Blog 552 – 02.21.2017

A Life With Awe

Awe is defined as a feeling of amazement brought on by something that is beautiful or sacred. I am not much for anagrams but a familiar one might be a good three word definition for an awe moment, an OMG or Oh My God moment. Amazing beauty or sacred encounters might be thought rare but they are not. A friend sent me a link to the group Alabama singing Angels Among Us. Beauty and Angels are all around us, even in us.

One has only to open their eyes to behold beauty, to see angels, to be over come by awe. So much has been seen of the beauty in nature, a sunrise or set, mountains, trees, rivers, lakes, and the sea but even the city with its gray concrete can still be a place of constant awe because of people. We have this treasure, this awe, in earthen vessels. We carry it with us wherever we go.

Should it surprise us that from time to time that we might be mistaken for an angel or God himself? We are after all as it has been written, “As he was in this world,” both God and Man, having a divine nature but also an earthly one. That alone is awe inspiring enough. If someone was having a terrible nightmare would it not be the loving, the Christian, the Muslim, the Jewish, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Taoist, the brotherly or sisterly, the etc. thing to do, to gently awaken them from that terrifying dream?

I recently watched again a favorite movie of mine that I have watched so many times that like the Bible I have much of the dialogue memorized. The movie is “What Dreams May Come.” It is the story of two people who have found an awe inspiring connection in one another. I am skeptical and at the same time a sucker for a great love story. They have two beautiful children  a boy and a girl who are tragically killed in a traffic accident while the housekeeper was driving the young teens to school. The man and his wife are devastated, she so much that she is institutionalized and angry at him for not going crazy with her. Finally in what might be his last visit he says to her that if she won’t talk to him and try to get well he will divorce her. The shock of maybe losing all she has left is enough to make her want to try and she does. They call that day for the years they have left together their double d anniversary for “Decision and Divorce.” Some years later just before their double d anniversary the husband is also taken from her in an awful automobile accident. He wakes up in heaven and is just learning the ropes when news comes that his wife has committed suicide. He is happy at first to hear the report because he thinks he’ll see her soon but is told suicides go to a hell of their own making trapped by their own guilt to relive a terrible nightmare over and over again in their mind and that there is no hope of rescuing them. The husband refuses to believe that and goes after her. It is a wonderful story, a great love story. It reminds me of another story of a husband who left heaven to come to earth, a hellish world of guilt and horrible illusions, to awaken, to rescue his bride from a horrific nightmare. That story has been written and rewritten countless times. God by a thousand names is the husband and we individually and collectively are the bride. It is the Great Love Story, the awe inspiring story, where the bride is gently awakened from her terrible nightmare, by the handsome and loving prince, who against all odds refuses to believe she is dead and lost to him.  Poets have written many songs about that love story. Two of my favorite quotes from those songs are: “Oh Love that will not let me go, I rest my soul in thee.” And a much more contemporary one, “But God said I love him, and I won’t let him go. Then a shadow on that hillside appeared. Oh, I thank God for that small lonely hill.”

I believe that every awe inspiring event or person is a glimpse of God in all his or her many forms. Some talk mostly about the big six emotions, happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust and surprise. They think the biggest and best one rare and hard to find or to achieve. They call it elation, extasy, rapture. I call it awe, love, God and it is all around us, and in us.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White