A Reflection in Three Parts
Part One

The heavens are telling the glory of God. ~ Ps. 19:1

The world is charged with the grandeur of God ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

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 transcendence,
for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things.
It enables us to perceive in the world
intimations of the divine, . . .
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. ~ Abraham Heschel

One of the great appreciations I have for Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s work is his assertion that awe, not belief, is the chief characteristic of the authentically religious person. For Heschel, wonder is the inherent human response to mystery. As such, it is the genesis of faith — precognitive, presymbolic, and pretheological. Like two hues in a water-color painting, wonder bleeds into awe so that the transition from the former to the latter is virtually indistinguishable though awe becomes a deeper hue.

Heschel is careful to make the distinction between belief and faith, explaining that in Judaism, the person of faith is not so much a believer, as a yare hashem, that is, one who is in awe of God. For Heschel, faith is activated by human sensitivity to the holy dimension of existence and the responsiveness to the Divine presence inherent and intimated in and through the mystery of transcendent living. Experientially, awe manifests itself when wonder, as a response to mystery, becomes the awareness that mystery is an overture of the Divine. Heschel writes, “It is the ineffable from which we draw the taste of the sacred, the joy of the imperishable.” In this sense, awe is the first expression of worship. Awe as the conscious and intentional participation in the liturgy of life, not faith reduced to belief in propositions, is the inner fire of the homo religiosus.

To be grasped by awe is suddenly to be caught up in the deep mystery of being which is present in that moment and alludes to the ineffable source which animates all of life. As a result, silence is often the first and natural response to what Rudolph Otto called mysterium tremendum et fascinans, that is, that mystery which is both tremendous and alluring. This is the difference between fear and awe and why so often when Bible passages are translated into English as “the fear of the Lord” it would be more accurate to understand it as awe before God (and in response to the numinous quality of all reality). Unlike the fear-inducing event which causes us to shrink or pull away, the awe-inspired experience is fascinating and alluring. Despite being tremendous, it draws us toward and in, making us feel connected, a participant in the interbeing of all reality and not merely an observer. Afterward, with some distance from the experience, the participant often feels humbled without feeling humiliated or diminished.

Whether a lightning storm, an exquisite sunset, the mica-like flashing of summer light on a mountain lake, standing at the foot of a sequoia, gazing up at the starfield splattered across a black night sky, or a bald eagle nobly perched at the top of a tree, nature, as much as anything else, has the capacity to evoke awe, to bear the numinous, and to bring together the immense or extraordinary with the experience of fascination and allurement.

But those who consciously spend time in nature realize that not just the magnificent, the huge, or the overwhelming in the natural world call forth wonder and awe from us. Nature also has the capacity to evoke radical amazement as the fitting response to the sublime as it is manifested in the seemingly unremarkable, the simple, the taken-for-granted, the tiny, and the intricate as well. The blossoming bush no less than the burning bush can evoke wonder, hold us rapt in awe, and allude to the numinous.

to be continued . . .