Adam Blatner

Albert Schweitzer said that was his goal, and I sort of idealized him. Albert Einstein, too. If I could be like them then maybe my Mom would have been satisfied. She was channeling the mores of the mid-20th century upward-striving middle class, for which nothing was good enough. I was suffering from feeling not good enough—low grade inferiority complex.

Anyway, the semantics of reverence is the thing here. Personally, I prefer a bit of twinkle. Sort of, "Gosh, God, this is so keen!" Does anyone ever say "Keen!" anymore? Haha! I mean, the slight winter breeze blowing the big tree out back in the meadow is making a veritable symphony of textures of this group of branches vibrating in harmony with that group of branches while this other branch is playing a sort of transdimensional “piccolo.” (You might recognize this as a symptom of “pronoia”—which is like paranoia, but nice. Pronoia is the sense that the powers that be are all conspiring to help me be happy and enlightened. So I take it personally, as if they (through the nodding tree) are singing oh-so-subtly, variations of "yes, yes, yes," like a Bach cantata, times a hundred. Whoo-eee.

Reverence? Celebration? Gratitudinism—a spiritual practice of plunging in with all four feet, if I had four feet, and there ought to be a word for frolicking mixed with wallowing. Reverence? Sure, but God told me (through Uncle Bud), "Enjoy! Enjoy!