Unitarian Universalist
Meeting of
“The Joy of Reverence”
Rev. Kathy Duhon
Today I am talking about reverence,
which is not to be confused with “the Reverend”, a title that I only use formally,
such as when I’m signing rousing, justice-seeking letters. And I realize you might think it would be
more apropos to speak of the “joy of irreverence”,
of which there is much, I admit, and we do especially love our irreverence in
this congregation. Reverence may sound
serious and stuffy, but today I want to share with you the joy of
reverence.
Albert Schweitzer was beside himself
with exuberance when he finally found the simple three words to unite his
ethics and his affirmation of the world:
“reverence for life”. This great
joyful breakthrough happened when it was awfully hot, when he was looking at
hippopotamuses, (not usually known for their awe-inspiring beauty), when he’d
been called to tend a sick woman far away, in such a hurry that he didn’t pack
food and had to share with the Africans on the boat who undoubtedly did not
have any extra, and when he’d been using his analytical mind in overdrive,
writing pages and pages of philosophy as he steamed up the river for three long
days. You see the problem, don’t
you? This hardly seems a likely setting
for joy, which he obviously felt, and
for his deep sense of reverence for life.
Reverence can grab hold of a person anywhere, anytime, especially when
you are seeking great meaning, as Schweitzer was, and the surprise is that it
is accompanied by joy.
Today we might expand Schweitzer’s “reverence
for life” concept to include “reverence for everything”, for the interdependent
web of all existence. If the
hippopotamuses and hot humidity are included in reverence, then surely there’s
room for the stars and mountains and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, for
everything to bring us joy. Herman Hesse wrote, “You are to learn to live and to learn to
laugh. You are to learn to listen to the
cursed radio music of life and to reverence the spirit behind it and to laugh
at its distortions.”
So what is reverence? I begin with the recent words of one of our
ministers, Phillip Hewett, although he and Schweitzer
might disagree in part and would have to work out at least some linguistic
differences. Hewett
writes, “Reverence is profound respect mingled with love and awe. However, it also includes humility. You don’t give it to things or to people, for
that would be a form of idolatry. You
accord them respect, to be sure; but reverence is reserved for what those
things or people give us. Reverence touches
us at a much deeper level, in which we are meaningfully involved as we receive
their gift.” Reverence involves respect,
love, awe, humility, giftedness.
On good days, I walk around savoring
a phrase from another of our ministers, “I count the day thin if I have not
stopped in amazement five times at least.” (Mark Belletini) Or I appreciate Dolores’s enthusiasm for
“Alleluia days”. Awe, amazement are keys
to reverence, and certainly naturally include the humility and sense of
giftedness, but reverence goes further.
It includes respect and love and touches us at a deeply meaningful
level, as Hewett said, and still there’s something
more, I believe. The response of
reverence that wells up in us can feel like adoration or worship. But we are Unitarian Universalists – we may
be confused about what this means, in terms of faith.
Hewett
didn’t use the word God at all, you may have noticed, and yet we often hear
‘reverence’ associated with what humans are supposed to do toward the
divine. In traditional religions, when God
is approached with reverence, it is often coupled with fear. We are a liberal religion and even our
theists may or may not have a traditional understanding of reverence about
their relationship with God.
In Unitarian Universalism, the first
one to bring up the need to have a “vocabulary of reverence” among us, about 6
years ago, was a Humanist, the Rev. David Bumbaugh. Then our President, the Rev. William Sinkford, took up the rallying cry for the use of the language
of reverence a couple of years later, and he did speak of God, as well as of
Humanism.
When Bill Sinkford
talked about the need for a language of reverence and faith in his 2003 sermon,
he told a very personal story about his religious journey, which included a
long stretch as a Humanist. But in
middle age, he said, suddenly there was a moment of transcending wonder, an
experience that called him to reverence and prayer. Bill said, “It was in the midst of a crisis –
my son Billy, then 15 years old, had overdosed on drugs, and it was unclear
whether he would live. As I sat with him
in the hospital, I found myself praying.
First the selfish prayers for forgiveness…for the time not made, for the
too many trips, for the many things unsaid, and sadly, for a few things that
should never have passed my lips. But as
the night darkened, I finally found the pure prayer. The prayer that asked only that my son would
live. And late in the evening, I felt
the hands of a loving universe reaching out to hold. The hands of God, the
Spirit of Life. The name was
unimportant. I knew that those hands
would be there to hold me whatever the morning brought. And I knew, though I cannot tell you how,
that those hands were holding my son as well.
I knew that I did not have to walk that path alone, that there is a love
that has never broken faith with us and never will.”
Bill Sinkford’s
experience of reverence included love, awe, humility, and faith. He wrote about it because he realized that we
all have a variety of experiences of reverence, but not necessarily the
language we need to speak about them; including the word ‘reverence’.
Reverence is a universal experience. Bill Sinkford
doesn’t advocate that we name the experience as being about God, though he
would; what he noticed is that Love Eternal is stronger than our loneliness,
and that the universe will hold our needs; and the word God felt right to him
in describing his experience. We feel
reverence naturally and we may search for where to aim the trajectory of this
powerful sense, but it can embrace all places and possibilities. As Paul Woodruff said, reverence is a
“developed capacity for a feeling of inarticulate awe at whatever it is that we
recognize as transcending us and our culture:
truth, nature, beauty, justice – or perhaps God, or life itself.” He also wrote, “Reverence runs across
religions and even outside them through the fabric of any community, however
secular.” “We may be divided from one
another by our beliefs, but never by reverence.” What a joyful thought.
John Muir, the great American
naturalist, had reverence for nature in all its grandeur and fierceness. From exploring the
Eric Liddell, immortalized in the
film, “Chariots of Fire”, is remembered for his traditional sense of reverence,
which prevented him from competing in Olympic events scheduled for Sunday, the
Sabbath. Carl Scovel
tells us that, to him, Eric had a finer moment.
Liddell’s understanding of “reverence for life” meant that he refereed a
game in the prison camp rather than risk more violence between the youth, even
though it was on a Sunday. I am sure
that his joy was in the peace which triumphed that day.
Reverence is both natural and
acquired. We well up with a sense of awe
and power and love, at times, when we can hardly help but have the experience
of reverence. But sometimes we need to
have put ourselves into the storm, to have loved our way to the hospital
bedside, to have grasped for the meaning in life along the hot journey. And sometimes we have to let the reality
before us change our ways of being reverent, whether moved to prayer as Bill
was, or moved to forsake his usual understanding of prayerfulness, as Eric
was.
Reverence is not just something we
may stumble upon, or even that we can try to put ourselves into the path of – it
is a force that we do well to seek.
William Sloane Coffin wrote, “only reverence
can restrain violence, violence against nature, violence against one another.” Reverence is the power of awe mixed with love,
mixed with humility, mixed with joy.
What could be more potent for making the world a better place than to
cultivate reverence in our lives?
And as Unitarian Oliver Wendell
Holmes said, it’s a good reason to go to church, (or to have any other
spiritual practice), for, as Holmes put it, “There is a little plant called
reverence in the corner of my soul’s garden, which I love to have watered once
a week.” So may we be blessed with the
joy of reverence.
Amen.