Awe

Gregg’s Reflection

A month after our wedding, Genie and I went camping in the mountains. We came home to find a fire had consumed four apartments, including ours. All our wedding gifts burned up. Genie was a Christian of the Lutheran persuasion, but I was not a believer then. Even so, we took it as a sign not to hold to tightly to possessions. We took the insurance money, bought camping gear, and headed out West for a 10 week, 15,000 Mile journey six months after we wed. We got about 10 years worth of relational time in 10 weeks, and maybe that has helped us stay together 50 years.

In the Mountain West, I was completely awed by the mountains, deserts and canyons. We camped in Canyonlands, and realized the spot we camped had been used for hundreds of years. We felt so small, insignificant. God revealed himself to me in the mountains. The stars in the sky, the snow-capped peaks, the wind and weather. We were the only ones camping in the Grand Tetons. It was 5 below while we were there. Snow makes everything look new, and we had plenty.

In the years since, we have headed to the wilderness as regularly as we could. The sense of peace, wonder, delight and awe never end. Today we live off grid in a log cabin, surrounded by National Forest, looking at the Continental Divide. Rocky Mountain National Park and the Indian Peaks Wilderness are our back yard. We hike or snowshoe or ski the mountain about every day.

Richard Foster in his book on Prayer speaks of Prayers of Adoration when we are struck by awe outside in the creation, a sense of wonder. Wonder: a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable. 

Do you have time for delight? Find awe in nature? Both move us from the rational mind to the heart, and that’s where we connect with the Divine. See what the saints and mystics have to say.

Scripture

Who is like You among the gods, O Lord? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, awesome in praises, working wonders? Exodus 15:11

He is the one you praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. Deuteronomy 10:21

Let all the earth fear the Lord; Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. Psalm 33:8

They who dwell in the ends of the earth stand in awe of Your signs; You make the dawn and the sunset shout for joy. Psalm 65:8

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgements, and his paths beyond tracing out! “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them? For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever!  Amen.  Romans 11:33-36 

For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. Colossians 1:16

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.  Hebrews 12:28-29

Ancient Writings

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.

St. Augustine

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.

Thomas Aquinas

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.

John Milton

Modern Writings

All my life through, the new sights of nature made me rejoice like a child.

Marie Curie

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

Albert Einstein

Awe opens us up and resets our lives.  We see the world less self-centeredly. 

Gaston Bachelard: “Slowly, immensity becomes a primal value, a primal, intimate value. When the dreamer really experiences the word immense, he sees himself liberated from his cares and thoughts, even from his dreads. He is no longer shut up in his weight, the prisoner of his own being.” 

Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox, 7/7/21

I think that every discovery of the world plunges us into jubilation, a radical amazement that tears apart the veil of triviality.

Dorothee Sölle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance, trans. Barbara and Martin Rumscheidt p. 89.

The Basics of Awe. In 2003, Dacher Keltner, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, who’s now widely regarded as a pioneer of “awe studies,” noticed that while thousands of articles in psych journals discussed fear, anger, surprise, and joy, only a handful looked at awe. He and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, PhD, coauthored a paper identifying awe’s two primary components—vastness and mystery—and its role in our lives. In 2015, Keltner’s lab collected 2,600 stories from people all over the world about a time they felt awe, which the study defined as “being in the presence of something vast and mysterious that transcends your understanding of the world.”

Through reading the stories, Keltner and his staff determined that awe can be triggered by any of what they’ve named the eight wonders of life: moral beauty (feeling moved by the kindness or bravery of others); collective effervescence (being swept up in a group event, whether it’s a theater performance or a quinceañera); nature (looking up at a towering redwood); visual design (marveling at a beautiful painting, sculpture, or structure like the pyramids); music (hearing a song that moves you); life and death (witnessing or just pondering birth, or experiencing loss); spirituality (feeling a sense of the sublime from a meditation session or religious service); and epiphanies (gaining sudden understanding, maybe from gazing at the face of your date and realizing you’ve fallen in love).

