Reverence as a Business Practice
Reverence – a deep and abiding respect. From Latin revereri ‘stand in awe of’
Nature never ceases to floor us. Its profound beauty, its seasons, its mystery. The cycles of birth and death.
How easy is it for us to stand and watch a sunrise and be mesmerized, reverent to the perfection of the constancy of the sun’s trajectory and how it provides for life?
In our shunning of much of the world of the sacred (sacred = hallowed/holy/blessed), we have also shunned words that evoke the sacred.
Words like Reverence. Sacred. Vows.
Yet what if we brought the sacred into business?
What if we viewed the act of business and enterprise as a sacred act?
What if we made reverence a business practice? That we held a deep and abiding respect for our work. For the people who come together and co-ordinate activity in the workplace? For people who buy our art, our product, our service? For the ecosystem in which our enterprise exists?
What if we replaced the central organising theme of business (money and profit) with reverence?
If we showed a deep and abiding respect for everyone and everything that our business touched?
Would this be a world you would love to play in? Would you then find yourself gazing at the enterprise, at the people who have committed to the enterprise, at the product or service of the enterprise, as you do the sunrise? With that same awe. The same love.
Is this not what we want as humans? Constant connections to reverence…days filled to the brim with a deep and abiding respect for……….all that we do, all of who we are…all that we see in others…?
Was this not the story of longing of our childhood?
Photo credit: Christine McDougall