Reverence

“Reverence is an emotion that we can nurture in our very young children, respect is an attitude that we instill in our children as they become school-agers, and responsibility is an act that we inspire in our children as they grow through the middle years and become adolescents.”
       ― Zoe Weil, Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times

The patron ‘Reverence’ is the masculine side of Religion - displayed as the 'Elderly Man' in ‘RELIGION’.

The word reverence is derived from the Latin “revereri”, to ‘stand in awe of’, ‘to revere’.  When we hear the word ‘reverence’ the quick visual is the Church or God for reverence is closely associated with religion.  In the classical sense, reverence involves a humbling of the self in respectful recognition of something seen to be greater than the self.

Believers never question that there is something greater than themselves.  Worship is the expression, the emotion, of reverence.  The skeptics believe that God is unknowable.  In essence they say, “I deny everything.  I do not believe in anything.  I am afraid to believe in anything.  I do not know if there is something there; I hope there is, but I do not know.” 

One can sympathize with the skeptics, disgusted with religious fundamental condemnation, judgment and fear (in the name of ‘Satan’) when they yell out “the notion of God must be absurd in that if a real God were actually so vain as to constantly demand worship, then he would not be worth it.”  The skeptics are actually rebelling against ignorance, of those who are worshiping a false God, a “Russian Roulette” God.  A God who is being characterized to have human emotions like vengeance, wrath, pettiness.  

The true believers understand that by believing in a vengeful, mean god, the god within you responds in kind.

“Love thy neighbor as thyself”  (Mark 12:31)

We’ve always been taught, religiously, spiritually, to love our neighbor.   In the spirit of loving ‘thy’ neighbor, people didn’t pay much attention the ‘thyself’.  Loving oneself was thought to be too ‘egotistical’, and not everyone can be, or is mean to be, a “Mother Teresa”.

In Latin “ego” means “I am; I exist”.  In the section on ‘Religion’ the story of the fictitious minister Frank Scott was introduce to discuss the importance of the self and self-initiative.  On that sunny day, Reverend Scott attempts to speak about the divine “I am”:  “…Therefore, don't pray to God to solve your problems. Pray to that part of God within you. Have the guts to fight for yourself. God wants brave souls.  He wants winners, not quitters. If you can't win at least try to win.  God loves triers.”

Worshiping the great divine outside of us has its role, however, the reverend Scott was trying to say that there is another divinity to be loved – that spark of divinity or creativity within us.  Scott was getting down on all the prayer and meditation because without activation it is impotent.  To reverend Frank, activation is, “Hey, you God take care of me, and I will try to take care of as many as I can.  We can stomp around and sing hallelujah and praises.  We can quote from scripture and it does not mean a thing.  If it doesn’t work out, we can be proud to say, ‘at least I tried to win.’“

The body is a living temple unto God and having reverence for that temple is a way to active our God-center.  God created us, and the mechanism to live in the world, a body.  The glorious part is that within the body lies a part of Them, which is called the soul. 

We live in a world that is distorted by un-factual things.  Besides finding universal truths (Universal Law), each of us is on a path to find our own personal truth and live a life according to that truth.  What is right for you, your truth, very much relates to your Theme.  This is called living a clean ‘blue line’ track; to stay on your written chart.  There is no false ego.  You have the “I Am”.  You are the best person that you know how to be.

z