...never treats anyone or anything as merely a means to an end, even though we treat Him that way all the time--for instance, we treat Him as a means toward some notion of "salvation" (as in some mechanistic version of "fire insurance), rather than as an end, the end, in Himself.
The famous Bro. Lawrence of the Resurrection (17th century), writing about himself in the third person, said that he gave thought neither to death nor to his sins, neither to Heaven nor to Hell, but only to the doing of small things for the love of God--small things because he was incapable of big ones. He need trouble no further, for whatever came after would be according to God's will. He also wrote, I undertook the religious life for the love of God only, and I have tried to live only for Him; whether I am lost or saved, I want simply to go on living entirely for God; I shall have this good at least, that I shall have done all that I could to love Him until death.
I notice how gently and respectfully very holy people treat the world around them, including inanimate objects, and how differently they even move in their bodies through the world and through time, whereas I tend to be hasty and subtly violent (in the sense of embodying a certain hostility/aggression/irritability/crankiness toward time, being, and necessity).
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Interestingly enough, I was speaking about this last night with a man whose father had died a couple of days ago. All of our human pettiness stems from our fear of death. Always subconciously aware that our time is short, we seek to get as much out of life as we can, not aware that Life itself is offered to us in limitless abundance.
Jtklopcic,
You're right...it's a combination of experiential gluttony and panic...
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