Reflections On The Power Of Reverence

Letting go of the false notion of what strength is.

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I’ve been taught that everything we sense and experience in this world has its corollary in the world of the spirit. For example, marriage on the earthly plane reflects marriage in the heavenly sphere. It serves as a metaphor for the “marriage” between God and human beings. This works in reverse as well. The marriage, or deep connection, between humankind and God serves as a metaphor for the marriage between two human beings. This is to say that the requirements of both the physical and the spiritual marriage are in many ways remarkably similar. What each requires is reverence. 

I have a friend, a real tough guy. He’s a boxer: he’s got no shortage of tattoos, and twice a year he participates in what’s called the Spartan Race. I don’t know much about the race except that it’s supposed to make a triathlon look like a stroll in the park. Oh, yeah—and did I mention he also rides an antique motorcycle and plays the hell out of both the upright and the electric bass?

So when he and I speak about marriage and relationships, as we often do, it’s somewhat ironic that it’s he—not the neuroscientists, psychologists, theologians, and other experts I’ve consulted in the past—who has given me the most useful information. Once, when I mentioned that my wife and I were at odds, he told me I needed to do one thing and one thing only: approach her with a “warm and open heart.”

Now, that seemingly hackneyed statement could be construed as pure cornball if it were proffered by, say, the guy who writes the verses on Hallmark cards. But coming from my friend, it took on a whole new intensity. It’s true what they say: context makes all the difference. Lately, I’ve been thinking about what my friend had to say, and it strikes me how simple it is, how elemental it is, and how much it has to do with creating a space for reverence. 

As a metaphor, my friend’s advice suggests a pathway to a relationship with the Divine. When we approach a loved one with anything but a warm and open heart, we create complexity. That is, we create confusion around something that should be simple—the need to bond, the need to join one soul to another. That’s what we all long for.

We want to be loved, to feel valued, and to feel the nurturance and joy that come from that love. But our fear (read: lack of reverence) breeds confusion. “If I give too much,” we say, “then I won’t feel like I’m being treated fairly.” “If I remain vulnerable,” we think, “then I’m liable to get hurt.” “If I ask for what I need and get rejected,” we surmise, “then maybe I was never loved in the first place.” So to protect ourselves, we close our hearts and cool them off, doing precisely what my friend told me not to do. Why is the fear of blame, judgment, and betrayal so prevalent? Furthermore, why are those negative feelings our default behaviors?

We have internalized a false notion of what strength is. We have been acculturated to believe that strength is primarily about the ability to repel and conquer. Granted, some of us may feel that that’s too primitive a notion, and so we, in our “evolved state,” look not to this sort of brute strength for a definition of strength—that would be beneath us. Instead, we create a more modern conception of strength: strong ideas, bold plans, decisive actions! And while all that decisiveness is taking place, we still find ourselves squinting into the sun à la John Wayne, staring into a destiny that we will never control even as we pretend that we can.

That’s what we do: we force control because we can’t stand the feeling of not being in control. It frankly terrifies us. But what about the times when being in control isn’t the right solution at all? What about the times when doing the very opposite is called for? What if the need were to simply stop and listen—to simply be present, to be reverent? Perhaps it’s the vulnerability and weakness we anticipate feeling if we stop and consider reverence as an option. Maybe the strong thing to do would be to let things be for a moment, to let other voices be heard, even if those voices contradict our perceptions of ourselves.

In Kabbalah, you’ll find two forces that are similar, in some ways, to the more familiar constructs of yin and yang. The terms are chesed and gevurah. Chesed, in its most basic sense, connotes yielding, love, and bestowal. Gevurah, chesed’s opposite (or so it would seem), connotes strength, protection, and a warrior’s nature. To many people, it will seem strange to learn that the term chesed (yielding, love, and bestowal) is used to describe the essence of manhood and that gevurah (strength, protection, a warrior’s nature) is used to describe the essence of womanhood.

Even within the physiology of each sex, we see the idea play out. Man, with his capacity to bestow seed, has within his nature the essential power of chesed, the power of giving and accommodating. Woman, whose womb is the place of protection from outside forces, is said to possess the power of gevurah, with its native tendency toward protection and boundaries.

Redefining strength as the ability to give love ever more freely doesn’t render a person weak; rather, it makes him or her powerful. Showing up with a warm and open heart demands courage. It demands that we become more badass and less baby. And with that demand comes the responsibility of bestowing that same strength to the ones we love most—and for people who believe in God—this also includes God.

