Simply Deep: awe
Simply Deep. A short reflective piece for Arise Blog with something simple yet full of possible complexities.
“cultivate the capacity to marvel”
Take a moment to close your eyes and notice what appears in your imagination.
What is captivating you ?
los poblanos open space, new mexico
Yesterday just before sunset, a friend and I took a walk out in the open fields in an area of town known as the Los Poblanos Open Space. The fields are swarmed this time of year with flocks of Canadian geese, sandhill cranes, and what seem to be swallows. The birds alone are a spectacle to watch and listen to as they circle the skies and land in bundles on the grassy open fields once growing wheat or corn. This time of year when the sun begins going down you can be surprisingly captivated by the color scheme of reds, pinks, and oranges set against the deep blue of the southwest sky. On this walk, we were stopped in our tracks, as the sunset was calling us to stand in wonder and awe of the incredible beauty radiating all around us. The Sandia Mountains glistening with pinks— no wonder the name means “watermelon” both its shape and more so the sun blazing on its granite and making “watermelon pinks” beam.
The natural surroundings called out “Yes!” “Cultivate the capacity to awe. Marvel dear friends.”
awe
—'‘an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc.,
produced by
that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like”
Awe and Wonder were often paired words when I was teaching in the classical school within my local community. I felt a loving exhortation and was drawn to making this connection each day I walked into my classroom. It was exciting to spend the day with my students (always a loving bunch of lively 2nd graders) and to get to point out the beauty, brilliance, and awe of any subject or play outside. And sometimes, a glance out the wintery windows when surprised by snowflakes falling from the sky. I would hear “Awe” “Look, look, it’s snowing!”
Awhile back I recieved this book as a gift from my children knowing how much I enjoy and cultivate walking into my weekly routine. I have loved this book and it’s invitations to walk differently. It can be read in order of its layout of 52 weeks in a year or discovered by its themes. I have chosen the latter by following my mind and body’s need for themes, and one has been the call to cultivate “awe and wonder” with intention during walks.
52 Ways to Walk by Annabel Streets, offers a variety of ways to walk within each chapter. In a glance over the table of contents, my eyes landed on Week 44: Seek Out the Sublime. Without even beginning to read, I was already taken with awe and wonder. When opened, I quickly found my inner voice saying, “Yes, it’s time to begin this again.”
Awe and Wonder are one of the gifts of our minds that God connects to our physical bodies. He chose “walking”—a simple movement we all can do even if we are weak in our legs. We can be partly carried by a crutch or a friend can come alongside to help us be stable enough to walk. In our modern times, we have strollers, walkers, and even wheel chairs that lighten or even bear our burden of this physical movement, for those needing assistance. The simply deep is that we can no matter where we are “seek out the sublime” way of walking.
God gave us the simple and natural stride of walking— a kind exercise to get us outside and to see His creations: sky and clouds, trees and cacti, flora and fauna (flowers and animals), sand and rocks, light and shadows, radiant sunsets or the morning’s dawn, and so much more.
You can name and describe your own surroundings.
Pause for a moment, go outside and see where you are.
Breath in some fresh air.
In 52 Ways to Walk, Annabel Streets gives a most encouraging exploration into sublime walking and awe; a neuroscience reality. Her writing on this topic is fascinating. Awe is offered; it is proven by experienced research to reveal amazing findings, though I imagine not surprising, a connection with AWE to our emotional health. This connection happens all through the simple exercise of a sublime walk.
Here are some of these findings:
*
—Psychologist Michelle Shiota, noticed that “awe wasn’t signaled by smiling but by mild expressions of shock—widened eyes, raised eyebrows, dropped jaws. She noticed that awe-inducing scenes changed the brains of observers.” (182)
“She found those who felt awe subsequently demonstrated stronger analytical skills and more rigorous thought processes. Other researchers reported: being exposed to AWE was linked to better cognitive processing.” (182)
*
—”Professor Melanie Rudd argued that awe expands our sense of time, enabling us to better focus our attention. When exposing individuals to awe, she noted that they felt less time-pressured, less impatient, than their non-awed counterparts.” (183)
*
—Another researcher in psychology, Dacher Keltner noted that “his experiments showed that exposure to awe-inducing scenes engendered greater feelings of humility, curiosity, happiness, and altruism. He also found that awe facilitated feelings of belonging, making participants feel more emotionally connected to one another and better able to deal with uncertainty.” (184)
*
—“Wonder more than any other positive emotion, appeared to improve physical well-being, according to Dr Jennifer Stellar. She wrote in her report, “Awe, was the strongest predictor of lower levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines.” (184)
The effects of awe-guided walks
cumulatively suggest
that “the more we seek out awe while walking,
the greater our potential of well-being” (184)
I Wonder if this is why Jesus and his disciples spent more time walking outside than inside… (you are free to fill in the rest of the statement)
“Anyone can cultivate the capacity to marvel.”
—Annabel Streets
Interested in reading more, enjoy 52 Ways to Walk by Annabel Streets
