Advent Awe
Have you recently experienced being awestruck?
Being out of doors and enjoying nature can easily inspire a sense of awe: that overwhelming feeling of wonder, sometimes tinged with fear.
I remember being awestruck the first time I snorkelled. As weirdly-shaped fish darted past me, and I looked down on a rainbow of coral, I found myself in a fabulous world about which I knew absolutely nothing. I was truly out of my depth.
Camping in a National Park in Argentina where my husband Rick and I were the only visitors (it was notably off-season), we brewed up each chilly morning as Andean Condors soared past snow-capped mountains. It was glorious, and also slightly scary to be far from all other humans. In a vast, harsh landscape, I felt very small and vulnerable.
In 2002, I helped to lead a holiday in Lebanon for A Rocha supporters. Our local guide took us into the stunning Jeita Grotto, a network of limestone caverns formed millions of years ago. Suddenly, my own life felt unbearably fleeting as I gazed at floodlit stalagmites, stalactites, pillars and draperies which had grown, drip by drip, over the aeons.
Feelings of awe can strike much closer to home, here in SW Scotland. Sunrises. Sunsets.Skeins of Pink-footed Geese from the Icelandic tundra, arriving in early autumn, their wild clamouring drawing me outside to search the skies for long straggling Vs.
Sometimes, in our garden, we run a light-trap at night to catch moths. Before I release them after identification, I choose one to study for a few minutes, taking in the details: sometimes a furry thorax, feathery antennae, delicate wing patterns and dark, expressionless eyes. I reflect on how little I − and others − know about the behaviour, population trends and needs of small creatures on our own doorstep.
Recently, I listened to a BBC Radio Serial, ‘More Wow’, presented by science journalist Jo Marchant. In five short programmes, she explored the elusive emotion of awe and interviewed people − involved in activities as diverse as space exploration, calisthenic exercise, cave-diving and engineering − for whom awe has been life-changing, in ways big and small. Ron Garan, who worked for six months on the International Space Station, spoke of his daily experience of awe as he looked out on the beauty of the Earth, gas clouds, auroras and lightning storms. Few of us can enjoy such a privilege but he finds that, now earthbound, he is much more easily moved to awe than he was before. He believes that responding with awe to everyday experiences is a sensitivity which we can cultivate.
The interviewees’ common conviction was that awesome experiences snap us out of our finite world. They enable us to realise that we are part of something much larger than ourselves and make us feel more connected: to other people and other species. Momentarily, we forget our petty worries and afterwards; they are more inperspective. Research at the University of California, Berkeley, has shown that experiences of awe can make us kinder, more generous, more respectful of others. The same could be said, of course, about Christian worship when we focus, not on ourselves, but on our Creator and Saviour.
As Christmas approaches, many of us will be caught up in all kinds of busyness. Perhaps now, the start of Advent, is a good time to pause and reflect on the story of Jesus’ birth. This last fortnight, I have been slowly reading the first two chapters of Luke’s gospel, savouring each drama: a priest in fragrant robes, struck dumb; a teenage girl offered a once-in-the-world’s-lifetime privilege; a babe in the womb recognising a stranger; stockmen suddenly abandoning their livestock. Each of these events inspired awe and wonder at the time. Each of them, if we bring our God-given imagination to the stories, pondering what the participants saw, and heard, and felt, can provoke awe and worship in us, even if we have heard, read or taught the stories many times.
It is all too easy, at Christmas, just to look at the Christ child in the manger. When you read of the birth of Jesus, of his humility and vulnerability, why not also take time to meditate on Colossians 1:15-20, which speaks of Jesus’ supremacy. St Paul tells us that all things: angels and angel fish, men and man orchids, barnacles and barnacle geese were created by Jesus and for Jesus.
May you delight in the certainties, and the mysteries, of the season.
Barbara Mearns has been involved with A Rocha since its beginnings, and for many years ran the A Rocha International office from her home in SW Scotland. Now retired, she writes an irregular blog about local wildlife at www.mearnswildlife.wordpress.com and spends as much time as possible recording dragonflies, butterflies, moths and birds. With her husband, Richard, she has researched the lives of many early naturalists, most recently for their updated Biographies for Birdwatchers (2022) see www.mearnsbooks.com.
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About Barbara Mearns
Having been an A Rocha supporter since the earliest days in Portugal, Barbara began to work full-time from her home in SW Scotland as A Rocha International Editor in 1997. Her writing career has included a spate of books, co-written with her husband Richard, on the great pioneering naturalists: Biographies for Birdwatchers (1988), Audubon to Xantus (1992), The Bird Collectors (1998) and John Kirk Townsend (2007), and has meandered through book reviews, scientific papers, magazine articles and short notes in wildlife journals. Her latest publication is Bairns and Beasts (2012), a joint collection of poetry with fellow Crichton Writer Leonie Ewing. Barbara has retired from A Rocha in 2017, and will now be spending as much time as possible away from the computer, recording local birds, butterflies, dragonflies and moths.
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