Going deeper into reverence...

In Rediscovering Reverence:  the Meaning of Faith in a Secular Age, Ralph Heintzman does yeoman's work articulating "why" religion matters.  It is both apologia in the deepest sense and a critical reflection on spiritual formation.  And what makes his work so valuable  at this moment in time is the way he articulates a "rational explanation of what the modern Western world calls religion."

+ First ,he wants to call into question the contemporary bias against religion that dominates both popular and intellectual culture because there are adults "who stand on the threshold of faith" who might benefit from clear thinking. 

They may be young people who have been raised in a household of regular religious practice, but who hesitate to commit to such a life as they grow older... (and) there maybe be others who have lived life without nourishment for the spirit and are hungry for something more (and would like to know) whether it would be reasonable for them to explore a religious life again, or for the first time.

+ Second, in a secular age where "intellectual and media opinion is overwhelmingly sceptical about religion in all forms," Heintzman wants to offer a corrective that is rational, relational and responsible.  He writes that the "objective of this book is not to persuade those who have not wish to be persuaded, but to remove some obstacles for those who have already begun to search."  Indeed, "meeting the claims of reason is part of what it means to have an adult faith."

Doing this, however, is complicated:  religious people have come to realize that while reason is necessary for an adult faith, reason alone is not the fullest expression of "the human spirit... religious life engages the heart and the will.  It grows from experience and need; not, in the first instance, from logic and objective evidence."  What's more, spirituality is a "human response to the profound mysteries that surround and inhabit human life: the mysteries of life and death, suffering and evil" as well as the very meaning of life itself. Just as you cannot explain rationally the power and beauty of art or music, so, too faith. Thus, there will always be a "gulf of some kind between the two... and the call to leap over this gulf is one of the subjects" of his book.

With intentionality and precision, Heintzman then proceeds to unpack some of the deeper truths behind words like religion and faith that have been forgotten or obscured by our obsessions with both Enlightenment and post-modern thinking.  At the core of his case are two simple truths: 

1)  Religion is a response to awe - and awe is endemic to all humanity

2) Spirituality  - or spiritual formation - is a time-tested way of nourishing habits that keep us connected to awe and reverence

As a pastor searching for ways to talk about what I hold most dear, Heintzman has given me a helpful text.  We are studying and discussing his book each Monday night at 7 pm.  Last week, in our first gathering we explored two major themes:  the paradox of our humanity and the call or reverence.  Heintzman believes that each person - and culture - wrestles always with the tension of seeking to be free and autonomous as well as staying connected in community.  We begin life in bosom of our family and find shelter, love and protection there. At the same time, however, "the joy of living in our families are at least equally balanced by the pain and the frustration, the many ways in which our families seem to restrict or limit us, the way they often refuse to respond as we would wish to our deepest desires."

So there is a tension - a paradox - between our aching for freedom and our connection to others in compassion.  "A human being who did nothing but assert his or her own needs and wishes would be little better than a brute. What makes us most fully human - that is, what makes us most fully ourselves - turns out, paradoxically, to be what connects us to others and to the wider universe."

The bias of our era is towards liberty - freedom - autonomy.  You can see it in our addiction to pleasure.  Or our fixation on business models of success and bottom line thinking. Or our willful disregard for the common good.  The organic - dare I say sacred - way to keep our drive for autonomy in balance is reverence. 

Reverence convey a human attitude of respect and deference for something larger or higher in priority than our own individual selves; something that commands our admiration and our loyalty, and may imply obligations or duties on our part. In a gesture of reverence, either physical or mental, we acknowledge superior worth, our relationship with it and our potential obligations toward it.

Awe and reverence are different - although related - and Heintzman makes a careful distinction:  "Awe is the emotion we feel when we encounter someone or something that transcends our normal life, and embodies qualities of excellence, or beauty, or some kind of power or authority that force our admiration, and to which, in some way or other, we submit ourselves..."  Reverence connections the emotional response of awe with time, memory and hope - and nourishes that initial reaction throughout a life time.  He observes:

Modern societies have lost not only reverence, but also the very idea of reverence... We go on practising the virtues of reverence and craving the feelings associated with them (for that is the human condition.) But our public language - the language of self-assertion - excludes any reference to the connecting threat that runs through them: the idea or concept - or reality - of reverence itself... and that makes it very hard for us to consciously nourish or develop the virtues... that are essential to the kind of society any of us would want to live in.

And if you believe I am mistaken, put the speech of Ann Romney next to that of Michelle Obama:  one is hyper-individualistic while the other celebrates the common good.  Same, too when considering the vision of Ayn Rand/Paul Ryan and Barack Obama:  the first argues that only freedom - super autonomy - matters while the second seeks to nourish each person within community.  Art, beauty, public roads, sewer systems, museums, public schools, hospitals, day cares, compassion, sharing , mystery and so much more are  realized only by blending our drive towards autonomy with the habits born of awe and then consciously cultivated by reverence.

Mary Oliver puts it like this in a poem entitled, "The Trees."

Do you think of them as decoration?

Think again.

Here are maples, flashing.
   And here are the oaks, holding on all winter
      to their dry leaves.
   And here are the pines, that will never fail,
      until death, the instruction to be green.
   And here are the willows, the first 
      to pronounce a new year.

May I invite you to revise your thoughts about them?
Oh, Lord, how we are all for invention and
   advancement!
But I think
   it would do us good if we would think about
these brothers and sisters, quietly and deeply.

The trees, the trees, just holding on
   to the old, holy ways.