Religion begins with the sense of the ineffable,
with the awareness of a reality that discredits our wisdom,
that shatters our concepts. It is the ineffable
with which we must begin. ~ Abraham Heschel

One reason I was drawn to Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s work and vision is that he understands the intimate and dynamic relationship between wonder and compassion. Concerned adults, loving parents, big-hearted grandparents, if we want our children and grandchildren and their children to become persons of integrity, loving-kindness, and compassion, we must first help them to cultivate lives of wonder and awe. We must lead by example. If you have not yet fallen in love with this resplendent planet from the tiniest dew-beaded twig to the splendor of the Grand Tetons, if your heart has not been broken open by the unspeakable sublimity of a piece of music, say, Karl Jenkin’s Benedictus or the melancholic yearning of Edgar Meyer’s Short Trip Home or the Lent-busting delirium of a slice of cheesecake or the swirling, dervish-like murmurations of a flock of starlings, drop everything. Seriously, before it’s too late. Allow creation in all its intricate and ecstatic forms to woo you, wow you, and move you.

Becoming human involves becoming soft-hearted enough to be moved. The geography within us where we are most deeply moved is the place where wonder and compassion meet like the proverbial lovers running on the beach toward one another and the embrace that makes them know they are truly alive. Not to be moved is to betray one’s humanity. It is to merely exist and take up space, not to be alive and be grateful for the grace of it all.

It is hard, if not impossible, to love something or someone in whom we do not yet take delight. Dorothy Day wrote of “the duty to delight” by which I think she meant the obligation to be human, let alone holy. Let our daily, spiritual practice be—to be undone at least once or twice each day by the sheer, ridiculous glory of being itself, by the delicious mystery of another person—your daughter or husband or beautician or mechanic. Let us learn to see—before it is too late—with the eyes of one about to die who suddenly realizes that there is no one and nothing that is unworthy of our complete attention or deep sympathy or unself-conscious rhapsody or God-given capacity to ooh and aah.

Given Heschel’s ancestral inheritance of Hasidism and his early years steeped in Torah and Talmud, it is not surprising that he places so great an emphasis on awe. So significant is awe that Heschel claims it, not faith, is “the cardinal attitude of the religious Jew.” Awe, not belief, is the more compatible biblical synonym for religion. Let that sink in. In Judaism, the person of faith is not so much a believer, as a yare hashem, one who is in awe of God. Awe is the deepest bow to God and what engenders praise.

As a Christian, Judaism is my mother religion. That awe—not belief—is the first, deepest, and most enduring response to the Ineffable One whose presence is intimated in and alluded to by the mystery and grandeur of creation, resonates deeply within me as true. Imagine how many wars in the history of humanity would not have been deemed necessary or waged or fought or legitimated if wonder, delight, awe, and radical amazement were universally understood as emblematic of authentic religion and spirituality.

Something tells me that when two awe-filled people meet in the presence of the other who they recognize as the imago Dei, they don’t end up arguing whose experience of awe or radical amazement is better or bigger or irrefutably right. They don’t end up killing one another because they are certain—always certain—their wonder and delight are inerrant and true while the awe and reverence of the other—who now has gone from being an image of God to being an enemy—are false, wrong, and make them an abomination deserving of death.

Too many “believers” allow their beliefs to justify them drawing lines in the sand—we’re in, you’re out, we’re right, you’re wrong, we’re saved, you’re damned—while those cultivating and practicing lives of awe are busy taking delight with their children or granschildren as they build enchanting sandcastles or are compassionately busy taking stock of how many children for whom life is not a beach.

© Dan Miller, 2022. All Rights Reserved.

If you enjoyed this reflection you might also like “Puddle Don’t Piddle.”

ARTWORK: Sun Dancer, Dan Miller.

EXTRA CREDIT

The Sun

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

From New and Selected Poems by Mary Olver

♣ GOODPEOPLE ♣ HOW ABOUT YOU? ARE YOU INTERESTED IN SPIRITUAL DIRECTION ONLINE? Would you benefit from having a trustworthy companion to listen with you to your yearnings, hopes, struggles, burning questions? Someone who will pay attention with you to your quiet desire to cultivate a life of spiritual depth and meaning as well as to the One from whom all wonder, joy, and blessings flow? I am offering spiritual direction online. If you, or someone you know, are interested in beginning or returning to spiritual guidance CLICK HERE where you will find both practical information and explanations of spiritual direction. I’d be honored to hear and hold your unfolding story.