Blog Post

Admiring and Revering

Michael Kroth • May 11, 2018

Thanks Backatcha V

“Later that day, we attended an anti-Vietnam War protest

where I was lucky to get—then unlucky enough to lose—my draft card

autographed by Cassius Clay,

soon to be the most famous person in the world, Muhammad Ali.”

Steve Martin, Born Standing Up , (2007, p. 95)

(Writing about a day he spent with his girlfriend Mitzi, daughter of Dalton Trumbo.)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged in a Nazi prison on April 9, 1945. He was a German minister and the author of books like the classic The Cost of Discipleship. He had resisted Nazism and attempted to overthrow Hitler. He had purposefully put himself in harm’s way for a larger cause.

I worry about what people might think if I were to wear different colored socks to work.

I revere people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

I am grateful that people like Bonhoeffer exist in a world which seems too often to focus on the trivial or the petty or the self-serving.

I am reverent in the presence of those who have skills or abilities or character or personal qualities well beyond my own and, critically, who have used them to accomplish uncommon tasks for uncommon good, often with uncommon sacrifice. These tasks may be singular, as in an act of courage or at great cost, but often they represent a body of work over a lifetime or a period of one’s life. I bend my knee, I bow, I genuflect, I offer a prayer for those people and my deep gratitude.

What sets apart admiration for special people from reverence? I admire all that I revere, but I do not revere all whom I admire. I don’t always even admire all things about the people I revere. Many top-notch saints were also top-notch sinners. These holy ones “had struggled with the same human foibles that everyone does” (Martin, 2016, p. 7).

I admire a quarterback like Tom Brady (the GOAT) or a basketball player like Larry Bird (I really admire these guys…!). I revere Jackie Robinson. I admire Warren Buffett. I revere Abraham Lincoln. I revere those who give their lives, sometimes with great loss, for their country or for their religious beliefs or for freedom of speech, because they are more courageous than I can ever imagine myself to be. I stand in awe of martyrs and heretics who acted in the full anticipation that they would suffer great pain to body and spirit and reputation, and death, by the way they led their lives or through acts which challenged people in power. I revere the person who gives his or her life for someone else or for a cause they feel worthy – this is the quality of sacrifice. I revere extraordinary commitment – this too is a quality of sacrifice.

I admire Joseph Heller, who wrote the satirical anti-war book, Catch-22 , which has influenced me as much as any other over my lifetime, and I also revere him and others who had the courage to write books provocative enough to be banned by acceptable, conformist society. I am in awe of their daring, their boldness, their commitment. I revere even more those who were banned from writing at all, like screenwriter Dalton Trumbo , because they would not cave, would not rat out other writers, to demagogues like Joe McCarthy (Ceplair & Trumbo, 2015).

Trumbo, at great personal and professional sacrifice, refused like others in the Hollywood Ten to testify or give up names to Senator Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950’s. Blacklisted by Hollywood, sentenced to 11 months in a federal penitentiary for contempt of Congress, lived in poverty in Mexico, and he still received two Academy Awards under different names for his work. He wrote the screen plays for Roman Holiday , Exodus , and Spartacus , among many others, and for a gifted artist it must have been excruciating to be left on the sidelines while others saw their work lionized.

These I revere.

I stand in utter, humble, deferential, respectful veneration of those who made the sacrifice, reaping both the satisfaction and the pain which goes with nonconformity, the questioning of iniquity, the railing against injustice, the breaking of unjust laws, the expressing of oneself fully and honestly, and with living uniquely. I know I have not the character or the vision to stand with them, so I must bow to them. To take, when I can summon the courage, a baby step with them. I feel reverence for these considered irreverent or unadmirable. Many of those perceived as the most irreverent were indeed most reverent and most admirable. Some were viewed as heretics but died martyrs.

Those who are willing to sacrifice for their beliefs or their loves inspire me, no matter if they are taking on an unwinnable battle or pursuing an ideal or goal that is not even one of my own . There is something in the human soul that connects deeply and emotionally with these others, with these brave ones. It does not matter if they show their mettle through declarations of and then battling for independence, defending their country or a cause, or if stoutheartedly trying to change or improve a country or a way of life, I revere their valor.

References:

Ceplair, L., & Trumbo, C. (2015). Dalton Trumbo: blacklisted Hollywood radical . Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Martin, J. (2016). My life with the saints . Chicago, IL: Loyola Press.

Martin, S. (2007). Born standing up: a comic's life (1st Scribner hardcover ed.). New York: Scribner.