Reverence (Written for My Sister)

There's a book by a classics scholar named Paul Woodruff, focused on an intellectual virtue he calls "reverence," translating the Greek word eusebia, or piety. It seems odd to say that an atheist could be pious/reverent, but I think in Woodruff's sense, Eusebia knows no creed, and needs no gods. She (and yes, Piety was a divine being in Greek myth) visits anyone who is patient enough to slow down and pay attention. Humans are odd, loud, lumpish things, but we occasionally have our moments of grace, when our tongues don't clang like New York traffic and our egos are (for once) asleep. I am a person, not a planet. Yet from all the attention I pay to the whiney community of my psyche, you'd think there were no world outside, no vast and colorful sea that this very small fish swims in. What holds me up? A whole polis of Being in which I am the most ignorant citizen. And so, as an ignoramus, I have to ask others for news of city doings: "What is the business of the day?" I inquire. "Ceremony" says one person, "Taking off your glasses when the Muse walks in" says another. "Loving your neighbor" from a third. "Caring for words..." "Stopping somewhere and getting to know the place" "Not bowing before the Iron Crown" "Arranging to be buried beneath a wine barrel..." As opinions pile up, I listen quietly. I'm a guest at a very old conversation. I don't know how to navigate it yet, but I'll find my sea legs. One day at a time.

000

Sources --- Paul Woodruff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtvRozROMtU
https://www.amazon.com/Reverence-Renewing-Forgotten-Paul-Woodruff/dp/0199350809/

Other Voices:

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/prayer-my-daughter

(W. B. Yeats)

http://phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/stafford_whenimetmymuse.html

(William Stafford)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=leviticus+19&version=NRSV

(The Guy in the Sky, as told to the Priestly Source)

https://www.amazon.com/Caring-Culture-Marilyn-Chandler-McEntyre/dp/0802848648

(Marilyn McEntyre)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/23/climate-change-fight-of-our-lives-naomi-klein

(Naomi Klein quoting Wendell Berry)

https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/god-men-elves/

(Martin Cothran on Tolkien and Lewis)

http://home.agh.edu.pl/~evermind/jrrtolkien/mythopoeia.htm

(Tolkien to Lewis)

https://austinkleon.com/2018/02/03/checking-in-with-death/

(Moriya Sen’an)