Entitled To Reverence

                                                       Entitled to Reverence

When heart-nonviolence is gained,
To live and love we will not be ashamed,
To laugh and to sing will be our delight,
Till by laughing and singing
We come 'round right.
                                                          From an old Shaker hymn
                                                 Changing "true simplicity" to "heart-nonviolence"


It doesn't take any effort at all to conclude that we are living in a very broken "system" -- I will not say "world" because "world" is Earth: Earth is only suffering because of our corrupt human-devised "systems", not because it is itself in any way corrupt. Earth is incredible: a wonderful, dynamic, and living work of art... And one could probably say instead, and be more accurate as well, a wonderful, dynamic, and living work of heart...

A number of years ago, Sue Bender, wrote a lovely little book entitled Everyday Sacred... which is where I read the charming (and rEvolutionary) phrase entitled to reverence... This phrase is exactly what I mean when I write of a festival of nonviolence... When we can look at another (any) human being, with the perspective of entitled to reverence in mind, everything, absolutely everything, is compelled to change... this is both the secret and the power of nonviolence...  

The Christian emphasis upon Lent as a time of spiritual and physical fasting, penance, and a working-willingness to change one's mind and habits, have not, evidentially, changed much of anything. Perhaps we have even lost our ability to change? If that is the case, then we are truly doomed! 

I write, though, because I believe otherwise. I write because I believe, in spite of what seems evident, that we can change: indeed, that we will change! Perhaps Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin had our era in mind when he wrote "The time is close at hand when mankind will see that, precisely in virtue of its position in a cosmic evolution which it has become capable of discovering... it now stands biologically between the alternatives of suicide and worship."

Suicide is the Russian invasion of Ukraine: along with every nation's misplaced faith in weapons of war as the means to self-preservation and peace. Every peace achieved by war is only temporary. There is always the next war... and the next... and the one after that... Suicide is the system of profit that grants privileges and power to weapons manufacturers and dealers. Suicide is the reverence for guns over and above the reverence for people...

Worship, on the other hand, is the most human thing that any of us can do. Oh, to be sure, I'm not first thinking of the "worship of God". Rather, I am thinking of our natural inclination to revere the awesome beauty of Nature... our natural inclination to revere the children born of our love-making... and then, finally, our natural inclination to kneel, in fact or in mind, to the Divine Mystery within which we are all enveloped... It actually turns out that our natural inclinations are the heart and soul of the developed religions (however much they empower systems of violence). 

We are all natural mystics. We've all just forgotten, and have not been encouraged to practice the sacred, by the developed religions. An old Daoist mystic on some mountain in China would no doubt simply say, "Practice your natural inclinations every day. They will see you safely home. Which is where you want to go, right?" I would add the suggestion that you begin your day with a phrase that Pete Seeger used to sing, "well may the world be!" To be sure, a humble beginning to your every day, but somehow, it connects very nicely to each of our natural inclinations... 

This connection is key to any possible festival of nonviolence... "Well may the world be!" And if this connection is key, then it stands to reason that the open door is the realization that every single one of us is entitled to reverence...