By Alexander Green
Reverence means understanding human limitations. It's a feeling of respect and awe about what lies beyond our control: nature, truth, fate, death.
It's also an attitude of acceptance toward life and our fellow human beings, flawed as we may be. Reverence underlies the grace and civility that make life in society bearable and pleasant. It reminds us what's important, what's sacred, what's worth protecting.
Reverence is as old as civilization itself, perhaps older. Writing in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the Greek historian Thucydides called it a cardinal virtue, existing universally across all cultures.
An irreverent man, he claimed, is arrogant and shameless, full of hubris, unable to feel awe in the face of things greater than himself. Moreover, irreverence makes it difficult to respect those who are weaker: children, prisoners, the poor, the elderly.
Many equate reverence with religiosity. Yet this is not always the case.
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