Several years ago when I was living in New Orleans, Episcopal Bishop James Brown told a story of his then fifteen year old daughter commenting on a video of a solemn procession around a church in honor of the Mary the mother of Jesus. The young girl asked her father, the bishop, “why do all of you look so sad.” To which Bishop Brown replied, “we are not sad, we are being reverent.” To which the daughter replied, “well, you sure look sad to me.”
I wonder, was the daughter correct? Have we lost the true meaning of reverence? Have we forgotten that reverence is our response to the beauty of creation, to the experience of the beauty of holiness, to the blessing of living in a world created out of love by an awesome God, the creator of heaven and earth. Matthew Fox, author and Episcopal priest believes that “the way of reverence is also the way of responsibility—not a responsibility based on duty and fear of disobedience, but a responsibility based on care for what we cherish and revere.” (The Coming Cosmic Christ, p. 199)
Many of us lose our sense of awe and reverence as we grow older and busier and perhaps even cynical. If we can reconnect with the child in each of us, with the artist in each of us, we might just be able to reconnect with our ability to express our awe and wonder at existence. “Reverence will become the test of our moralities: is what I am doing, are the choices we are making, reverential to others—to mother Earth, to generations of humans to come, to the particular individuals with whom I am currently interacting, to our non-two-legged brothers and sisters with whom we share Mother Earth? Reverence can only grow out of a living cosmology.” (Fox, Ibid, p. 199)
This sense of reverence will bring joy to our hearts and a smile to our faces. It might even cause us to want to sing and dance and explorer the artistic soul that lives in each and every one of us. As I write today I am looking out my window at a clear, blue, cloudless sky, the sun shinning off the lake and the leaves moving in the breeze. It brings a smile to my face. Is this reverence, I believe it just might be.
The Hebrew Prophet, Joel, writing sometime in the fifth century before Christ, speaks in the name of God: “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.” (Joel 2:28-29) Could this be the spirit of reverence God desires for us? This spirit of reverence may well be what Jesus was thinking about when he told his disciples, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it. And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.” (Mark 10:14-16)
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