Spiritus Monday: Radical Awe

Self-identifying as a child of God unscrolls several lines of thinking that are helpful to my sense of self and my connection to the larger world beyond the domain of my face in the mirror.

To view myself as a child—in the sense of a certain smallness physically and of a limited understanding cosmically—provides a good dollop of humility. Basically stated, I am so small and God’s creation is so vast—deeply humbling.

Of course, there is the longstanding idea setting God in place as a fatherly figure and the human race safely in the basket of all God’s children, but it’s a child’s response to the world that most resonates with me.

Most anyone who has been around preverbal children has seen their facial reactions to new experiences—birthday candles, puppy licking at their faces, a sudden boom or pop that startles them. They are unable to articulate through words what they are feeling, but clearly they are moved.

This ability to respond may encompass small children standing rapt before waves crashing onshore, geese splashing in a small pond, or a large adult looming before them. I venture to say they are in awe in the moment.

Surely, children in such circumstances may shout or shriek or gasp, which is not so very far from we adults, who in a moment fairly described as awestruck, may call up nothing more than a Wow from our more sophisticated vocabularies.

I have known many such moments. I hope you have as well.

Rightfully, now, you may be thinking back to the title of this little piece of my mind. Nothing so very radical in the idea of being so stunned by a scene or event before us that we are dumbstruck in wonder.

Well, should you be thinking of the deep blue of the Caribbean or the mighty chasm that is the Grand Canyon or the terrible solemnity of a funeral, I am with you. But I have in mind smaller items on this particular agenda.

Restudy your right or left hand, unfold a half-opened rose, or watch a young deer stumbling to its feet.

An AAA battery, a coffee grinder, or a daisy. A pencil and a piece of paper.

Imagine a point of view where all you behold amazes you as if you were a child just coming along into this world. How extraordinary, how enthralling, indeed how miraculous life would seem. To live in radical awe of all things.