Why It’s Important. Over the years, Keltner uncovered the positive physical, intellectual, emotional, and social benefits of awe. (His book about his findings, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, came out this year.) Feeling awe promotes concentration and rigorous thinking, encourages community and connection, relieves depression and anxiety, and can reduce inflammation, aiding our cardiovascular health. It lifts us out of the daily race and, Keltner says, gives us “the sense that we have more time in the day.”

Researchers have learned that experiencing awe activates our parasympathetic nervous system, shutting down the fight-or-flight stress response, and spurs our bodies to produce inflammation-fighting substances called cytokines. Awe also promotes what scientists call modest sympathetic arousal. In this state, we’re somewhere between fully relaxed and on guard, and we feel energized to connect with others, says physician Michael Amster, MD, who wrote The Power of Awe with Jake Eagle, a licensed professional counselor. “Awe is calming, settling, and grounding, but it also awakens and activates us,” Amster explains. “It makes us more open, curious, playful, and humorous.”

Recovering Awe. Even if you don’t have time to take an awe walk, chances are you have at least a few seconds to spare each day. That’s all Amster and Eagle say you need to practice their AWE method, which they describe as a kind of “microdosing mindfulness.” The A stands for “attention”: Focus on something you value or find amazing, whether it’s a leaf, a ladybug, a pudgy baby hand, or an inspiring book. W is for “wait”: Pause to inhale deeply while you are fully present with whatever you’ve chosen. And E means “exhale” and “expand”: As you breathe out, make the exhale slightly longer than the inhale, concentrating on whatever feelings come up and letting those sensations fill you.

Eleni N. Gage, Totally Awe-Some, Real Simple Magazine, 12/23

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. Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the … mystery beyond all things. It enables us … to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.

What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition; faith is attachment to transcendence, to the meaning beyond the mystery. Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith. Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a marketplace 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.

Abraham J. Heschel, Who Is Man? p. 88–89.

Trees provoke awe—that emotional response to something vast that expands and challenges the way we see the world. It’s the perfect antidote to the way we’re feeling right now—a pathway to healing. Research shows that awe decreases stress, anxiety and inflammation. It can quiet our mental chatter by deactivating our brain’s default mode network—the area that is active when we’re not doing anything and that can get absorbed by worry and rumination, according to Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and faculty director of the university’s Greater Good Science Center, who studies awe.

It can improve our relationships, making us feel more supported by and more likely to help others, more compassionate and less greedy. A little awe goes a long way: Dr. Keltner recommends eight to 10 minutes a day, although he says feeling awe even once a week is enough to start reaping benefits. And research shows our capacity for awe builds over time. Each experience we have makes us more likely to notice additional opportunities for awe around us. This is why you need a tree friend. Because you can’t always find a mountain or a beach or a sunset nearby—much less go bathing in a forest (although these all produce awe).

Elizabeth Bernstein, Why a Tree is the Friend We Need Right Now, Wall Street Journal, 6/21/21

In Japan it’s called shinrin-yoku, “forest bathing.” It’s the practice of taking in the atmosphere of the forest using all your senses, slowly and mindfully. Scientists have found that forest bathing can reduce levels of stress hormones in the body. Some studies have also suggested that phytoncides (natural chemicals released by trees) can boost the immune system. More generally, researchers have found that being in nature can improve mood, attention and problem-solving skills.

Scientific research has suggested that natural spaces can enlarge our sense of time. In a paper entitled "Time grows on trees," psychologists Mariya Davydenko and Johanna Peetz of Ottawa’s Carleton University found that participants in their studies overestimated the time it took for a walk in a natural setting. In contrast, participants accurately estimated the duration of an equally long walk in an urban setting. “In sum,” write the researchers, “our studies suggest that nature exposure can slow down time perception.”

Parks Canada newsletter

To be alive is to look up at the stars.... and to feel the beyond-words awe of space in its vastness. To be alive is to look down from a mountaintop ... and to feel the wonder that can only be expressed in “oh” or “wow” or maybe “hallelujah.” To be alive is to look out from the beach toward the horizon at sunrise or sunset and to savor the joy of it all in pregnant, saturated silence. [It’s] to gaze in delight at a single bird, tree, leaf, or friend, and to feel that they whisper of a creator or source we all share.  

