Reverence is more than just quietly sitting

After needing this book for a long long time I finally bought it right after our hiking trip. It's wonderful! It articulated so many of the feelings and yearnings I have had for a while. I have realized that reverence is the virtue I desire most. Every aspect of the life I want for myself and my family centers around having a deep and abiding reverence. Anyway... I highly recommend it!

Reverence begins in a deep understanding of human limitations; from this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control--God, truth, justice, nature, even death. The capacity for awe, as it grows, brings with it the capacity for respecting fellow human beings, flaws and all.

Reverence is the virtue that keeps leaders from trying to take control of other people's lives...Reverence has more to do with politics than with religion...power without reverence--that is a catastrophe for all concerned...Politics without reverence is blind to the general good and deaf to advice from people who are powerless.

Wherever people try to act together, they hedge themselves around with some form of ceremony or good manners, and the observance of this can be an act of reverence. Reverence lies behind civility and all the graces that make life in society bearable and pleasant.

We have ceremonies in our own time too, but we try not to think about what they mean. In fact, I believe reverence gives meaning to much that we do, yet the word has almost passed out of our vocabulary. Because we do not understand reverence, we don't really know what we are doing in much of our lives, and therefore we are in no position to think about how to do it better.