What grabs your attention and makes you feel part of something greater than yourself? Special moments, like seeing a rainbow. When you’re struck with awe and wonder. When you feel you’re in the right place at the right time. That your life has a deeper meaning than you thought.
Reverence: a feeling of respect or admiration for someone or something.
In her book Writing to Wake the Soul, Karen Hering tells us: “Reverence… begins with an acknowledgment of human limitations in the presence of something greater, something more than we can ever be.”
We must be silent, listen, and watch. Watch the night sky, go out when the wind is ruffling the leaves on trees, when the sun hits the water of a lake, stream, or ocean and makes thousands of tiny sparkles.
In our modern world, it’s easy to feel disconnected and detached, as if our lives don’t matter and we can’t make a difference. But even though we are small in relation to the world and the cosmos, we belong here as an intrinsic part of the whole. Reverence is about finding our connection to the web of life, about belonging.
We may see others behaving and speaking in ways that try to elevate themselves. This is hubris, or “an extreme and unreasonable feeling of pride and confidence in oneself.”
Reverence reminds us of our smallness and requires humility, since we don’t have the answers to the mystery of our existence.
But it also helps us remember that each of us carries a spark of the divine and that we live in relation to all other living beings, not separate from them. If you weren’t part of the world, you wouldn’t be able to appreciate these moments of wonder.
Write about a moment of reverence. When have you been surprised by a close-up encounter with divine possibility? How can you carry that memory into your daily life, to give you courage and inspiration, knowing that the power of creation lies inside you?
