Reverence Opens the Door to Beauty
When I was young, my mom would often take my siblings and I to the St. Louis Botanical gardens. It was a magnificent place, nestled in the center of the city and surrounded by imposing, ivy-covered walls. There was a two hundred year old manor house at the center and a hedge maze in which, as small children, we loved to get lost for hours. It was one of my favorite places in town.
Generally, we went with just our immediate family. One day, however, my mom had volunteered to watch her friend’s two sons for the day, who were both about my age at the time (nine). This was no easy task, as they were two of the most rambunctious lads I have ever encountered. A pair of energizer bunnies, they barreled, crashed and torpedoed their way through life. In other words, they could be a lot of fun.
My mom wisely determined that our house could not contain these twin cyclones, so we visited our old standby: the gardens. We had a grand old time bounding around the place, chasing our way through the maze and rolling down hillsides. At one point, we found ourselves in a corner of the park that we seldom visited. It was a zen garden, complete with a tea house surrounded by a small lake. The sand on the shore had been raked in intricate patterns and the place was circumscribed by a delicate rope fence. Most alluring, however, were the lustrous black rocks that blanketed the ground. They were jet black, yet so smooth and shiny that they appeared to be made of glass. The sun shone brightly with the rosy hue of late autumn afternoon, and the way the light caught those stones made them look like alien jewels.
They were too much to resist, and my two friends, running far ahead of my mom, leapt right over the rope fence, tramped through the raked sand and began picking up and tossing the black rocks back and forth. Despite how much I had been enjoying their company, I found myself hanging back at this moment. The way they had disregarded the fence and obliterated the painstakingly arranged sand patterns was shocking. I felt a twinge of sadness, though I wasn’t quite sure why.
No more than thirty seconds after the pair had made their dramatic entrance, an older Japanese man, whom none of us had noticed, emerged from a back corner of the garden and raced (rather quickly for an old man) toward the two miscreants. “Those are the sacred rocks of lightning!” He shouted, his eyes ablaze. “You must not touch!” The two brothers froze mid-laugh, unsure what to do or say. There was silence for a moment before the old man again yelled “You must not touch!”
What was going through his mind at that moment? What was I feeling when I felt those pangs of sadness? I certainly had no personal connection to the zen tradition, nor had I ever heard of the sacred rocks of lightning. Perhaps I simply felt some compassion for the old man. After all, we were disturbing his meditation. I think it was a bit more than that, though. Prior to our encounter with him and even before my companions began trampling the garden, I felt a certain awe for the place. Its appearance demanded a right to exist undisturbed.
Many years later, I was aimlessly browsing through a friend’s bookshelf while waiting to leave for a party. I came across a copy of The Art of Living by Dietrich von Hildebrand and began leafing through it. I found myself absorbed in the opening chapter on reverence. Like the word sacred, reverence is a tough word to define. Broadly, it connotes a respectful attitude toward someone or something. It is not mere respect, however. When a parent admonishes a quarrelsome child to “respect your elders”, they are commanding an outward attitude of deference to those who have experienced more of life. This outward display may not reflect the child’s inner disposition, but that is beside the point. Commanding respect has more to do with maintaining the hierarchy necessary for society’s functioning.
Reverence seems to be a deeper quality, one that exists more on the level of Being itself. Hildebrand says:
Reverence gives Being the opportunity to speak to us: The ultimate grandeur of man is to be capax Dei (ed: “capable of receiving God”). Reverence is of capital importance to all the fundamental domains of man’s life. It can be rightly called “the mother of all virtues,” for it is the basic attitude that all virtues presuppose. The most elementary gesture of reverence is a response to being itself. It distinguishes the autonomous majesty of being from mere illusion or fiction; it is a recognition of the inner consistency and positiveness of being - of its independence of our arbitrary moods. Reverence gives Being the opportunity to unfold itself, to, as it were, speak to us; to fecundate our minds. Therefore reverence is indispensable to any adequate knowledge of being.1
Reverence is a certain attitude of receptivity which underlies all virtue. To act rightly, we must act in accordance with the way things are, not how our mind distorts them in favor of our biases and desires. Likewise, we must not strip Being of its right to unfold as it must.
A sign that an object, place or ritual warrants reverence is a corresponding indignation at its disrespect, like that of the old man in the garden. For example, when I visited Rome, I naturally made my way to St. Peter’s, wishing to view the Sistine chapel ceiling and Michalengelo’s Pieta. The artwork was as splendid as advertised, but the experience was marred by the pervasive atmosphere of commercialization and disrespect. Bumptious hawkers of tours and merchandise crowded our approach to the basilica; the chapel was a forest of selfie sticks, permeated by the din of security guards barking at guests flagrantly violating the “no photography” regulation; chattering couples brashly inserted themselves in front of the Pieta and snapped selfies before quickly moving on the the next photo spot. It was as if these objects were things to be captured and grafted on to one’s ego as proof of personhood. I couldn’t help but sympathize with Jesus’s thrashing of the temple money changers - I half hoped he would reappear in the midst of that crowd for an encore. It was such a grating experience that I wished I had never gone. Better never to see the Sistine chapel than to experience it like that, I thought.
While some things seem to elicit respect without our conscious effort, I have come to think that a more universal air of reverence is necessary. After all, we say that God is the first cause of all things; everything we perceive is ultimately made manifest through God’s creative act of self understanding. To be conscious of the world is to be conscious of the divine mind at work moment to moment. How could we not acknowledge its right to unfold? Hildebrand reminds us that “The depth and plenitude of being, and above all its mysteries, will never be revealed to any but the reverent mind.” If everything is to be monetized and manhandled, then we have pinned our hopes to the paltry and ravenous self. If we cannot acknowledge the existence of that which exceeds our capacity to frame and comprehend, we will never notice the path to transcendence. This starts with reverence, with holding silence and allowing Being to speak its piece.
I have developed the habit of stepping outside every night before I turn in to simply stare up at the dark sky for a few minutes. Even though our street lights have nearly vanquished the stars, there are always a handful that shine through. Nothing more reliably provokes a sense of reverence in me. Like the selfie sticks in the Sistine chapel, it pains me that we have thoughtlessly obscured the dome of the heavens. But I still feel small in its presence and, for a brief moment, I can surrender.
1 Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Art of Living