Brian McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation, p. 4–5, 5–6.

Optimal experience is that rare occasion when we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyhi, Flow

Your Guide to Forest Bathing by Amos Clifford. The invitation is simple: Walk slowly [or sit still], while silently noticing what is in motion in the forest. There is always movement, even when things seem perfectly still. Strands of a web drift in the air, trees move in the breezes, birds fly by, and squirrels scramble in the branches, grasses bend, insects crawl. . . .Until you become accustomed to it, walking slowly for more than a few minutes is, paradoxically, stressful. . . . Because the mind and body are a single entity, slowing our body will also calm our mind. . . .  The eternal movement of the forest gives our minds something to engage with. Just as with sitting meditation the breath is always there and available for watching, in the forest there are always things in motion. Your mind will drift, and many other thoughts will arise. When they do, gently bring your attention back to noticing what's in motion. 

Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion 4/18/20

Wonder is what sets us apart from other life forms. No other species wonders about the meaning  of existence or the complexity of the universe or themselves.

Herbert W. Boyer

“There’s an urgent need emerging in science and at the gut level to increase the nature experience. This field is just exploding,” says Gretchen Daily, a professor of environmental science at Stanford University. The benefits have been clear to scientists for some time, but the pandemic has made the matter more urgent. The physical and emotional toll the virus has taken, especially in urban areas with little green space, has galvanized doctors, researchers and others to tap into nature’s therapeutic effects. Spending time in the woods—a practice the Japanese call “forest bathing”—is strongly linked to lower blood pressure, heart rate and stress hormones and decreased anxiety, depression and fatigue.

Betsy Morris, For Better Health During the Pandemic, Is Two Hours Outdoors the New 10,000 Steps? Wall Street Journal, 2/14/21

When I walk the fields, I am oppressed now and then with an innate feeling that everything I see has meaning, if I could but understand it. And this feeling of being surrounded with truths I cannot grasp amounts to indescribable awe sometimes.

Charles Kingsley, William James, Varieties of Religious Experiences, p. 385

I believe the basic, primal, foundational religious intuition is a moment of awe and wonder. We say, “God, that’s beautiful!” Why do we so often say “God!” when we have such moments? I think it’s a recognition that this is a godly moment. When awe and wonder are absent from our life, we build our religion on laws and rituals, trying to manufacture some moment of awe.

I think people who live their lives open to awe and wonder have a much greater chance of meeting the Holy than someone who just goes to church but doesn’t live in an open way. I see people come to church day after day unprepared for anything new or different. Even if something new or different happens, they fit it into their old boxes. Their stance seems to be, “I will not be awestruck.” I don’t think we get very far with that kind of resistance to the new, the Real, and the amazing. That’s probably why God allows most of our great relationships to begin with a kind of infatuation with another person—and I don’t just mean sexual infatuation, but a deep admiration or appreciation. It allows us to take our place as a student and learner. If we never do that, nothing new is going to happen.

The Western mind almost refuses to be in awe anymore. It’s only aware of what is wrong, and seemingly incapable of rejoicing in what is still good and true and beautiful. The only way out is through a new imagination and new cosmology, created by positive God-experience. Education, problem-solving, and rigid ideology are all finally inadequate by themselves to create cosmic hope and meaning. Healthy religion gives us a foundational sense of awe. It re-enchants an otherwise empty universe. It gives people a universal reverence toward all things. Only with such reverence do we find confidence and coherence. Only then does the world become a safe home. Then we can see the reflection of the divine image in the human, in the animal, in the entire natural world—which has now become inherently “supernatural.” 

When we are in awe, there are no deeds to be done or words to be said; it is a simple, ecstatic surrender.

Richard Rohr, “The Practice of Awe and Wonder,” in Another Name for Every Thing, season 3, ep. 10, podcast, MP3 audio.