REVERENCE FOR OTHERS

Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in ‘An Altar in the World,’ “Reverence for creation comes fairly easily for most people. Reverence for other people presents more of a challenge, especially if those people’s lives happen to impinge upon your own…I have an easier time loving humankind than I do loving particular human beings…Particular human beings rarely do things the way I think they should do them, and when they prevent me from doing what I think I should be doing, then I can run short on reverence for them…
At its most basic level, the everyday practice of being with other people is the practice of loving the neighbor as the self. More intricately, it is the practice of coming face-to-face with another human being, preferably someone different enough to qualify as a capital “O” Other—and at least entertaining the possibility that this is one of the faces of God.”
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” Jesus