I want to talk about awe today.
Not awe as a feeling,
But awe as a kind of awakening.
I think this kind of awe quiets the small self.
Even if it only lasts for a few seconds,
Awe can remind us that our worries are not the whole story.
Our plans are not the whole story.
Our interrupted plans and distractions are not the whole story.
The little world that we try to manage and keep together is not the whole story.
There's something larger here.
Something so big and vast that it cannot be adequately named.
And for a moment,
When we're in awe or we're awestruck,
We stop feeling like we have to be at the center of everything.
Or maybe we realize that we never were.
And maybe the center is not one place,
Maybe it's everywhere.
One of those moments happened when I was 16.
I had the incredible privilege of taking an outdoor education course through my high school.
I was in 10th grade.
The course lasted a whole year,
And it was one of the best experiences of my life.
I'm so glad I got to take this course,
And I'm still grateful to this day for the teachers when I think of what they had to do to put this course together and wrangle all of us 10th graders.
It still amazes me.
I'm still very grateful for that.
We learned how to cross-country ski.
We went hiking and we learned to rock climb.
And we just really went on some incredible trips.
And one of those incredible trips was up to,
There's a hut or a cabin and a place called Diamond Head that's near Squamish,
British Columbia.
And it's pretty remote.
You can't just drive up there,
Especially during the winter,
You have to ski or snowshoe.
On this particular night and this particular time,
Because of the location and what you had to do to get there,
There was a real feeling of adventure.
And on the night that I'm thinking about,
There was a clear sky and a full moon.
And a few of us decided to go out and ski for a little while.
And I can still picture it,
The cold air.
The snow and the silence that happens when there's a lot of snow around.
There was that too.
And then on top of that,
From a safe distance,
I saw an avalanche.
And it was far enough away,
Like I said,
That we were safe,
But close enough that I could see it.
And something really happened in me.
I was already blown away by the setting.
But when I saw the avalanche,
This feeling rose up in me that I can only describe as awe.
And it wasn't just the kind of awe that,
You know,
Like,
This is beautiful.
It was bigger than that.
It was a full body experience.
In the truest sense of the word,
I was awestruck.
Looking back,
I think what touched me that night was aliveness.
It was life.
It was something really full and alive.
It was a moment of connection with something greater and much larger than myself.
And I think because of the feeling,
The way it.
.
.
Impacted my body too.
I wasn't separate from it.
It was going on inside me,
Not just outside of me.
And maybe that's one of the gifts of awe.
Is that it opens us,
It wakes us up to the sacredness and the vastness of what's already here.
It's like tearing down a curtain or a veil.
And I think that matters because so much of life can narrow our perspective and make us live in our lizard brains,
As it's called.
We start to live in the tyranny of the urgent and loose sight of the universe and our tiny place in it.
You know,
For example,
And I know you're familiar with all of these,
But we get caught in stress,
In worries,
In planning.
Not that there's anything wrong with planning,
But we get caught up in our plans and hoping that they go a certain way.
There's screens and deadlines and disappointments and our endless need to be productive,
Impressive,
Or okay.
It's quite a list,
But I think maybe I experienced all of those today,
To be honest.
And when I'm in that place,
My world gets very small.
And ah interrupts that.
Ah is a pattern interrupter.
And we need those every once in a while.
Doesn't erase the hard things going on in our lives but it changes the size of things if you notice that it ah Have you noticed that awe gives us perspective?
And I want to be careful here because I had a literal mountaintop experience,
And that's not our day-to-day experience,
Is it?
And I'm not saying that you need to have a dramatic mountaintop experience.
And I'm not saying awe has to come through something big or spectacular.
But I do think even a small dose of awe can help us.
A microdose,
If you will.
Because awe provides us with connection.
And we need connection.
And maybe even connection isn't quite deep enough a word.
Connection can make it sound like we're all separate beings trying to reach across some distance and link ourselves to something else.
But in moments of awe,
Something deeper is revealed.
For a moment,
It can feel like the distance was never there in the first place.
Like maybe we were never as separate as we imagined and that we are already held inside one living reality.
And in those moments,
Separation starts to soften.
You might even say it goes away.
Of course,
It comes back,
But in those moments,
Something happens.
The mountain doesn't feel like it's over there,
And I don't feel like I'm completely over here.
The moon,
The snow,
The breath in my lungs,
The person beside me,
And the stranger across the street,
All of it begins to feel connected and together.
When awe opens us up,
It does something to us.
Because if everything is alive with sacred presence,
Then awe isn't just a feeling I get to enjoy.
It becomes a way of living.
And if awe really opens us to the sacredness of life,
Then it has to change the way we move through the world.
It becomes harder to be careless with people.
Harder to treat the earth like it's something just to use up or like our trash can It becomes harder to look at another person and reduce them to their opinion,
Their politics,
Their pain,
Or the way that they inconvenience us.
Awe softens all of this in us.
It reminds us that everything we meet is part of this one living reality.
And if that's true,
Then wonder isn't something we feel.
It's something we practice in the way we love,
Listen,
Notice,
And respond.
Invites more from us,
Like kindness and generosity,
Humility and compassion.
Because the point is not just to have beautiful spiritual moments and then move on.
The point,
At least for me,
Is to let those moments change how I live.
But I also know how easy it is to forget.
I kind of alluded to that earlier that I've forgotten a lot of times today.
I can rush through a whole day and barely see it.
I remember visiting some young friends once,
And they had a baby in their arms and a toddler at their feet.
And the toddler was crouched down,
Completely absorbed,
Watching an ant crawl along the pavement.
You've probably seen a child do something like that.
But for some reason,
It really hit me.
He was just so present and curious,
Completely engaged.
And I remember thinking,
I want to be more like that.
We can go outside.
I was doing that as I dictated this.
I was sitting in front of my computer for a couple hours working on this reflection and I just felt like I need to go outside.
And I was instantly in awe.
I saw a dogwood tree that had pink petals for flowers.
I've never seen that before.
It was so gorgeous.
I saw water sitting on top of leaves.
It's been raining off and on all day today.
I noticed the veins in some of the tree leaves.
And as I was dictating,
I saw the light shining through the bottom of some leaves.
And sorry for being a little didactic or preachy here,
But I just want to suggest that if your awe tank is a little low,
You could go outside.
So as you return to your day,
Maybe ask yourself this question once in a while,
How can I be open to the ordinary?
And maybe today,
Somewhere in the ordinary,
Awe will find you.
Or maybe you'll become available enough to notice that it has been here all along.
Thanks for joining me.
I hope this has been helpful.
And take good care.
