The blowing of the Shofar – a traditional instrument made from the horn of a ram — is one of the most ancient religious practices in the world, dating back to the earliest days of the Jewish People nearly two and half millennia ago. Hearing the Shofar is one of my oldest memories, it’s strange, otherworldly sound punctuating every year at the coming of autumn and the arrival of Jewish High Holy Days.
This most sacred time of the year in the Jewish calendar begins with Rosh Hashanah, the celebration of the Jewish New Year – which starts tomorrow at sunset — and culminates ten days later on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In Hebrew, the name given to this ten-day period is Yomim Noraim, or the “Days of Awe.” Indeed, the sounding of the Shofar – its clarion call both plaintive and piercing — is intended to awaken a sense of awe in us.
Awe is one of the most elemental and universal of human experiences. While the feeling of awe is both primal and primordial, a response deeply embedded in the human psyche, it’s not the easiest of emotions to describe in words. For this reason, since ancient times religious traditions have employed a range of mythic images, symbols, and stories to help us comprehend the experience of awe.
For example, I still remember learning in Hebrew school about the idea of a “Book of Life” in which our destinies would be inscribed and of the “Gates of Heaven” which were said to open especially wide between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. These gates were said to open especially wide to receive our sincere and heartfelt repentance for any failings during the past year. I also remember learning that God would not accept my atonement for wrongs I had done to other people unless I first sincerely tried to make amends to those I had hurt. If we honestly repented and expressed our intention to try harder in the days ahead, we were told we would be written in the Book of Life for a sweet year to come.
Possessing a good imagination, I had no trouble envisioning these gates opening to receive my prayers of atonement for all the ways I hadn’t been as good as I might have been. At the same time, I could easily see in my mind’s eye a giant book open to the page with my name on it and watching an unseen hand writing what my fate would be in the year ahead. Needless to say, both images filled my child’s heart and mind with a deep sense of awe.
As a child, I understood these images — of a Book of Life” and the “Gates of Heaven” — in literal terms. Not surprisingly, as I outgrew childhood, I came to realize that things weren’t that simple. After rejecting these images as an adolescent and a young adult, I’ve since come to appreciate them as powerful symbols and honor them for what they represent. Like an image in a great work of art, the Book of Life now represents for me the sense of a destiny which I co-create through the choices I make in my life. Similarly, the I now see the Gates of Heaven as a symbol of the means by which I access my own highest and deepest consciousness. Those gates can be said to open especially wide when I reflect deeply or enlarge my own capacity for compassion.
Interestingly, though I no longer understand these ancient images in any sort of literal way, as symbols they once again have the power to invoke awe in me. As I experience the unfolding of my life, I increasingly have the sense of a story being written by a consciousness that both incorporates and mysteriously exceeds my own understanding and wisdom. I have a deepening sense of destiny, of the life I’m meant to be living and of the person I’m meant to become.
These days, I try to open myself to the experience a sense of awe on a regular basis… awe at the mystery of life, the glory of nature, the infinite majesty of the cosmos, the power of love and compassion, and our never-ending capacity to grow and evolve. That said, I have to admit that, like most adults, I think I went through a good chunk of my adult life more-or-less unaware of the awesomeness of everything. I got caught up in the day-to-day routine of life — making a living, being in a long-term relationship, dealing with friends and family members — much the same as all the other adults I knew.
I generally reserved the experience of awe for special events. Some were joyful and exciting, like visiting an awe-inducing natural or manmade place like the breathtaking coast of Big Sur or the monumental interior of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Others were painful and disturbing, like witnessing my partner’s last days and being present at his death, of washing his body in preparation for his cremation, and of contemplating the mystery of the vast chasm between his lifeless mortal remains and the living man I had shared my life with for 35 years.
In my own process of opening myself to a greater sense of awe as a spiritual practice, I’ve found the work of a man named Rudolf Otto to be very helpful. In his writing, Otto focuses on awe in relationship to another emotion connected to the sacred, wonder. In the presence of the mystery known as the sacred, we are fascinated, amazed, and, enthralled by the wonder of what we experience. Simultaneously, the experience of the sacred induces a feeling of profound awe, of being swept-away, overwhelmed, and made deeply conscious of our limitations as human beings. We can sense the enormous power of awe in the ancient Latin word tremedum, a term which was used to describe that which inspires this feeling in us, which is also the root our English verb tremble. Encountering the power of awe is a profound emotional experience, one that “shakes us” to our core.
Of the two manifestations of the holy described by Otto, wonder and awe, the one that most of us would choose to avoid is awe. After all, wonder feels wonderful, while awe is the root of the word awful as much as the word awesome. While the price we pay for shutting down our capacity for wonder is great — diminishing both our access to a deep and abiding curiosity about life and a sense of the magic of being alive — the cost of eliminating awe from our experience is perhaps even greater.
For it is in awe that we encounter the unanswerable riddle of our own existence; and it is here that we develop the deep humility that comes with recognizing our own small precious strand in the infinite web of life. Without awe, we lose our capacity for reverence, the ability to experience a profound respect and veneration for life, for each other, and for the great mystery that is the source of all things sacred. Just as my childhood self was in awe of the Book of Life and the Gates of Heaven, my adult self finds awe in the sublime, the enigmatic, and the challenging. In honoring the spirit of these High Holy Days – the Days of Awe — my fondest prayer is that we may each experience a renewal of our capacity for awe, both for the holiness that resides in each of us as well as in all of creation.