Still Stuck on Awe
So I’m still stuck on awe. I guess I could be stuck on worse themes. 😜
Anyway, before jumping into the rest...
1MaryAnn and I have launched a new site for our Pop Culture Podcast as well as we’re now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts! We’re getting official now! You can click over and (free) subscribe if you want to follow or subscribe on the podcast sites as well. Our next two are coming up - Our favorite clergy portrayals in film/TV (December 29 at 11am ET) and Wake Up Dead Man (December 31 at 11am ET). Going to be some fun conversations ahead!
Onto the rest…
When I wrote last Sunday, there had only been one CAC post about awe - the one I referenced. Well, this whole week has been centered on the experience of awe. I’m grateful that this week has allowed for some open sky mornings at the lake (as well as slightly warmer ones too). So today is mostly going to be some of the most resonant sections of the CAC posts this week along with some of my awe-moments.
One note...as you take in each of these I would like to invite you to think of those you know in your immediate life as well as public figures...who of them seem to represent what we read here of people connected to a deep sense of awe in the world? Who seems to be disconnected from that sense of awe? How do you feel connected to these deep senses of awe? Disconnected?
Just something that stirred for me throughout this week.
Awe...
From Kathleen Norris
Modern believers tend to trust in therapy more than in mystery, a fact that tends to manifest itself in worship that employs the bland speech of pop psychology and self-help rather than language resonant with poetic meaning—for example, a call to worship that begins: “Use this hour, Lord, to get our perspectives straight again.” Rather than express awe, let alone those negative feelings, fear and trembling, as we come into the presence of God, crying “Holy, Holy, Holy,” we focus totally on ourselves, and arrogantly issue an imperative to God. Use this hour, because we’re busy later, just send us a bill … and we’ll zip off a check in the mail. But the mystery of worship, which is God’s presence and our response to it, does not work that way.
Maybe your wandering time leads you on a wilderness hike when you cross a ridge and are awestruck by a shimmering alpine lake reflecting a snow-covered mountain peak like a mirror. Or maybe you happen upon a firefly at nightfall in your backyard, where that tiny, sudden light blinks up, rises, and settles on your arm. In simple and unexpected moments of epiphany, you will sense that you are connected to creation in ways that bypass your self-protective, preoccupied, rational mind. Your task? Be attentive. Allow your wonder to wander...Whenever one is moved to awe by the beauty of creation, one is moved by God. God, the Creator of both the beauty, and of the inner feelings that excite the soul.
The inspiration we feel in the presence of beauty causes us to transcend ourselves, and in so doing, this is the testimony to the presence of God in the world. Regardless of one’s intellectual view of God, when one is moved beyond him or herself, beyond a preoccupation with one’s own being to the recognition of the greatness that is other than him or her, then the inward urge to worship and adore such beauty means one is being moved by God toward God.
From Barbara Holmes
God is the wisdom of every lifetime, a deep plunge into a clear pool, the sinew and muscle of ethical responsibility, a community of goodness, but always more. Descriptions reach out as far as they can toward the God of the universe, and then, like a rubber band stretched too far, they snap back and we are left with the silence of mystery and awe.
From Barbara Brown Taylor
Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars...Reverence stands in awe of something—something that dwarfs the self, that allows human beings to sense the full extent of our limits—so that we can begin to see one another more reverently as well. An irreverent soul who is unable to feel awe in the presence of things higher than the self is also unable to feel respect in the presence of things it sees as lower than the self.
From Victoria Loorz
Reverence is slow and intentional. It allows awe to fill your lungs and bring tears to your eyes, and it floods your bloodstream with extra oxygen and energy. Wandering with reverence means you’re looking at the world with softened eyes that no longer see others as objects of beauty or utility. Reverence allows you to behold the trees and waters and tiny ants as separate beings…. You acknowledge them as individuals who are as concerned about their own survival and enjoyment of life as you are about yours.
From Fr Richard Rohr
Our ordinary lives are given extraordinary significance when we accept that our lives are about something much larger. Our pain is a participation in God’s redemptive suffering, and our creativity is God’s passion for the world. I don’t need to be the whole play or even understand the full script. It’s enough to know that I have been chosen to be one actor on the stage, playing my part as well as I can...The word disaster comes from a Latin word meaning “to be disconnected from the stars.” The stars represented the great and universal story. Our lives are usually a disaster unless we live under these stars. When we sense that our little story is part of the great story, we are basically content. No amount of psychology and therapy can offer us such a cosmology; I believe only good religion can.
From Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe...Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you. The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom, for the discovery of the world as an allusion to God.
And Scout posing with her calendar…
Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed
Me with lego camera and lego Scout // MaryAnn with a lego copy of her upcoming book!
Awe happens, a gift many experience. Love all you highlight .
Regarding the topic of the article, it is fascinating to consider the varying degrees of awe people experience. What would you say is the key diferentiator between genuine awe and simpler admiration?