I like the example of Noah having both a overall goal and a (for him, perhaps) more practical goal. I guess in all things we have the overall goal of giving glory to God, loving him. I wonder how that might change the "more practical" goals of some a-spiritual (secular?) things that we do. Like organizing my closet. Or buying lunch in the student center. Would keeping a better eye on the overall goal change the WAY (i.e. the HOW of Kierkegaard) we go about it? Maybe this idea is more basic in just thinking about God when we do things.

This segues in to your questions about living as a priest (without all the baggage). One thing our resident gadfly and I have talked about is about keeping a Sabbath, a day where we don't do work. It seems like when I was growing up (uh-oh, Nathan's using a subjective example!) Sundays were more holy, and now they've degenerated into days where I do church and homework. There's no sense of rest like it seems like God intended there to be once a week.
As far as other priestly ways to live. . . I wonder if we would have more rituals . . . like praying before meals is both a ritual and a means for being in touch with God. What if everytime we entered our homes, we recited the Shemah . . . "Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates." Without even thinking of other specific examples, I feel as though a more priestly life would have more meditation, more peace, more communion with God. What think you?

To the communion issue . . . I remember one time Highland St CofC (memphis) had the Lord's Supper (LS = communion = Eucharist = collection?) up front, and groups of people went up in sections where there were church members who served them the LS. It took a little bit longer than usual, but there was a connection when someone looked you in the eye and gave you the symbol of Christ's body and blood. It integrated the horizontal aspect of communion -- that of fellowshipping with other Christians -- with the vertical dimension -- that of being in the presence of God. The church gave a good response to the experiment/deviation . . . but the next week it was back to the men passing the trays. So on a more macro scale, I'd like to see something more like that develop.

On the micro scale, I think just to look up during the LS, to smile b/c God raised Christ from the dead, and to be more aware of others rather than zoning out would be a good way to start. I think the way we do it now is biblical but could be even better (did I successfully avoid railing-against-the-establishment? :-P )

mmk, that's enough for now . . . I read the Kierkegaard excerpt, so feel free to bring that up if you like.

Noah, etc.

Transferred action to God: Yes, I think you mostly answered your own question -- the motivation and attitude are different when what you're doing belongs to God and not you. But perhaps we can elaborate again and clarify two of the specific questions.

Yes, you can still dedicate something to God if it's the only option. A lot of great servants of God have done what they saw as the only choice, not acted with some bold and free initiative. Noah didn't have some flash of genius to build the ark, it just happened to be his job, and he would've drowned if he hadn't. But while he was doing it to preserve his life and his family's, he was also doing it for God, and God used it to achieve everything else that he ever did for humanity. So we've got the intermediate goal (not drowning) and the final goal (God's work). And while the intermediate goal may have been more accessible to Noah, it wouldn't have even been possible without the final goal -- and (this is important) without Noah's being in line with the final goal at the time, at least as much as he was able. Noah had to trust that God knew what he was doing and be willing to be used by God in order to build the ark before the rain started -- so Noah's submission to the final goal of God's not-yet-realized work was relevant and useful for the intermediate goal of not drowning, and the goal of not drowning also served God's not-yet-realized work. It's not usually going to be that dramatic, but I think the same process can apply to other things we do without much choice but decide to do for God.

And yes, I think we can Christianize every action. Think of the priests in the temple or tabernacle -- they killed animals, made bread, washed themselves, ate, studied, etc. on holy ground and with the goal of worship in sight. They had to do all the stuff people do to take care of themselves and their surroundings, only they did it aware of the presence of God. We could do that too, couldn't we? We should talk more about what a priestly life would look like in our context. Have you ideas about that? Would we do mundane things any differently? Think about them differently? Would we have rituals?

Yes, your categories of obedience and creativity in worship are most excellent. We need to practice and esteem both wherever possible. (I shan't touch the potential tangents and controversies in your examples at the moment, but feel free to bring them up again if you want.)

Yeah, we can talk about integrating the communal aspect back into communion. But we'll have to be careful to keep it out of ineffectual-rant-against-the-establishment territory and include thoughts about what we can do now even though we aren't church leaders. This post is already long, so I'll let you start. What do you think communion is meant to be, and how do you think we could bring in the neglected community aspects into it? (Or throw out whatever thoughts you like on the topic and we'll go from there.)

P.S. I believe Jess would call you a "punk" for tagging your post under "Pulitzer." ;)