I prayed for wonders instead of happiness, and You gave them to me.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God: Man
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) is known for his prophetic action and commitment to “radical amazement.” Theologian Bruce Epperly explains:
Heschel lived out a holistic balance of delight and awe, radical amazement, and prophetic challenge.
At the heart of Heschel’s mystical vision is the experience of radical amazement.… Wonder is essential to both spirituality and theology: “Awe is a sense for the transcendence.… It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine.” [1]
Wonder leads to the experience of radical amazement at God’s world. Created in the image of God, each of us is amazing. Wonder leads to spirituality and ethics. As Heschel noted, “Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy. The moment is the marvel.” [2]
Heschel considers the significance of a worldview of radical amazement:
The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what I own; I must learn not to miss what I face.
We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. We objectify Being but we also are present at Being in wonder, in radical amazement.
All we have is a sense of awe and radical amazement in the face of a mystery that staggers our ability to sense it….
Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.
Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the … mystery beyond all things. It enables us … to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.
Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition; faith is attachment to transcendence, to the meaning beyond the mystery.
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.
Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you. The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom, for the discovery of the world as an allusion to God. [3]
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1. Teaching
An interesting thing happens in the United States when we cross the calendar threshold of Thanksgiving.
We enter the unofficial season of Frenzy.
Beginning with Thanksgiving, we pack this time of year with loud and outgoing festivities: Black Friday, tree lightings, visits to outdoor malls blasting Mariah Carey, the Christmas holiday itself (often filled with people and yearly rituals), and then we cap it with the raucous New Year celebration.
All with the steady drumbeat of “buy-buy-buy” texturing the energetic soundtrack of the season.
But if we pause, we might notice something else happening: nature all around us is constricting and pulling in, protecting and quieting down.
In this context, it makes sense so many of us feel frazzled and anxious during this season of Frenzy.
Because we, too, are a part of nature, also made cold by the wind and in need of holding ourselves close.
And yet, we’ve manufactured a season of busyness, social obligations, and energetic outflow, disconnecting ourselves from the softness of our animal bodies.
There is a tension in this – in striving to keep pace with the season of Frenzy while our bodies yearn for slow movement, quiet evenings, and the soft glow of warm fires.
2. Questions
- What is this time of year like for you? How does this tension, if present for you, show up in your body?
- How were you taught to see yourself as separate and distinct from “the natural world?” What experiences do you have that have broken down or challenged this sense of separateness?