Awe
Finding Strength for the Journey
I had the privilege of giving the homily this morning at Willow Avenue Mennonite Church in Clovis, CA on Revelation 22:1-2.
On Thursday morning of this week, I woke up to a Facebook feed full of gorgeous brightly colored photos of the aurora from friends all over the country. It was a welcome break from the righteous anger at our current government and lament over hungry neighbors and suffering in Gaza. These things are important, but we also need awe to remind us that we really are small in the grand scheme of the universe. Awe is like a glimpse of heaven present in the here and now, a reminder that this mess we’re in now is not the end, and is not even the biggest thing happening in the universe, though it feels overwhelming to us.
Awe, an often-overlooked emotion in psychology, is having something of a cultural moment right now. A quick google search turned up 10 books with ‘awe’ in the title published in the last five years. One reason for this could be that awe is the ultimate antidote for fear and cynicism, two emotions running rampant in our world ravaged by the continuous wildfires and floods of climate change and the tumultuous political reality currently gripping the US with global effects. Awe invites us into a different kind of reality, immediately present and awake to the vast beauty of the world, even in the midst of tragedy.
Awe doesn’t need epic panoramic views or exotic locations, though those are great places to experience it. Awe is about paying attention to the phenomena of everyday reality—the smell of crushed pine needles underfoot, the beauty of an early winter sunset, the sound of crickets at dusk. Awe is all about paying attention, the moments we choose to focus on.
And what better example than this week’s auroras, which were visible as far south as Alabama and Florida. After failing to see them in the city on Tuesday night, we drove out to the country Wednesday night to try to see the fantastic display, worried that we had missed out. We pulled into the nature center of a state park, bundled up in coats and hats, and stood in a dark field, waiting for our eyes to adjust. At first, I thought we’d missed it. I watched the dark sky for any sign of color. And then suddenly, a pulse of deep pink sprung up between two trees, low on the horizon. Soon there was even more color, red and green lighting up the whole northern sky. We both gasped. It was breathtaking, like a miracle light show playing out in silence above us. We managed to take a few photos that captured even more light than we could see with our own eyes. We drove home in the dark, along country roads, feeling elated despite the lateness of the hour.
Awe is powerful medicine. It gives us a more holistic vision of reality, a reminder of our smallness in a vast universe which is profoundly comforting. It’s also a reminder that this moment of suffering won’t last forever. And it is these same characteristics that we find in the vision of the new earth in these last verses of Revelation.
It’s always hard to talk about hope in the midst of crisis and chaos. I suspect that every generation on earth has felt they might be living in the end times at some point. There is no doubt that at least in the United States, we are enduring a time of large-scale social and political upheaval. And all of this feels really heavy. It’s hard to get up the courage to read or listen to the news each day, because there’s this ominous feeling that nothing good is happening.
And the book of Revelation was written in a similar time of turmoil. Christians were facing pressure to assimilate to the culture of the Roman Empire and abandon their egalitarian and non-violent ideals in favor of nationalism and imperialism. John fights back against these pressures with a creative prophetic imagination, that for all its bizarre visions and symbols, asserts that God is in control and that even though evil appears to be winning, it is God who will be triumphant in the end.
The passage we read this morning comes at the very end of the story arc, the happy-ever-after moment when God comes down to dwell on the earth. It is this vision of a restored earth that the early Christians looked to in times of persecution and threat, when they feared the world had lost its way. And today we look towards this same vision in hope that there will be a time beyond all of this turmoil.
It’s important to note here that hope and optimism aren’t the same thing. Hope has a more eschatological tone to it. Hope is an orientation of the spirit that persists even when we do not feel at all optimistic about the future. Hope is one of the core tenets of our faith, acting as Jesus acted because it’s the right thing to do instead of because we think it will be successful in our lifetime.
One of the places I experience hope and awe is through science fiction. One of the beautiful things about science fiction is that it gives the author the power to imagine what the world might be. Futuristic literature isn’t always rosy. Sometimes the worlds are depicted as dangerous and fallen from any form of stability and justice. But other authors have chosen to set their stories in worlds they want to see come into being.
One such author is Becky Chambers, creator of the Monk and Robot series and the Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet series. If you haven’t already heard of her, Becky Chambers creates beautiful, complicated worlds in which her stories take place. In her Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet series, she introduces the reader to a universe in which humans aren’t the only sentient beings. In fact, humans have very little clout among the more advanced alien species because we ruined our planet and even now have difficulty getting along with our fellow humans. Humans, far from being the center of the universe, are just one small group among many in the Galactic Commons, a federation of species that have been traveling the universe much longer than humans. It is a reminder that though we often think of ourselves as the only beings in the universe, just as people once thought the sun revolved around the earth, we are only one small, unimportant part of the tapestry of cosmic creation.
In the Monk and Robot series, the main character Dex, leaves their comfortable life in a monastery in search of the song of crickets, which are absent in the city where they live. The whole first story is a quest to find awe in the form of crickets. The series as a whole is set on a planet called Panga, where humans have survived what they call the Factory Age and successfully weaned themselves off oil to live in cooperation with the natural world. In this new era, everyone has what they need to thrive. No one hoards wealth, and no one goes hungry. Life isn’t perfect for sure, and humans are still searching for meaning, as the quest of the main character shows, but there is no more capitalism and the extreme inequality that comes with it.
These worlds are a glimpse of what could be, a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. A city with a tree that bears all kinds of fruit, a tree of healing for all nations, and a clean river running through the middle of it, sustaining all of life. We have a long way to go, but these visions, these experiences of awe, propel us forward on the journey.
A few more words in closing about awe.
In an age where we tend to favor cynicism over hope and are constantly bombarded with bad news because that is what gets us to keep clicking, keep reading, keep buying, awe is transformative. It is a powerful force for waking up, for breaking out of this cycle. Awe allows us space to rest up, to restore our souls. Awe gives us strength to keep working for good even when we don’t see any immediate results because we have had a vision of what could be.
So today I invite you to go out into the world in search of awe, in the exuberance of a child watching leaves fall, in the twinkling of stars in a dark late autumn sky, in the gentle gurgle of a stream, or the quiet depth of a fast-moving river. There is much work to be done, much strength to gather for the road ahead of us.