Beginning an Awe-Practice

I had a profound experience on a walk last weekend. I switched from podcast to music and the change in perspective blew my mind.

I walk in the mornings. It gets the blood moving, wakes me up, and gets me outdoors.

Most times it’s a mile hike up the hill behind my home, 300 vertical feet, then down to a park where Mumford chases frisbee. But instead, last weekend I walked our neighborhood for about an hour.

For the first 45 minutes I listened to a podcast. It was interesting and deep and esoteric…an exploration of taste and how we develop our own individual palate. My left brain was abuzz.

Then I switched to a Christian song I had just discovered on Instagram. It was a gal singing Agnus Dei, like really well, like really movingly. She sang it in a way that caused tears to fill my eyes the first time I listened to her.

As the song played in my ears, I noticed a dramatic change in what I was noticing on my walk. All of the sudden I noticed the trees and how tall they were and birds perched on their limbs and how they thrust themselves gloriously into the sky. I noticed the sky, the blue, the fullness of it, the height of it, the clarity of it. Then I noticed the hills and mountains around me, they popped in my mind, their gradations and canyons, their massive amount of earth and rock and dirt, the spring green that was bursting out of them. 

I went from complete immersion into words, not noticing a thing about my environment except the sidewalk in front of me—to not only noticing nature, but having it POP before me, having it come alive, taking on its own life-force. All by changing my input...all from a song about God being gloriously pumped into my ears. 

The experience was so profound that I stopped in front of a giant pine, about a mile from my house. I stared up at it, drank in its glory, its size, its age, its nobility. I imagined it thrusting its needles skyward, longing for sunlight, drinking in the sun rays and transforming them into an elixir for itself. I imagined the tree crafting its own form of praise and exaltation, not having a mind to understand it, but having a form to express it, also skyward, toward the heavens, up, up, up, everything upward.

This imagining was all while this song played over and over in my ears. It was euphoric for me, pure heaven. It was a moment of exaltation and awe. It was an instant when I knew I had a soul and knew there was more than just stuff.

Call me dramatic. Okay, that’s fair. Call me a little wacked. Okay, that’s definitely fair.

But music for me, and that song in particular, brought me to a place that is rarified air. It set my right brain on fire. It elevated my spirit. And I feel a need for that kind of worship and reverence and awe. I long for it. I seek it out. That’s why I hike. That’s why I listen to music. That’s why I’ll stop sometime when I’m on a mountain slope, Agnus Dei playing in my ears, tears streaming down my face, I’ll turn my body toward the broad valley before me, thrust my palms to the heavens, look to the sun, a mystical ring surrounding it, throat too swollen to speak, and just nod my reverie. Yes, nod my reverie.

As far as the left brain goes and learning from podcasts and playing them while I walk—I’ll continue that.

But last weekend’s neighborhood walk reminded me of my soul’s desire. It reminded me of the thrill of wonder and reverence and veneration.

I want to have an awe-practice.

I want to face the sun and thrust my hands into the air and not be ashamed that tears stream down my face as wonder washes over me.

I will keep hiking. I will continue going to the beach. I will turn off the podcast and experience awe in my life.