Reverence is a topic we don’t discuss or even think about. And yet this book makes us care deeply about the subject, leading us to examine assumptions and become utterly convinced of what, in retrospect, are astonishing, bold conclusions—for example, that “Leaders are responsible for the compassion of the groups that follow them.”
While the practices of reverence differ from culture to culture, Woodruff shows that reverence itself is a virtue that can be detached from particular beliefs and rituals. One of the many ways he demonstrates this is by exploring reverence in two very different cultures: China and ancient Greece. From the Greeks we learn that the opposite of reverence is not irreverence but hubris—forgetting, in the pride of power or glory, that you, too, are human, with human limitations, and must respect the humanity of others. Reverence, says Woodruff, is the source of the capacity for respect. But it lies deeper than respect, because it is not simply a behavior; it is aligned with truth. Reverence is the “capacity to have feelings of awe, respect, and shame when these are the right feelings to have.”
This rare thoughtfulness about feelings—and a profound respect for them—is a signature feature of the book, highlighted most vividly in an exploration of the experience of playing in a string quartet, even without mastery, when one becomes connected to something larger, something that can elicit awe. We think of awe and respect in relation to the sacred, but in one of his many fine distinctions, Woodruff says that while we owe respect to all sacred things, even those of other cultures or religions, we do not owe reverence to anything that is merely sacred. In a closely argued explanation, Woodruff shows that reverence is incompatible with relativism.
This argument raises the issue of the ethics courses so often taught in professional schools, which students almost uniformly find a waste of time. Figuring out what the rules are and being able to follow them in a difficult situation is a slender bulwark when compared to the development of the capacity “cultivated by experience and training, to have emotions that make you feel like doing good things.” The capacity for “awe, respect, and shame” would have been far more likely than training in ethics to have prevented the abuses at Abu Ghraib, as Woodruff convincingly shows us.
Like the Abu Ghraib discussion, some of the most telling explorations of reverence in this very illuminating book are based on military examples, where reverence can literally save lives. Woodruff shows, for example, that the idea that mutual respect flows from good opinions people have of each other is exactly backwards. The ceremony and ritual of the military is, in part, designed to support the giving of respect before the opportunity for opinion can even arise. “Respect is given, not earned, and to think otherwise would tear any hierarchy apart.”
Far more powerful than mere civility, reverence is necessary for community. An ancient Greek story tells how Prometheus stole fire from the gods, in the hope that this superior technology would help the human species survive. But the highest god saw that “technology alone, without virtue, is no defense against mutual destruction”—and so humans were given reverence and justice “as means for their survival, which depended on their ability to live in society.” When we look at our own society, we often speak of justice—or the lack of it. Reverence provides the other half of a very necessary conversation.
Betty Sue Flowers