In the 1991 movie City Slickers, Billy Crystal plays New York executive Mitch Robbins, whose hassled life is wearing negatively on his work, his marriage, and his friendships. At thirty-nine years old he finds himself deep in a midlife crisis. For his birthday, his two best buddies purchase a two-week vacation for the three of them at a dude ranch in New Mexico to participate in a dude cattle drive. As is usually the case with Billy Crystal, hilarity and poignancy ensue simultaneously. The tough-as-nails trail boss Curly, played to great effect by Jack Palance, is an enigma to Mitch from day oneโCurly is silent, curmudgeonly, skilled at his job, self-assured, and clearly in possession of information that Mitch badly needs. One day while rounding up strays, Mitch asks, โCurly, what is the secret of life?โ As a good philosopher should, Curly answers with another question.
You know what the secret of life is?
No, what?
Your finger?
One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else donโt mean shit.
Thatโs great, but whatโs the one thing?
Thatโs what youโve gotta figure out.
One thing. Finding out what that one thing is might be the point of anyoneโs life, but thatโs a pretty big task. At the beginning of a new year, a more manageable question might be โWhat is the one thing that I resolve to do this coming year?โ And I donโt mean something like drinking less coffee or going to the gym more. I mean โWhat is the one thing that I resolve to do in this coming year that will be good for the inner me, for my soul?โ I gave this assignment to the Living Stones seminar group that meets once a month after church when we met in December, and theyโll be bringing their โone thingโ resolution when we meet next. As for me, I resolve that in 2016 I will be a more reverent person.
Reverence is not a concept that is particularly in favor in Western cultureโit probably hasnโt been for decades. The term is almost always used in religious contexts, especially during the holiday season just ended. The shepherds and wise men gaze reverently upon the Christ child, Mary listens reverently as the angel tells her that her world is about to be turned upside down, the stable animals chew their hay reverently as they observe Mary reverently giving birth to Jesus while Joseph reverently boils water and finds some swaddling clothes. I suppose that sort of faux holiness has its place (maybe), but thatโs not what I have in mind.
The sort of reverence I am resolving to develop this year is more like Mosesโ reaction to the burning bush in Exodus. As he is taking care of his father-in-law Jethroโs flocks one day, he notices something weird out of the corner of his eyeโa bush that is on fire but is not being burnt up. He could have thought โthatโs weirdโ and kept on going. He could have made a mental note to check back later when he wasnโt so busy. He could have Googled โburning bushโ on his tablet after dinner with Zipporah and the kids when he had a few minutes of down time. But he didnโt. Instead, he said โI must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.โ Loose translationโโHoly Shit! What the hell is that?โ Moses was willing to interrupt his busy day to take a look at something outside his usual frame of reference. Reverence begins with the ability to see in a different way, to notice whatโs going on outside the boundaries of my agenda, to be attentive to even the most mundane items and events that cross my path. Most importantly, reverence is cultivated by an increasing awareness that everything is important in its own right.
The Greek philosopher Protagoras famously claimed that โman is the measure of all things.โ Reverence says that I am not the measure of anythingโwhat is most important and interesting is almost never about me.
The work of the French, Jewish mystic, activist and philosopher Simone Weil has been important to me both personally and professionally for many years, but one of her many cryptic phrases has been a mystery to me until just recently. In Gravity and Grace, she writes thatย โHere below, to look and to eat are two different things. . . . The only people who have any hope of salvation are those who occasionally stop and look for a time, instead of eating.โ This truly made no sense to me for a long time. But as Iโve learned something about peace, silence and attentiveness over the past few years, Iโve begun to see Simoneโs point. Human beings are naturally acquisitive and devouring creaturesโwe are seldom willing to let things be as they are. If X is attractive, I want to buy it. If Y looks useful, I want to consume it. If Z is important, I want to make it mine. We turn these manic energies on the world around us and on each other on a regular basis. Simoneโs point is that not everything is here for my use and pleasure. The importance of what I encounter during a given day is not to be judged according to how important it is to me. And as I learn that everything is important in its own right, I can begin to see it differently. To โlet it be,โ as the Beatles sang, and to remember that โit is what it is,โ as Jeanne frequently says.
So in practical terms, what does reverence amount to? At the very least, it means giving each task, person, and event in my life my undivided attention. A colleague of mine defines โmultitaskingโ as โdoing several things poorly at the same time.โ If multitasking is the enemy of reverence, which Iโm quite sure it is, then Iโm in trouble. I find it very difficult to do one thing at a timeโthe very writing of this essay has been interrupted, sometimes in mid-sentence, by going to a second screen to check on my blog numbers, then a third screen to see if my latest important email has been responded to yet. During a typical evening it is not unusual for me to be watching a television show with Jeanne, farting around on my tablet, and grading a paper or two all at the same time.
So I resolve to ask myself the following question frequently in the following weeks and months: Is what you are doing worthy of your undivided attention? And if the answer is โyes,โ then the follow-up question is Then why are you not giving it your undivided attention? Learning to give my undivided attention to each thing as I encounter it is the first step in recognizing the value inherent in even the tiniest and most insignificant part of reality. Moses took the time to check out something unusual and found out that he was standing on holy ground. And so are we. All the time.