That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality – your soul, if you will – is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Theresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.
– George Saunders
A generation or three ago, the word “awesome” meant something like “that which inspires awe.” That definition began to shift when, thanks to our culture’s curious need to have as many superlatives as possible, “awesome,” along with “fantastic” and “incredible,” got drawn into the gravitational field of the word “excellent.” Today, all four words are more or less synonyms.
Now, I am mostly at peace with the reality that English is a living and evolving language. I don’t get too worked up about the distinction between “can” and “may;” I’m OK with folks saying “literally” when another era’s dictionary would insist that they say “figuratively.” But I’d like to make the case for resuscitating the former meaning of “awesome.” I believe we need a word that gives name to the experience of deep wonder, of awe.
I was reminded of what old-school awesomeness can be like a couple of weeks ago when my parish held its annual Family Camp in Vernonia, Oregon. Vernonia is quintessential small-town Pacific Northwest: the trees are bountiful, the deer are close at hand, the sound of running water is all around. And when the sun goes down, the darkness is complete.
Because of Vernonia’s deep and old darkness – a kind of darkness that we all but never experience in an urban context – the stars above it sing in their clarity. There is Cassiopeia and Hercules and Ursa Major. There is the immense majesty of the Milky Way.
Standing beneath Vernonia’s night sky, beneath that massive time machine that transmits light that danced forth from the stars hundreds or even thousands of years ago, I found myself in a familiar place of paradox. I imagine that it is a paradox that you know as well: this is the place in which a human being feels both inconceivably small and yet somehow profoundly loved and profoundly important and profoundly connected with all of creation.
Human beings encounter this paradox of smallness and connectivity not only beneath the stars. We encounter it as well when we witness a birth, when we are present for a death, when we participate in beauty and love and suffering and wonder. This paradox – like everything that touches the numinous, like everything that touches deep reality, like everything that touches mystery, like everything that touches God – is ultimately beyond words.
The word “awesome” might be as close as we can get.
Part of what we try to do in this strange and glorious thing that we call church is to respond to the awesome. Through song and symbol and word and service, through prayer, through simply being together, we try to say yes to that which we meet under the night sky and beside the deathbed and inside the room with the crib.
It doesn’t always work. Sometimes our songs are goofy, our words are halting, our symbols are confused, our efforts to see Christ in our neighbor are awkward or even (God forgive us) destructive.
But sometimes. Sometimes it works perfectly.
On Sunday mornings, I have the privilege of placing the bread – which, somehow, is also Jesus – into people’s hands. Most of us, when we receive that bread, say “Amen.” But there is a parishioner in our community, who when the bread touches her skin, says, “Thank you God for my life.”
I almost gasp out loud every time that I hear those words. They are so beautiful.
I don’t really understand what happens in that moment of giving and receiving at the altar rail. I suppose that I don’t understand what happens in any of those moments when I notice that God is way closer than I usually acknowledge. Indeed, I don’t think you or I can understand. But we can listen, we can say thanks, we can do our best to let the moment open us and change us and make us more generous and loving and free.
In those moments, we can recognize that this life is awesome.
