For those of you that have paid any mind to my podcasting posts you’ll remember the name Nathan Lowell. He’s perhaps one of podcasting’s most prolific authors and has recently gotten a book deal under way for the first of his Share series. I’m not here this time solely to pimp his podcast (I’ve done a fair amount of that and will no doubt do more) so much as I am to take a look at some characters in two of his stories that I’ve listened to most recently. Though I will say that you should really listen to his stories at your earliest opportunity.

The two that I wold like to draw your attention to are South Coast and his most recent outing Ravenwood. Like any really good fiction these particular stories spark some, I suppose you’d call them extraneous thoughts. The one in question was prompted by the main character in Ravenwood, Tanyth Fairport. Tanyth is an herbalist and has some considerable knowledge and wisdom gathered in her wanderings through the fantasy world that the story takes place in. At the point I’m at in the story, she’s become the healer and in some ways the spiritual leader of a small community. Mysterious things are happening and the villagers are beginning to look up to her in ways that she’s not very comfortable with. She thinks to herself that she feels like “a bit like an impostor being on the wrong side of reverence”. She doesn’t really feel like she’s anything special, at least not worthy of being held up in the same way as the others who she herself reveres.

That made me think about Lowell’s treatment of shamanism in South Coast. There we get to (among other things) watch two shaman’s discover their gifts. Richard Krug, the village shaman believes that a birthright puts him in the position and that this alone is enough and that the position alone is the gift. Meanwhile, his son Otto is destined to fill his father’s shoes and desperately wants to be a fisherman instead. They both seem to attach a fair amount of reverence to the position alone and revere it as something more, or less, than it is. Richard revels in what is basically the pastoral counseling side of the business and his position in the community. Otto believes that in order to become a shaman he must give up his dreams of going fishing. It turns out that both of them are wrong to a degree and that there’s more to this shaman business than meets the eye. There’s mystery to it and the gift (part magic, part meditation, and part connection to the planet) is that which should be revered.

So while the Krugs’ and Tanyth’s situation may not be the same, I think there are some things here that are of value to those in the “professional ministry” and to you, me, and the lamppost. A lot of folks, myself included for a time, attach a lot of reverence to the position of minister. When we see someone whose “job” it is to care for the flock the temptation is to think of how much more Godly they may be than we are and that it’s their calling and position alone to preach and teach, to heal the sick and comfort those who grieve. Putting minister’s on a pedestal like this isn’t fair to them and it isn’t what God desires. We are a priesthood of believers. Yes we’re to hold our teachers, preachers, and prophets to a higher standard, but that’s only so folks won’t be lead astray.

What does need to be revered is that connection that we have with God through Christ. That doesn’t come as a result of a birthright. If you grow up in a Christian family, that’s simply not enough. That connection is not cemented by a teaching position or a calling of men that comes with a title and an office. It comes from listening to God and communing with him. If you do happen to be in a position like Richard or Tanyth and you’re the spiritual leader of your flock, whether you want to be or not, then you’d do well to keep your head about you as Tanyth does. She doesn’t want to be revered. All she wants is to teach her people the things that they need to know in order to survive. There may be a certain level of respect that comes with that, but some of the gifts that she has aren’t anything that she learns or could ever learn. They’re just that, gifts. Giving people what they need and loving them is what we, regardless of position, should strive to do and that should come, not out of a desire to be revered by men, but out of a reverence we have for God and his creation.

That is the right side of reverence.