Excerpts from "An Altar in the World" by: Barbara Brown Taylor

"According to the classical philosopher Paul Woodruff, reverence is the virtue that keeps people from trying to act like gods. ""To forget that you are only human,""he says, ""to think you can act like a god--this is the opposite of reverence."" While most of us live in a culture that reveres money, reveres power, reveres education and religion, Woodruff argues that true reverence cannot be for anything that human beings can make or manage by ourselves." 

 

"Reverence stands in awe of something--something that dwarfs the self, that allows human beings to sense the full extent of our limits--so that we can begin to see one another more reverently as well. An irreverent soul who is unable to feel awe in the presence of things higher than the self is also unable to feel respect in the presence of things it sees as lower than the self."

"Reverence may take all kinds of forms, depending on what it is that awakens awe in you by reminding you of your true size. As I learned on that night of falling starts in Ohio, nature is a good place to start. Nature is full of things bigger and more powerful than human beings, including but not limited to night skies, ocean, thunderstorms, deserts, grizzly bears, earthquakes, and rain-swollen rivers. But size is not everything. Properly attended to, even a salt marsh mosquito is capable of evoking reverence. See those white and black striped stockings on legs thinner than a needle? Where in those legs is there room for knees? And yet see how they bend as the bug lowers herself to your flesh. Soon you and she will be blood kin. You itch is the price of her life. Swat her if you must, but not without telling her she is beautiful first."

"The practice of paying attention is as simple as looking twice at people and things you might just as easily ignore. To see takes time, like having a friend takes time. It is as simple as turning off the television to learn the song of a single bird. Why should anyone do such things? i cannot imagine--unless one is weary of crossing days off the calendar with no sense of what makes the last day different from the next. Unless one is wear of acting in what feels more like a t.v. commercial than a life. The practice of paying attention offers no quick fix for such weariness, with guaranteed results printed on the side. Instead, it is one way into a different way of life, full of treasure for those who are willing to pay attention to exactly where they are."