Sunday Morning with Andy – 9th February 2020

Reverence is a beautiful word, not just to say, but to live with

When I was a youth and a young man, I marveled at how easy my dad was with children.  They loved him, in the best possible meaning of those words.

He was not so at easy or comfortable with some adults.  So, the rather natural way he related to boys and girls, say ages 1 month to age 9 or 10, stood out.

Only in my senior years have I come to understand why or how.  Dad saw in children the deepest meanings of life.  To be near them, to converse with them so they also understood, to embrace them in a fatherly, totally natural way—Dad was a master.

Dad had reverence for life, in his very soul.  Not always outwardly, especially when he was upset with world chaos and bad politicians.  But deep down, he had it.  And I love him forever for it.

Anybody with any years on them knows life can be cruel, harsh and ugly.  It can be violent, and bloody as hell.  We know.  For we live most every moment of every day in 2020 without reverence.  There is, sadly, surrounding us, the absence of the holy.

By reverence, I do not mean religiosity, religion with all the outward trappings of ritual and formality.  No, I mean respect, love, appreciation, the adoration of life itself.

What do we hold in reverence?  I submit, that is the question before us Christmas 2019.

Our spouse? Our relatives?  Our friends?  The children of the world?  The natural beauty of our awesome universe? I hope so.

If we can possess, or be possessed by "reverence," life will be good, mighty good, of that I am absolutely certain.

alp