“Project Awe”
Psalm 65, Acts 2:43-46
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
October 16, 2016
A few years ago, a group of us went to a Saturday Matinee to see Inside-Out. In this animated film about an 11-year-old girl, the main characters are personifications of her emotions. Joy, sadness, fear, anger and disgust form a kind of committee inside her head, as they jostle for control and figure out how to work together. The movie is a vivid reminder of the complexity of our emotional lives and the importance of each emotion.
Over pizza after the movie, Janet Sanders asked about the role of faith in that internal committee. Shouldn’t faith be in the mix? We agreed that faith isn’t exactly an emotion. And we agreed there was something important missing.
I thought back to that conversation last Sunday when I read the cover story in Parade Magazine, entitled “Awe,” by reporter Paula Spencer Scott.
It turns out the psychologist who consulted on Inside-Out, Dacher Keltner, had a similar sense that something was missing. Even before the movie came out, he had moved on to the study of a sixth emotion: awe. Keltner defines awe as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast or beyond human scale, that transcends our current understanding of things.” Through his Social Interaction Lab at the University of California in Berkeley, Keltner took on a research project he called “Project Awe.”
The major funding he received reflects a growing awareness amongst psychologists of the importance of awe. One collaborator, Arizona State University professor Michelle Shiota, writes: “Awe was thought of as the Gucci of the emotion world–cool if you have it, but a luxury item. But it’s now thought to be a basic part of being human that we all need.”
The initial results of the project point to four ways awe impacts our lives. The first is that awe brings us together. In fact, Keltner believes that the evolutionary reason for awe is to ensure human survival by prompting us to collaborate. When we face something much larger than ourselves, we realize our need for one another. Scaling a cliff requires teamwork; watching a meteor shower inspires us to reach out to hold someone’s hand.
Second, the research indicates, awe helps us see things in a new way. While fear prompts a primitive fight or flight response, awe slows us down. We stop and notice the rainbow’s colors, and suddenly we see the rain in a new light.
A simple experiment points to the third impact of awe. Researchers had one group of subjects spend a minute gazing at a grove of eucalyptus trees and another group stare at a unadorned building. When a researcher dropped a pen, as though by accident, the tree-gazers were far more likely to reach down to help. Awe, it seems, makes us nicer and more helpful. Another collaborator, social psychologist Paul Piff of UC Irvine puts it in almost Buddhist terms: “Awe causes a kind of Be Here Now that seems to dissolve the self.”
The fourth impact is to our health. Of all the emotions, awe is the one most likely to reduce a kind of inflammation that is connected with illness and depression.
Awe, the scientists tell us, draws us together, gives us fresh perspective, makes us more compassionate, and lifts our spirits.
The Parade article brings me back to the post-matinee question Janet asked about the role of faith in our lives. Awe isn’t exactly the same thing as faith, but it’s intertwined. Faith, and the ways we gather to express it, inspire awe. Awe inspires faith in something beyond ourselves.
Our reading from Acts points to the transformative nature of awe as an expression of faith. The text describes a time filled with signs and wonders–tongues of fire descending on disciples, lepers healed and blind beggars given sight. The early group of believers who witnessed this were living in a state of awe. Suddenly their own needs and desires felt less important, and they paid more attention to each other and to the group. They shared all things in common, helping one another, working together for the greater good. This remarkable moment in the life of the early church points to the upward spiral awe can set in motion: awe inspired the believers to dramatic acts of sharing, which in turn inspired more awe.
In choir this fall, we have ended our rehearsals with snippets of an interview with choral composer John Rutter. “Choral music,” he says, “is not one of life’s frills. It’s something that goes to the very heart of our humanity, our sense of community and our souls.” He put into words what choir members know from our experience. The words we sing, like the ones from today’s anthem, are often expressions of awe. The music reaches climactic moments that evoke awe. Even more, it is awesome when individual voices come together to create something more than the sum of the parts. Singing confirms the scientists’ hypotheses about awe: it connects us with each other, lifts our spirits, puts our own lives and troubles in perspective and leads us to even more awe. Singing in a choir–voices blending in harmony–is, Rutter says, “kind of an emblem for what we need in the world.”
“Awesome” is a word so overused that it no longer evokes the “awe” from which it comes. I like “awe-inspiring” or, even better, “awe-struck.” There’s another word, though, with awe as its root: awful–literally full of awe. The word reminds us that awe isn’t always a happy emotion. The eye of a hurricane viewed on TV in the safety of our warm homes may be awe-inspiring, but to the people caught in its path, a hurricane is simply awful. It awakens us to our powerlessness. It prompts disturbing questions about God as creator. The Psalmist declares with gratitude that the river of God is full of water, but for the people of Lumberton, North Carolina flooded out of their homes, it is hard to feel grateful for that abundance.
For most of human history, hurricanes brought us face to face with our smallness in the face of something so mighty. Today, the extreme nature of our weather events also brings us face-to-face with our own destructive power as a human race. How have our collective choices over the last century impacted these weather events? To be faced with our feelings of powerlessness is hard enough; to be confronted with our destructive power is truly awful.
Where do we find hope in that awful mix of powerlessness and power? Where do we find God? The Project Awe leader, Dacher Keltner, offers one more peace of wisdom: “People often talk about awe as seeing the Grand Canyon or meeting Nelson Mandela. But our studies show it also can be much more accessible–a friend is so generous you’re astounded, or you see a cool pattern of shadows and leaves.”
That is where we find God amidst the devastation of a hurricane. God is in small but awe-inspiring acts of courage–the young man with his row boat, the nurse who risks her life to give someone CPR. God is in the perseverance of people who have lost everything but find a way to go on. God is in the generosity of people thousands of miles away who give money and pack hygiene kits and pray. God is in our choice not to close our eyes to the suffering of strangers. God is in people gathering, gardening, putting up solar panels, carrying signs, making phone calls, working in so many ways to heal and care for our planet. Ordinary, everyday, awe-inspiring acts of community and compassion and courage.
2.5. That, according to the Parade article, is the number of times per week people, on average, feel awe. Compare that to the number of times, especially with the news these days, that we feel disgust or anger or fear. Disgust as the level of discourse in our nation falls to a new low. Anger at the ways women are objectified, at the times people of color and immigrants are stereotyped and targeted. Fear at what will happen next.
There are many reasons for disgust and anger and fear right now. What happens when we consciously choose to add awe to the mix? When we choose to honor the mystery and wonder of each person, we reject the temptation to treat one another as objects. When we slow down enough to rejoice in the glory of God’s creation, we are compelled to devote ourselves to preserving it. When we acknowledge both our awful human tendency for destruction and our awesome human potential to work together for good, we are able to make a choice to live into our potential.
Awe is not just another emotion. Awe has the potential to transform our lives and our world. We can choose to open ourselves to a force that brings us together, shifts our perspective, stirs our compassion and gives us hope. In a time when disgust and anger and fear dominate, awe is a counter-cultural emotion. To choose awe is a revolutionary act. Let us be revolutionaries. Amen.