,” and as an extension, “bind oneself to God.” The attention that God commands is conducive to the strength of the binding. And God binds himself to the worshipper. From the Quran, “Your Lord has proclaimed ‘Call upon me and I will answer you,” (40:60), to the Bible, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you,” (James 4:8), and to the Torah, “For the Lord, your God, is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you,” (Deuteronomy 4:31). To love and be loved is a heeding of commands through attention; call to God and He will not fail you, and you should heed the command of attention from God.

Thus: the more attention, the stronger the binding, and the deeper the love. How can you not give attention to what you are bound to and is, in return, bound to you?

This is all to say, again: Loving is spiritual.  

In the song “Aayat,” by Arijit Singh, the narrator calls out to his love:

Tujhe yaad kar liya hai, aayat ki tarah.

Kayam tu ho gayi hai, rivayat ki tarah.

I’ve memorized you like a verse from the Quran,

You’ve become to me, a ritual.

Han (aforementioned author of The Disappearance of Rituals) reflects, “The repetitions make the attention stabilize and deepen. Repetition is the essential feature of rituals. It is distinguished from the routine by its ability to generate intensity.” Repetition is necessary in memorizing a verse of the Quran, and the repetition becomes a worshipping ritual. The narrator in “Aayat,” confesses to the repeated worship of their lover to the point of memorization. To know someone is to love them, and what better way to know someone than to memorize them to the point of ritual? The narrator compares his lover to the holy verses of the Quran, memorializing his lover as holy and worthy of worship.

To say that love is an act of worship is to understand the foundations of worship itself. It is a vulnerable giving and a vulnerable begging of attention to bind. Love as an act of worship calls the soul’s visceral desire to bind, to connect, to intertwine.

Love as an act of worship is I love you, I love you, I love you.