Values: Justice and Reverence

Greetings, friends and beloveds, from the windy streets and pulsing porch gardens of the fiercely-wild urban midwest.  I have recently returned from my excursion to the Wisteria Summer Solstice Festival, where I spent the long hot days and beautiful nights singing and laughing with good friends and generally taking it easy.  I had a lot of fun babbling on about love spells and honeybees in the two workshops I gave at the festival, and I grokked some good advice from a green friend in a visionary excursion through the fields and deserts of the Otherworld in a workshop on Plant Spirit Familiars with author Christopher Penczak.  I ritualized, I dreamed, I danced, I sang.  I also got bitten by approximately two ooptikerzillion mosquitos, and stung by one angry wasp.  But it’s a small price to pay in order to luxuriate in the company of good people, sweet dark woods, firelight and honeyed wine.  The summer has let down all her hair and is drumming her free and dancing heels against the receiving earth.  I am looking forward to Lammasfest in Iowa in August, and to Terra Mysterium‘s fall production of “Finding Eleusis” at Chicago Fringe Fest in September.

But while I’m blithering on about stuff, two more pieces of self-involved news before I move on.  First, beginning with the July issue, I am happy as the proverbial clam to announce that I will be one of two new regular columnists in Witches and Pagans magazine.  I’m super excited about this opportunity.  The column is entitled “Figs and Honey” and this summer’s issue will feature a short rhapsody about bread (a subject that regular readers of PG know I am particularly enthusiastic about).  And second, I am very excited to be one of several new regular guest bloggers at The Honeybee Conservancy.  Long-time readers will know how powerfully I feel about our golden sisters, and I’m really thrilled to be able to support the Conservancy in this way.  I encourage everyone to check out their website, and to donate to the cause if you can.

So yes…a super busy summer already…but still and through it, I have been pondering.  My foray into the woods for a firefly shod week has allowed me some breathing room, and some time to meditate further on my thoughts from earlier this month.

These sojourns in the woods are critical for me in remembering to come back to the ground.  To come back to honeybees, and story – prayer and poetry.  The beauty of the Mama – the breathtaking gobsmacking wonder that greets me every morning and rocks me to sleep every night.  The wind in the cottonwood trees.  The wickedly fast enthusiasm of our potato plant – the enterprising voraciousness of mint and tomato.  The work of the people in breaking down walls, the sharing of bread.  And what unites all these together in my mind are the critical values and virtues of Justice and Reverence.

Reverence is the well-developed capacity to have the feelings of awe, respect, and shame when these are the right feelings to have. – Paul Woodruff, from Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue

In this amazing, phenomenal interview (Thank you, Phillip!), Bill Moyers talks with Barry Lopez about several subjects surrounding Lopez’ work as a writer and interpreter of the human condition, especially in light of our relationship to the natural world (full transcript here).

One subject that arose in this interview was the virtue of Reverence.  Lopez referenced the excellent Paul Woodruff book “Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue,” an incredible book that I also recommend:

BARRY LOPEZ: Yes, that’s right. I read this book. I think it’s called “Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue.” And he says in there that the virtue of reverence is rooted in the understanding that there is a world beyond human control, human invention, and human understanding.

And that that world will always be there, no matter how sophisticated our technologies of- probing reality become. The great mystery will be there forever. And it’s the sense that it’s not yours to solve. And the issue of a solution to a mystery is perhaps not a sign of wisdom. I am perfectly comfortable being in a state of ignorance before something incomprehensible. And it’s in that moment that you’re driven to your knees and you believe.

Yes!  Limits and mysteries!  That Great Unknowing is rolling there in the heart of earth-centered theology I think.  Woodruff’s book states that reverence “begins in a deep understanding of human limitations,” which brings about the “capacity for awe.”

Deliciously, however, it naturally happens that a conversation about reverence becomes a conversation about justice:

BARRY LOPEZ: We’re so afraid. There’s so much to be afraid of. I mean, look at the government we have at the moment, I mean, there’s so many places you can go, that make you think, “What in the world are we doing? And how can it be brought to heal?” But we– I believe that there is a way for people to communicate with each other that they have never known before. It’s never, I mean, part of this electronic world we live in, you know? It’s got its darkness as well as its light.

But for people all over the world, in small groups, to be in touch with each other about what is welling up in every country, among every group of people, which is a desire for justice. You know, there– I’m trying to remember the story. I don’t remember the philosopher, the Greek philosopher who told the story of Zeus and Prometheus. Which really stuck when I first heard it, is that Zeus said to Prometheus, “Okay, you stole fire. Great for you. Now your people have technology. Wonderful. But here’s something you don’t know. You lack two things. And if you don’t take these two things that I will give you, this will be a failure. Technology, you know, fire, all your magic, it will fail completely. It will be your undoing. And the two things that you need to make it work are justice and reverence. And if you have these two things, you won’t get in trouble with this third thing that you thought was the be all and the end all.”

Reverence and justice.  The ability to discern limitations – to feel awe and have respect for that which cannot be fully known.  To have respect for the Other.  To feel shame where shame is necessary in learning an important lesson.  If they have reverence, those responsible for the BP oil spill will feel shame in response to their part in that crippling disaster, and they should.  They should.  To not feel shame in response to this crisis is to lack reverence.  How can justice be served without this critical moment?  For justice to be restorative, reverence has to be present.  But justice takes movement – it takes communities and people working together to live out their reverence.

