Life is a miracle beyond our comprehension, and we should reverence it even where we have to struggle against it.
The more you consider the matter, the more salient the parallels between the Neolithic and the neoliberal appear: archaeologists seem fairly convinced that implicit in the Stonehenge's design is some form of ancestor worship; for us there can be no doubt: we revere the idea of their reverence, we are engaged in a degraded form of meta‑ancestor worship.
How will we instil reverence for Virgil?
We reserve reverence for Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, the four Maryknoll sisters and missionaries killed in El Salvador in 1980, and the six Jesuit priests killed there in 1989 - along with their housekeeper and her daughter.
My blessing to us all is that we take the Yirah - the reverence we experienced on Yom Kippur, and that together we move up to the Ahava - to the joy and love expressed on Sukkot and Simchat Torah.
A radical interrogation of the sad events of recent months is disallowed, for the roots may prove damaging to the holy of holies: the economy, which has performed so well for the past 15 years; the economy, which we approach with reverence, and to which we look for meaning and deliverance.
We're either expressing our inability, as when we call God incomprehensible, or we're expressing our reverence, as when we call God omniscient and just.
I fear that, if we lack at least a trace of this reverence, we will remain trapped within the gated community of human dominion -- trapped within the sure thing of our technology, even as the sureness vanishes.
We have a certain reverence and once we put our loved ones to rest, we hold them in our hearts and minds so that we can return to their grave site and honor their memory.
May we never seek to mistreat the earth; may we live with reverence for you and all you have made.
