“Modernism, philosophically speaking, is in a sense the ‘‘worship’’ of time and the transient, a kind of deification of time and becoming and all that flows in the temporal order. That is why it resulted quickly in historicism and evolutionism and the theories all of those 19th-century philosophers such as Hegel and Marx and scientists such as Darwin. Such people are very different from one point of view, but they all in a sense divinize history even if Marx rejected the category of ‘‘divine.’’ The historical process is the reality that is domi- nant in modern thought. It is that which determines values and even real- ity today in the dominant Western paradigm.”

“Time doesn’t change anything; that is why we still worship asshole Arabs.”

“I love the freedom of my wings. I love the empty space above the ground. I rejoice in my freedom. Freedom is my religion. Peace is my God. Love is my worship.”

“In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. All the praises and thanks be to Allah, the Lord of the ‘Alamin (mankind, jinns and all that exists). The Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. The Only Owner of the Day of Recompense (i.e. the Day of Resurrection) You (Alone) we worship, and You (Alone) we ask for help. Guide us to the Straight Way… The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger, nor of those who went astray.(The Qur’an- Surah Al-Fatihah)”

“Mum had a Charles-and-Diana wedding mug that had survived longer than the marriage itself. Mum had worshipped Princess Di and frequently lamented her passing. “Gone,” she would say, shaking her head in disbelief. “Just like that. All that exercise for nothing.” Diana-worship was the nearest thing Mum had to a religion.”

“And don’t waste time worshipping Harmony. Doing good was the worship.”

“The grandeur of God, the glory of His majesty.”

“Most High God, how excellent is thy Holy name.”

“This life is the only opportunity we will have to worship God in the midst of trials and tests. Heaven will be perfect.”

“Worship is the common sense of faith in a life to come; and the hours we devote to it will assuredly be among those upon which we shall reflect with most thankful joy when all things here shall have fallen into a very distant background, and when through the Atoning Mercy our true home has been reached at last.”

“Aeneas’ mother is a star?””No; a goddess.”I said cautiously, “Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus.”He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. “So do we, he said. “But Venus also became more…With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite…There was a great poet who praised her in Latin. Delight of men and gods, he called her, dear nurturer. Under the sliding star signs she fills the ship-laden sea and the fruitful earth with her being; through her the generations are conceived and rise up to see the sun; from her the storm clouds flee; to her the earth, the skillful maker, offers flowers. The wide levels of the sea smile at her, and all the quiet sky shines and streams with light…”It was the Venus I had prayed to, it was my prayer, though I had no such words. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with inexpressible joy.”

“It is the nature of the physical self (Pudgal, Mind-Body-Speech) to worship. ‘Brahma same brahma latka kare’ (in front the Pure Soul, the God within; the physical self (Pudgal, Mind-Body-Speech) dances). If we remove our Faults, crookedness, then the physical self (Pudgal, Mind-Body-Speech) will do worship.”

“He’s an indulgent sort of man……With a quick lip and a fierce tongue, the sort of tongue that draws you in with charm and words of praise, awkward silences and desperate worships.”