Reverence for life has to be learned and if it is to be learned it must be based on a worldview that sustains interconnection and a sense of awe

Rebecca Parker writes in "Love First" as sermon given at the Opening Convocation of Starr King School For The Ministry in September 2005. 

"We must learn again to live with reverence. Reverence is a form of love. It is a response to life that falls on its knees before the rising sun and bows down before the mountains. It puts its palms together in the presence of the night sky and the myriad galaxies and recognizes, as poet Langston Hughes tells us, "beautiful are the stars, beautiful too are the faces of my people." Reverence greets all humanity as sacred. It genuflects before the splendor of the grass and the magnificence of the trees. It respects the complexity, beauty, and magnitude of creation and does not presume to undo its intricate miracles. Instead, it gives life reverent attention, seeking to know, understand, and cooperate with life's ways.

Reverence for life has to be learned. It is not just a feeling; it is a way of life that is manifested in more than an isolated moment of appreciation for nature or awe before its destructive or creative power. Reverence involves full-fledged devotion enacted in deeds of care and responsibility. It involves knowledge, study, and attention."

Reverence for life is a spiritual attribute, and spiritual attributes are acquired through practice, by what has been called spiritual discipline.  Unitarian Universalists has experienced an increased interest in spirituality, but the interest appears to be stronger than the willingness to commit to a discipline. Parker argues that reverence for life involves knowledge, study and attention.  Acquiring reverence for life requires practicing deeds of care and responsibility for our earth and for animals and plants of our earth.  It requires practicing deeds of care and responsibility for human community, for seeking not only ways to aid each others immediate needs, but to seek ways to overcome oppressive systems that restrict the full unfolding of life.  This may require the theological task of overcoming an oppressive world view.

Parker continues:

"Our society is currently guided by a worldview that is insufficiently grounded in reverence.  Religiously, it is  a worldview that regards the world itself as trash-a planet that God is soon going to discard in a plan to wipe this world away and create a new one.  Economically, the dominant worldview regards human beings as self-interested individuals, motivated only by their personal desire to consume.  And scientifically, it sees existence as devoid of value, atomistic, disconnected, and mechanistic.  Such inadequate views are tearing our world to tatters by lack of regard for the communal character of life."

Parker argues throughout this sermon for a connection between what we do in the world, and our spiritual, theological and intellectual understanding of that world.  Reverence for life must be learned and that learning involves transformation, taking on a new identity and a new worldview.  Transformation to becoming a person who loves life in practice is more than a simple matter of doing some non controversial projects of aid to the less fortunate, or thinking some good thoughts.  It takes practice, and theological work. 

(This raises a question for me, why did the UU World cut Parker's sermon just at the point where she critiques the current religious, economic and scientific worldview?  Is it because her critique is a challenge to the views of many Unitarian Universalists who are content to spin feel good religion on top of the dominant worldview?  It can't be because of space, there is much they included that is incidental to her main point.