Reverence and Awe

Saturday, December 20, 2025
Week Fifty-One Summary
December 14 – December 19, 2025

Reverence and Awe

Sunday
Healthy religion, which always makes space for Mystery, gives us a foundational sense of awe. It re-enchants an otherwise empty universe. —Richard Rohr

Monday
The scandalous truth, known by mystics throughout history and affirmed in the pages of our sacred texts, is that when we connect with God, it is as if we are plugging our souls into a pure current of high-voltage joy. —Brian McLaren

Tuesday
In simple and unexpected moments of epiphany, you will sense that you are connected to creation in ways that bypass your self-protective, preoccupied, rational mind. Your task? Be attentive. Allow your wonder to wander.
—Wesley Granberg-Michaelson

Wednesday
God is the wisdom of every lifetime, a deep plunge into a clear pool, the sinew and muscle of ethical responsibility, a community of goodness, but always more. Descriptions reach out as far as they can toward the God of the universe, and then, like a rubber band stretched too far, they snap back and we are left with the silence of mystery and awe. – Barbara Holmes

Thursday
Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars. —Barbara Brown Taylor

Friday
Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith. 
—Abraham Joshua Heschel

Week Fifty-One Practice

Awe for the Next Generation

 Author and activist Lydia Wylie-Kellermann writes about our responsibility to share the gifts of awe and wonder with the next generation:

Awe and wonder are gifts my kids give me daily. But also, I believe it is a gift we adults need to give the children in our lives.

These kids are growing up in an incredibly anxious time. Yes, the climate is changing. Weather is more extreme. The future is unpredictable. But also, there is one school shooting after another. Our kids do drills and hide in closets. And Covid … Covid changed everything for them … in an instant. Everything about these children’s lives was turned upside down.

It’s too much. Sure, they are resilient. But, still, it’s too much. I can start to feel anger running through my veins at all these kids are holding. It’s too much.How could these kids not grow up anxious and worried and stressed and angry?

You know what is an antidote to anxiety and despair? Awe and wonder. We owe our children awe and wonder!!

It is our job. It is our responsibility to find beauty in unexpected places, to marvel at the miracles around us, and to rest in moments of pure magic.

So, friends, let us—with everything we’ve got—make space for awe and wonder.

We need it. Awe and wonder hold our hearts and bodies in the present moment around us, keeping us from spiraling into whatever is yet to come. We can find it anywhere … in the streets, the woods, our neighborhoods, the shore of the ocean, or in a culvert under the road. It happens in the slowing down. It happens when we let ourselves loose. When we let go of control and are free to stumble upon joy.

Let us show these children in our lives that, amid all the horror, there is a life worth living that can take your breath away and leave you dancing.

Beloved friends,
go out and find a secret portal.
Walk the shoreline, and keep your eye out for magic.
Pull out that old telescope.
Tell wild stories.
Go outside and dance in the rain.
Do ridiculous things.
Be “that” adult who gets the eyeroll nd the side smile.
Laugh often. Slow down.
Feed the imagination.
Clear the space to be washed over
by this wild and wonderful world.