As Woodruff points out in his book, one does not need to have religion or an articulated spirituality in order to have reverence.  Reverence is not a religious virtue, it is a way of being in the world.  But it certainly can be talked about in light of theology and spirit, and is critical in discussing religions that hold the Mama at their center.

I have been mired in thoughts of late about identity and definition, it’s true.  At the same time, I have been gutted and savaged by the ongoing oil spill coverage.  Holding these two issues together simultaneously has had me thinking lately about how they are connected if at all, and trying to remind myself to keep my eye on what is important.  It is true that after a while, it can look like all this talk about umbrella terms and defining boundaries seems like a bunch of academic bickering over ephemera.  In the face of peak oil and global climate change, can we afford to quibble over matters of capitalization and identity?  Why engage these questions when the ocean is burning?

Good questions.  But my instincts tell me that it is important.  So why is that?

I have said that I think these questions of identity and definition have, in my opinion, far-reaching implications for the way we do community, the way we do ritual, and the way we engage with others of different faith traditions.  I believe this.  And I believe that as we turn to face a dim future that will not be brighter as we go on, the value of real-time, local and sustainable community, the importance of deep ritual, and the ability to engage in constructive interfaith dialogue becomes even more critical.

It may very well be that it comes down to my argument with radical individualism.  This very American notion, that we are all rugged individuals, has, in my opinion, had devastating consequences for us as a society and for religions born within it.  But before you come at me (individually or communally) with pitchforks, let me state that of course, the individual is important.  Freedom and liberty…yes.  But both freedom and liberty, like fire and technology, only truly work for good when wed to reverence and justice.  Liberty unchecked by community, reverence, awareness of the Other, and authentic relationship leads to rampant consumerism, NIMBYisms and “Drill Baby Drill.” It is the living tension of individual and community that holds the center together.  Without one, the other is meaningless.  Perhaps it is the same for Justice and Reverence.  Reverence is something an individual can hold within hirself, yes…but justice is what happens when reverence is engaged on the communal level.  Which leads me to some similar thoughts I’ve been having on the difference between spirituality and religion.

I think spirituality can be individual – it can be as individual as you like.  I have personal and private thoughts about my spirituality that are just that, and they don’t really have much to do with anyone but me, and that’s dandy.  I don’t expect that when you go Traveling into Otherworlds (depending on your interpretation of what that means), you will begin in the desert at the base of an enormous Joshua tree surrounded by red rocks.  I don’t expect that you will articulate your understanding of virtue ethics in light of Peter S. Beagle’s novel The Last Unicorn (yes indeedy, I do that…I might have to elaborate in the future).  My individual spirituality has key elements that are unique – geographies and landscapes, some novels and books here, a movie or two there, specific poems, dreams I’ve had, art I’ve seen, music I’ve heard, animals and insects I feel a kinship with, memory and fantasy, defining moments from childhood…all these combine to define the parameters for my sense of What Is Holy to me.  What I hold in reverence.  Of course.

But religion is communal, and pivots around shared story/stories, theologies, practices and values.  I have a group of co-religionists that I worship/practice with.  Some of them share a few of the ingredients of my personal spirituality I described above, but not all of them do.  What we share is our history together, the mythologies that define our group, the theologies we all generally agree on, our practices together, and our values.  We are all individuals with individual differences in spirituality, but we are held together via our shared religion.

What is religion?  What is the purpose of religion?  What should religion DO?  I don’t have answers, but I think they’re effing good questions, and I think, I think, it might have a whole hell of a lot to do with the application of justice.  To tell community stories in ritual is to remind the people of the bedrock out of which justice springs.  To engage authentically with the religious Other in interfaith conversation is to strive for justice.  Earth-centered theologies are ripe with the inspiration that inculcates reverence, and when we engage in these theologies of reverence together, we cannot help but seek justice.

Ye gods and little fishes, I am not a philosopher.  I’m not sure I’m making any sense even unto myself here…I’m just knocking at doors (I think they’re interesting doors to knock on at least).  I believe, very much, that while there is a time for the sturm and drang of metaphysical philosophical argument, what is more important is how things happen on the ground.  But in terms of religion and spirituality, very often the philosophical argument deeply affects the practice on the ground and vice versa – and that’s where conversations need to happen.  How many angels can dance on the end of a pin? I don’t really care.  What are the religious and social philosophies undergirding our worldviews as a people? Unbelievably important.

Haha!  A post on values – by the skin of my teeth in the last hours of International Pagan Values Month.  Next time, perhaps I will strive for more coherence.  It’s a dream anyway.

In the meantime, between the words and between the breath, in the inky pool at the bottom of your lungs where the gates of the world sit and that you touch each microsecond your chest stills, there lies the touchstone of your connection to the Mama.  May you grok that stillness, that wellspring of moment.  May you have fireflies and late nights.  May you thrill to the sound of the wood bee as it revels in the rose.

Grok Earth, friends and beloveds.  Pray without ceasing.