If I worship a god who is comparable to me, of course I cannot lower myself to the dust. But the true God is beyond compare, so that no created notion, whether ‘incomprehensible’, or ‘unattainable’, or ‘unknowable’, and not even holy silence can describe His radiance. Since even my loftiest thoughts and highest expressions are lower than dust, I crawl not to reach God but to get farther from heresies. I strive to see in myself the worm, not in order to lose my humanity or abandon my intellect, but to retain my sanity, fleeing delusion, casting aside man-made idols, and so hope to rise from death, blindness, and madness to life, clear vision, and true humanity. If I follow God, he will take care of my dignity. If I take care of my dignity, I will lose sight of He who creates it. The downward stair leads up. Groveling, to be sure, is a false devotion, but to say with the Forerunner, “I must decrease that Thou mightest increase” is a path to theosis. When someone says “I am a worm” or “I am but dust”, only then does he come closer to commenting on the divine; the comment is one of attitude, and is made sensible only in deification. I can participate in the economy only to the degree that my mind fails in respect to theology.