Post-Its, Dinner Tables, and the Search for Awe
Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash
Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash
The table is set, ready for dinner.
In the stay-at-home season that is COVID-19, we like many others are eating all of our meals at home. As a family, we’ve always had a high value for eating together. Now without the option of eating out, our table is carrying a great deal more weight.
During one of our walks, my wife and I discussed how easy it is in this pandemic to be overcome. The weight of unemployment numbers, financial projections, and the stories of health workers crash like tidal waves on our souls.
It is difficult to stand under the weight of it all.
So, Holley came up with an idea. Each night as we sat down to dinner we would talk about one thing from the day that brought us joy or hope, or something that was beautiful. Each of us responds and we write down those responses on a small card.
We have a jar in our kitchen for memories that make us smile. Every year we keep a jar, a pen, and a stack of lined post-its on the kitchen counter. As the year progresses, we jot down moments and happenings that bring a smile to our faces. Then on New Year’s we open the jar and read the past year’s moments.
This year will be quite different. The jar will contain moments from the days before COVID-19, the days during, and the days after.
Yes, this New Year the post-its will read quite differently.
Dinner is now a time for us to dig deep into our memories. In the midst of e-learning, working from home, and navigating the existential question “Do I really need to go to the grocery store yet?”, we find moments of beauty. Moments of joy. Moments of hope.
And we write them down.
The whole exercise is a process in fueling something deeper in our spirits. Pandemic or no pandemic, the practices of recognizing beauty and hope begs us to notice one of our soul’s most significant needs. One word. One simple, beautiful, lost word.
We desperately need awe.
Beauty, joy, and hope are in and of themselves transcendent things. They go beyond the mundane little acts of life, and more than that they include what we would see as mundane in their grand sweep.
In other words, within nature the movement from winter to spring is the movement from death to life. Dormancy gives way to the heat and green of life coming forth. To truly step back and drink in that reality is significant – it lifts us and invigorates us.
In a sense, it is a bittersweet blessing that the pandemic came in spring. To be sequestered by snow and ice as well as a contagious virus would be far heavier.
Spring is an announcement of resurrection. To some, that is.
To others, spring is a tedious time because the weeds will need to be tended. The grass will beg for a cut on a weekly basis, or it will die in the heat leaving an obnoxious brown carpet behind. I know some are wrestling with family members, friends, and co-workers at the mercy of this virus. Or, the battle is with possible economic shortcomings and catastrophe.
To be sure: Spring may feel like resurrection to some, but others can only see the burden. Whether they choose it or not.
What makes the difference?
The difference is the concept of awe. While not the dictionary definition, “awe” is what happens when we release our stoicism and allow ourselves to be carried along by a beauty and reality far beyond our understanding.
Awe is the glimpse of spring’s power over and above spring’s demands.
To embrace “awe” is to see that there are things in nature that defy our common understandings of life and reality. Things that lift our eyes up and away. Yes, that’s true but then they return to the world in which we live.
Return, yes, but return differently.
In the book How to Disappear, Akiko Busch cites a study in which a group of people were divided into two. One group was asked to spend time in a forest of redwoods, the other was tasked with examining a large skyscraper.
While the Willis Tower or the Empire State building are imposing and may even inspire a level of awe, to be among the redwoods of California is to be overwhelmed by the power and potential of Divine sculpture.
Busch reports that in the study those who spent time with the redwoods felt a greater sense of awe, but they also reported feeling less entitled, less self-centered and more generous. Researcher Paul K. Piff then comments,
“In the great balancing act of our social lives, between the gratification of self-interest and a concern for others, fleeting experiences of awe redefine the self in terms of the collective, and orient our actions toward the needs of those around us.” (193, emphasis mine)
The awe that leads us to see beauty in spring, hope and joy in the midst of pandemic, and the awe that descends when we are among the giants of creation – that awe is what all of our souls needs right now. More than anything, we realize that there is a grand and sweeping narrative at work in humanity.
There is a great pain and potential for devastation, but there is also the awe that helps us realize people will stay healthy if I just stay home.
The awe comes when God’s beauty cracks through the seemingly impenetrable wall of the 24-hour news cycles. Awe becomes the beauty that draws us towards each other, even as we stay in our own homes.
Awe emerges from slumber, wiping the crust from our eyes when we see that even though the economy is teetering on the edge of a precipice, we are invited to “Be still and know…” (Psalm 46:10)
To know awe is to know the story of this Passion Week.
To move into new life means that things will, by nature, die. That is what created things do. But awe comes when they don’t stay in the grave.
When our fears are laid to rest, and hope rises from the ash.
When our work meets an untimely and unwanted end, but a new vocation comes to light.
When all the plans we made bear the last shovel full of grave dirt, but a single green shoot defiantly pops up.
That is the awe our thirsty souls need. The awe of resurrection, remaining, and redwoods.
And we need this awe not so that we can believe things are fine even when they aren’t. Awe is not a pretense for pretending that this battle is blown out of proportion or some sort of deep government conspiracy.
We need awe so that we may be “awe-bearers” to those around us. Or don’t we know that we are children of light and song? God has extended awe to us to remind us of the Great Economy in which we live.
The awe is the raw material to which we bear witness; in every action, reaction, and reflection.
So, at our dinner table each evening we cobble together our moments of awe:
Seeing the sunrise over the houses next door…
First buds on the trees…
The bark of our favorite dog across the street…
The smell of spring coming in force through the winter wind…
Awe. Awe. Awe.
We need awe because our souls need a reminder that the smallness of disease is swallowed in the largeness of new creation, resurrection, and the community of God-haunted humanity in which we live.
May you remember that, above all things, you are invited to drink deep of Divine awe. Then, wiping the excess from your chin, you bring news to other thirsty souls. Awe is alive and waiting.