Could it be that our encounter with beauty is truly the place where all spiritual belief begins? Maybe awe is the beginning of all real belief. –Sam Jolman
One evening not too long ago I was making dinner. It was an ordinary weekday evening. The kids were off doing something in another part of the house. I was making a Bolognese sauce. The garlic was sizzling in the drizzle of olive oil on the stove, filling the room with its warm, spicy fragrance. Nessum Dorma was playing over the bluetooth, the flawless blend of tenors creating the evening’s soundtrack. I was cutting thick slices of crusty bread, the crumbs falling in little piles on the wooden cutting board. I paused to take a sip of the Pinot Noir I had poured, savoring the taste of black pepper, cranberry, and an earthy flavor on my tongue. I closed my eyes, surprised by emotion.
I was suddenly I was overcome with the sheer alive-ness of the moment. It was as if the world had stopped momentarily and nothing else existed except what I was feeling.
A few weeks later, I was out for a late afternoon run. I was running west, facing the mountains. The late afternoon sun was warming my face. I was coming down a hill near our house where for a small section, there is a completely unobstructed view of the Pikes Peak. I could see the whole huge mountain in minute detail. The music was playing in my Bose earbuds, weirdly, Nessum Dorma again. (Don’t ask me why I was listening to Italian opera while I was running, but I was.) My body felt strong, every muscle feeling fully alive. In that moment, looking at the majesty of the mountain in front of me, hearing the harmonies of the world’s best tenors, feeling the sun on my skin, both warm and tingly with sweat cooling in an almost imperceptible breeze, I again felt completely overcome.
I stopped running, just to fully feel the moment.
I didn’t have a word for those experiences then, but I do now. It was awe.
As our pastor, Jonathan, defined it last week, awe is an experience of truth that cannot be put into words.
The human heart was created for awe.
Hearing that for the first time in my life, I felt SO known.
I have felt awe my whole life.
At various times throughout my life people have described it as enthusiasm or excitement or even being overly dramatic.
I remember as a child, things were always “the best.” This is THE BEST piece of cake I’ve ever eaten. This is THE BEST song I’ve ever heard. I had THE BEST day. This is my BEST friend. I had a lot of bests. I got a lot of eye rolls and was often written off as someone who liked to exaggerate. As I grew up, I learned to dilute that child-like wonder, toning down my descriptions to a more reasonable, nuanced, adult-like view of the world.
Everything can’t always be the best, right? That’s not real life.
Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology and one of the foremost experts on the science of emotions. He says that “awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” Dan Allender says it this way … awe is “being afraid of something that we are simultaneously drawn to.”
Not being able to put it into words. Transcends my current understanding of the world. Both afraid of and drawn to it. This is exactly the emotion I’ve most naturally expressed my whole life, but never, ever understood. It’s something that’s bigger than myself, which I can’t explain, but that I feel in the deepest part of me.
Awe. The word is awe.
A few years ago I was having coffee with a friend, and she said something to me that I will never, ever forget. She suggested that maybe the way I experience connection with God is through my senses. Until she said this, I didn’t even know that was a way one could experience connection with God.
When she said that, it was as if I suddenly saw myself in a mirror for the first time in my life.
I am learning in grad school about how our bodies are capable of knowing things before our minds even comprehend them. Do you ever get a tightness in your throat or a pit in your stomach after hearing bad news? Do your shoulders tense up when you’re stressed? Does you get butterflies or mouth get dry when you’re nervous? Do you get a stomachache after a fight? Your body is trying to tell you something.
It’s wild, isn’t it?
The way our nervous system is built, our bodies are our first indicator of our emotions, and if we learn to listen to them and understand what they are telling us, we can become experts at interpreting them.
It’s awesome.
So I am learning how to listen to what my body has to tell me about my feelings. I am learning how my body can, in certain moments, bring me face to face with my Creator.
I am learning how to daily cultivate and celebrate and savor the moments of awe in my life.
Where do you find awe?
These Words of Mine 
Dear Becky,
This blog incited awe in my innermost soul! It bears witness to how I also connect with God through childlike wonder and wild, unleashed emotions like thunder! A co-worker once knocked on the office wall and said, “Robyn loves everything, even this wall.” I knew it was a dig. I knew that person could not understand my awe over people, places, and things.
Life has always been stunning. My mom and grandmother taught me to discern the silver lining in every sad and fearful cloud. Joni Mitchell captured the poet child’s heart in “Both Sides Now”:
“Rows and floes of angel hair, and ice cream castles in the air, and feather canyons everywhere, I’ve looked at clouds that way…”
Keep writing!
Robyn