Beauty as a pathway to reverence

A few years back I spoke at a symposium for data analysts and actuaries in West Palm Beach, Florida. My job was to get people to think differently about their lives and use that differentiated perspective to make more creative decisions in their work. When I told a cynical filmmaker friend about the gig, all he could say was, “Actuaries? Data analysts? Good luck with that.” He couldn’t imagine that there would be a creative soul among them.

On the day of the symposium, I entered a bland conference room where 250 well-dressed professionals sat in orderly rows of folding chairs. I started the session by asking for a show of hands. “How many of you think of yourselves as creative beings?” Not a single hand went up. But I did see quite a few people staring at me, wondering where I was headed with my question. Either my innate desire to challenge the status quo or my travel fatigue led me to ask the following question; I’m still not sure. “What was the last time you cried with sheer reverence at the beauty of the universe?” Silence.

The attendees, some employed by the most well-known corporations in the United States, sat so still you could hear the air blowing through the vents overhead. But having read a few books about negotiation, I was hip to the tricks. I allowed the silence to continue and vowed that no matter what, I wouldn’t be the first to speak. People shifted uncomfortably in their seats, looking at one another and down at their laps, praying—I imagined—that I wouldn’t call on them to talk about something so personal, so potentially embarrassing. 

After around forty-five seconds—and trust me, that’s a very long stretch of time in that context—a young woman raised her hand. I waded into the group and gave her my microphone. She began, a bit tentatively. 

When I was a junior in college, I did a semester abroad at Trinity in Dublin. I’m Irish, or at least my great-grandparents were from Ireland, and I’d always wanted to see what it was like. I slept on the flight over, and as the plane neared the Dublin airport, a flight attendant announced that we’d be landing soon and that we should fold up our tray tables and make sure our seats were in the upright position. I was pretty groggy, but when I opened the window shade I remember feeling completely overwhelmed by the depth of the color green. These incredible fields surrounded the airport, and as we descended it was as though something inside me, some primitive impulse, was suddenly unlocked. This is hard to explain, but it was as though the greenness of the fields drew me into a state of awe. I felt connected to a land and a place that I’d never visited or even thought much about. That’s when I just lost it, I guess. It looked so beautiful, and I was so filled with gratitude that I started crying.

As I’d hoped might happen—but certainly couldn’t have predicted—this brave young woman single-handedly opened the floodgates. The room was abuzz. Soon another person spoke up, a man in his forties. He took the microphone and told a story about the time he went snorkeling in Bali and wept in his goggles, overwhelmed at the staggering scene he’d seen beneath the lagoon’s surface. A third person shared how she felt the first time she held her granddaughter in her arms.

In that bland conference room in Florida, nervousness and reluctance transformed into beauty and reverence. Disconnection dissolved into unity as more people volunteered their answers. A spirit of ease blanketed the room. I could feel a palpable sense of harmony begin to tie these former strangers together. Tears can engender great reverence. Even more so when they don’t fall from sadness but from the joy that comes as we realize that even with all our rich and varied life experiences, we don’t know much at all. 

Watching this all play out that day out reminded me how people in my Santa Monica, California, neighborhood became more open and trusting after the 6.7-magnitude Northridge earthquake shook the city, in the winter of 1994. In those chaotic moments, people who’d never spoken a word to one another suddenly asked, “How can I help?” They took strangers into their homes; they fed and cared for them.

The simple joy we all felt at having survived those frightening hours before dawn made us more human, more loving—and more full of reverence for the power of nature and for our own power to press on in spite of the challenges we were facing. What that post-earthquake experience and the symposium in West Palm Beach taught me was that at its root, reverence connects us with things beyond the self: nature, other human beings, and the mystery, or Divine spirit, that infuses the universe. 

Spiritual Eye-Opener Exercise

Just as the actuaries and data analysts did at their Palm Beach conference, I want you to think about a time you became emotional over someone or something that struck you as beautiful: laughing with a friend, a scenic vista in Colorado, or the birth of a child.

Here’s your opportunity to create a simple artistic sketch, write a poem, or make a short film on your smartphone that captures or recalls the reverence of that experience. My friend Kent sketched himself holding his young daughter after her bath. In Kent’s words: “She’s wrapped up in a towel and routinely asks me to ‘carry her like a baby’ to get her PJs on for bedtime. So I pick her up like a baby, and we smile and laugh while looking at each other in the mirror.”

The trick to doing this SEO right is to simply act. Don’t fixate on the result. When you’re done, keep whatever you made close to you: set your sketch in your desk drawer, fold your poem in your wallet, or keep your film handy for occasional viewing on your smartphone. Let it remind you of the emotion it brought up in you, and let it feed your reverence for the created world and the beings we share it with.

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