Find Awe, Welcome Humility

Soul Sculpting Project for Lent 2022 Week 1

The wind had escalated to a fierce gale and the waves began to swell and break over the boat. Water rapidly filled the boat.  Some of the men on board were expert fisherman. They knew what they were doing and they knew the danger. The boat was sinking. They shouted to their exhausted passenger, “Wake up, the boat is going down!”

 Their passenger got up and spoke, not to them, but to the wind and the sea, “Hush, be still.” The shrieking wind melted to silence. The towering waves shrunk into a glassy sea.

The men now became more terrified. “Who was this man?” They were struck with awe. 

The experience of awe is both frightening and wonderful.

Awe:

• A state of being that straddles the boundary of pleasure and fear. 

•  An overwhelming feeling of amazement for something that is grand, special, or unique.

• A feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends our understanding. 

How does the experience of awe change us? 

 Awe promotes the virtue of Humility.

Studies find that people who are more naturally prone to experiencing awe also have a greater sense of humility and are rated as more humble by their friends.

What are the perks of Humility?

Studies find Humility helps us:

• Acknowledge our strengths and weaknesses in a more balanced way
• Better recognize how outside forces contributed to successes
• Have less entitlement, arrogance, and narcissism

Our 2022 Lenten Challenge: Counteracting the 7 Deadly Sins with 7 Life Giving Virtues

The Deadly Sin List was begun in the 4th century by a monk, Evagrius Ponticus. In the 6th century Pope Gregory the 1st organized it into a 7 sin list, later on Christians like Thomas Aquinas (13th century) elaborated on the list.

These 7 sins are seen as the big, problematic, soul sucking sins that alienate us from God. 

• For this Week #1 the Deadly Sin before us is Pride
• The Life-Giving Virtue to counteract this sin is Humility

How do we cultivate life-giving humility?

 Berating and mentally beating yourself up is the first method that comes to mind for many of us. I am not sure how helpful that method is for creating a healthy humility, so I recommend we use a method that is known to be effective: putting more awe in our life.

Where do we find Awe?

Jesus’s disciples experienced awe when they saw his ability to change the weather with a word.

 Job experienced awe when he encountered God in the whirlwind and heard things “too wonderful to understand”. Job 40-42

David found an even simpler way to experience awe. He meditated on God’s ability to know all of a person’s actions and secret thoughts. Psalm 139: 6

I have friends who have experienced awe while snorkeling with the manta rays in Hawaii or while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. I also have friends who have experienced awe while reading their Bible or scrolling through sites on geology.

Where do you experience Awe? 

The potential for awe surrounds us.

• We can find awe in art, music, ideas, other people, machines, athletes, skilled workers, our body,  the sciences, theology, . . .  .  
• Nature is one of the most frequent places we experience awe. From the microscopic to the cosmic, in nature we enter the presence of things that are vast and that transcend our understanding.
• Meditation/thinking about God opens a door to the vast, wonderful, more-than-we-can-grasp. 

Just thinking about the awesome can bring us to an experience of awe. Studies have found that reading or writing stories about awe can increase our well-being.

Our job this week is to pay attention and find awe.

Soul Sculpting Project: Find Awe, Welcome Humility

#1 This week, hunt for the awesome.

What is vast, grand, amazing, beyond understanding? 

Where to look: 

• Get out in nature, 
• Visit places (wild, rural or urban) where awe might hang-out
• Search your memory, search books, search devices 
• Think about God.
• Look and listen for the awesome in ordinary tasks and places. Soap-bubbles in the dish sink, a piece of music, the sky out the window.

#2 Welcome the humility that comes from experiencing the awesome.

“And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.” 
Luke 5:26 (words from the crowd after spending a day with Jesus)   

Gratitude for the many researchers on Humility and Awe: Here are few for the studies referred to above:  Bai, Y., Maruskin, L. A., Chen, S., Gordon, A. M., Stellar, J. E., McNeil, G. D., Peng, K., & Keltner, D. (2017), Tangney, (2000),  Jennifer Stellar, Amie Gordon, Craig Anderson, Paul Piff, Galen McNeil, Dacher Keltner.