Movement comes to mind.

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Not the motion that transports you from one place to the next. Though, of course, devotion has been known to inspire such improvised action. I’m referring to that which rearranges your insides: movement that adapts your priorities, challenges your loyalties, and perhaps even modifies your understanding of the world.

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There’s a depth to reverence that is best handled with care.

 

Reverence conjures. It produces within us outward manifestations of inward feelings. It might be holy, or it might not. It might beckon, it might repel. It is foreign, enormous, other. It is familiar, precious, mine. Does it draw you to your feet? Do you know more or less now that you stand in its presence? Reverence is respect tinged with awe. It is subjective and therefore will not evoke the same image for you as it will for me.

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By quickening our pulse and deepening our breath, veneration creates room within our bodies to accommodate awe. The work compiled in this issue illuminates devotion. It gestures towards adoration. Where will it take you? Follow the rhythm of the words, trace the images with your fingertips, then seize the opportunity presented to you at the very brink of reverence.

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—Nina Lohman