Simply Deep: awe
Simply Deep. A short reflective piece for Arise Blog with something simple yet full of possible complexities.
“Anyone can cultivate the capacity to marvel.”
—Annabel Streets
Take a moment to close your eyes and notice what appears in your imagination.
What is captivating you ?
mariposa park, Albuquerque
This morning being able to enter-in to one of my walking spaces again brought to surface the healthy need for awe and wonder. The spaces around my neighborhood welcome a variety of moments to pause where both inwardly and outwardly, all the expression overflows with Awe— “God, thank you for this day!” As I walked, the roses and greenery of spring in Albuquerque provided the visual eyes with awe. Along the path, a young gal was also receiving a moment of awe as she watched the mother quail run across the bike path where we were walking. Delight was the inner response to the awe she had just paused to see. I too joined in. Together the outer world spoke gently and refreshingly to our interior.
May your natural surroundings call out and give way to cultivating the capacity to “awe and 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 the invitations to walk differently. It can be read in order of the layout of 52 weeks in a year or be explored by the various 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 the physical body. 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 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 creation of 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.
Pause for a moment, go outside and see where you are.
Breath in some fresh air.
Furthermore within 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)
Interested in reading more, enjoy 52 Ways to Walk by Annabel Streets
