Will

“I constantly warn my assistants to guard against worship environments in which people can hear the voices of other audience members. That is why one of the most wonderful achievements of our time is the combination of sophisticated instrumentation and voice amplification. We have elevated accompaniment to an art form, added attractive worship teams, and created a worship atmosphere in which no one need hear her own voice or that of her neighbor. The entire audience—for now it has become an audience, not a congregation—can now lip synch their praise, with confidence that our Enemy will hear, and approve of the worship being offered onstage.”
― T.G. Brown, The Wormwood Archive

“And this is one of the most interesting things about pharmakeia. People claim to be enlightened by the experiences, but when you ask them what they learned, you get saccharine clichés about the oneness of everything and how we just need to love everyone. Not exactly enlightening.”
― Lewis Ungit, The Return of the Dragon : The Shocking Way Drugs and Religion Shape People and Societies

“As you know, real musicians (and the performers must keep reminding themselves that they are indeed real musicians) don’t like to play familiar songs repeatedly. They intensely dislike overused arrangements for hymns and praise songs; they need a challenge, and this means new songs added each week, songs that have ever more sophisticated arrangement and accompaniment. Over time fewer and fewer audience members are able to give voice to the songs.”
― T.G. Brown, The Wormwood Archive

“Rav Yehuda did not like to pray He preferred to learn Torah and say: “You may call my soul dirty But one day in thirty Is better than three times a day.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir