Reflect

Perhaps you were taught as a child to listen to wise elders, speak softly when entering a place of worship, take good care of your library books, or give thanks for the rain. Such habits can be taught simply as rules to follow or they can be taught through reverence — embodied ways of approaching, appreciating, and tending what is life-giving. External rules are easy to break. Internalized reverence shapes who we are and how we respond to the world. It helps us attune to what’s sacred.

The word “sacred” is often associated with religion, but it refers more broadly to those things we consider inviolable and deserving of reverence. What’s sacred varies from person to person, but having a shared reverence for some essential sacred things weaves the fabric of a vibrant and healthy society. Think public education, wilderness preservation, religious freedom, the right to vote, access to the arts, free libraries. Imagine, for a moment, what would be lost if no one cared about these things.

The creation and protection of the sacred has always been flawed by disagreement, human greed, and violence, but if we lose all sense of collective reverence, we lose something essential for the human spirit. By responding to life with reverence, we not only experience the great pleasure of all that is beautiful, awe-inspiring, and life-giving, we’re also compelled to protect these things from desecration. Wendell Berry writes, “For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.” Our reverence is not only a grateful celebration of life, it’s the very thing that might save us.

This week’s practices invite you to celebrate and take care of the things you cherish in life.