Lenten Journey: Emotional Exploration – Awe

After reflecting on Anger and Grief, I really do want to shift gears and look at Awe. Awe connects with inspiration and inspiration offers us courage.

Awe is also connected to mindfulness. I looked on one of the emotional wheels and found Awe connected to Surprise and I get that. But I think Awe is also something you experience because you were open to it, mindful of the possibility of awe, and willing to keep your eyes open to it. So, Mindfulness is an important part of Awe even if there is an element of surprise.

I have had the great fortune to have some awe-filled experiences. Nature certainly has provided more than its share. Growing up in Ohio, we don’t have any great mountains but there are other ways to experience Awe in nature. I recall driving back from Athens, Ohio one autumn morning. I had spent the weekend there celebrating Halloween at Ohio University. As I drove the state highway northwest toward Columbus, I looked into my rearview mirror and saw the changing colors of the leaves - reds, oranges, yellows – caught by the sunlight as the sun was getting higher in the early autumn morning sky. The hills looked like they were on fire!

I also recall driving back from Vincennes, Indiana as a summer storm grew from some slightly heavy looking clouds to enormous thunderheads by the time I reached Columbus. I must have been travelling relatively closely to the speed of the storm because I was watching the same clouds billowing and growing for most of the five hour drive.

I have hiked several 14,000 foot peaks here in Colorado and the views from the top of the highest peak around you in the middle of the Rockies are indescribable. I also recall the shear amazement of hiking on a glacier in the middle of July when I was living in California during the summer of 1987.

When it comes to nature, I have had some awesome experiences. But one of my favorite wasn’t purely Mother Nature although she certainly had a hand in it. I was traveling from Denver to Oberlin and decided to stop for the night in Davenport, Iowa. There’s a baseball team there called the Tri-City Bandits so it was a perfect place for me. I checked into my hotel room and made my way to the baseball stadium expecting to have a nice summer evening watching a minor league baseball game. I got to my seat behind home plate and looked out toward centerfield and THERE, just beyond the centerfield fence, was the Mississippi River stretching about as widely as it probably is anywhere along its length. The river is so wide and smoothly rolling by that it looks more like a grand lake than a river. Beautiful.

Awe isn’t just present in nature. Awe is present in life. Of course, holding each of my children right after they were born was an awe-filled experience but I’d like to go back a couple decades to a birth experience where I wasn’t even a family member. I was invited to go to the hospital with my girlfriend at the time. I believe the mother was her cousin. (In hindsight, I give the mother a lot of credit for allowing so many people in the room just a day after she had been in labor.) As I looked around the room, I could swear that I could see the rays of connection moving from all the various family members to this baby. Ever since this experience, I have referred to babies as Love Magnets. I don’t know what other dynamics might have been going on in that family but there was nothing but love coming to and from that baby.

When I think about my RESPONSE to Awe, it is clearly gratitude and appreciation. But more than anything else, my response to Awe is a proactive one. Being present to nature, to connections, to life starts with being Mindful, being awake and aware for the possibilities that Awe may happen at any moment. To that end, when I pray, I always include thanks for all of the blessing and miracles in our lives, both seen and unseen. Some miracles happen whether we notice them or not. But I’m enjoying my life all the more because I try to be as mindful as possible with my eyes wide open for the possibility of another awe-filled moment.

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You are welcome to take this journey in solitude in your own personal journal or share your reflections. If anything that you do makes you think you might want to continue a journey using Spiritual Direction, now or in the future, you can make an appointment with me through my website: 

www.RedRocksSDC.com 

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