The moment one gives close attention to any thing… it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. (Henry Miller)

As I write, where I live in Minnesota, we are having our first significant snow fall of the year.

Of course, it is aggravating and scary to drive on snow and ice, and my heart breaks for those who don’t have good shelter or sufficient warmth to be comfortable in such winter weather.

At the same time, though, as I look out my living room window, I am amazed at how the snow changes the landscape into a wonderland that reminds me of a Christmas snowglobe.

And, this is just if I look at the landscape.

John O’Donohue has written that hidden beneath our initial perceptions, “another world waits.” This reminds me of something my mom told me about snow. I don’t know if this really is true, but she told me that every single snowflake is unique.

In light of this, I am so amazed by the stunning photography that PBS shared in the following link that reveals the usually hidden details of snowflakes. As Miller said, it indeed does seem true that close attention to any thing can reveal mystery and awe.

Snowflake Photography

This TED talk by Louie Schwartzberg is the best video I have found (yet) for inducing a sense of mystery and awe. It actually is framed as a talk (really a meditation) about gratitude, which shows the close connection between awe and gratitude. It would be 10 minutes well worth your time.

Soon, we Americans celebrate our most psychologically informed holiday: Thanksgiving. Although most of us associate this holiday with overeating and football, the meaning of thanksgiving is much more profound.

Most of us recognize that our thoughts often are negative in tone. Consider, for example, the thoughts to which you personally most often return. If you’re like most people, many of these thoughts probably concern what you lack, what is in the way of your progress, and what could go wrong in your future. These kinds of thoughts contribute to stress, depression, anger, anxiety, addictive behaviors, and relationship problems.

A transformation often occurs when peop learn to shift their thoughts from negative to thanksgiving. Although we only celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving one day per year, we all would benefit from making gratitude a consistent lifestyle habit. This weekend would be the perfect opportunity to try out some new practices that might move us in the direction of cultivating a lifestyle of thanksgiving.

Some specific suggestions follow.

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Christian author Rob Bell discusses the need for wonder and awe in this video production. He distinguishes between the religious urge to be “right” and the spiritual inclinations to “behold,” “taste and see,” and be alive in a “childlike” sense of possibility. He suggests that the increasingly large number of individuals who identify as spiritual, but not religious, do so because of the failure of institutional religion to cultivate wonder and awe, insteading pursuing their needs for these states on their own.

The two most significant experiences of mystery and awe in my life have been the creation of my two daughters, Ellie and Annika. It is truly beyond my comprehension how an act of love between my wife and I could lead to the development of two beautiful souls such as this. Although the second was amazing as well, there is something unique about the first. Below are reflections from my myself and my wife shortly after Ellie’s birth.

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This TED talk is the best I’ve seen for addressing issues of mystery and awe. In it, Lesley Hazleton discusses the core mystical moment of Islam in which Mohammed experiences the Divine. Rather than experiencing certainty of conviction, she discusses how Mohammed was “overwhelmed by doubt” and felt a great “primordial fear,” best described as a kind of “terrible awe.” She raises questions more generally about how we increasingly seem to prefer certainty in order to feel comfortable and, all too often, avoid the genuinely human realization that not everything can be well-explained. Pride and arrogance unfortunately have come to replace the experience of “real awe” for many people.

Like many, I consider the most important role in my life to be that of a parent. Although my 11-year-old and 9-year-old mostly are wonderful young ladies, I often struggle. Once in a while, I feel like I’m a good parent. More often than not, I feel completely inadequate.

From time to time, I reflect on the difference between those times when I feel like I’m being a good parent and when I’m not. There are many factors that seem to matter. One that especially stands out has to do with whether I am connected with what I really want for my kids for the long-term. When I am connected with what I want in this way, my parenting seems to be much more helpful and consistent.

I believe that many parents, myself included, would do well to regularly reflect on the question of what they really want for their kids. (Please consider commenting below with your ideas about what you want for your kids.) Among other things, I want my kids to be healthy, mindful, curious, grateful, and hopeful. Maybe most importantly, I want my kids to be “in awe,” the main reason being that research suggests that awe may be a causal factor in promoting many positive outcomes along these lines. (Read more about the effects of awe in everyday life.) This seems to be done less and less encouraged among parents. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “we teach the children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to wonder and awe.”

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During Fall semester, 2009, along with my wife and two daughters, I spent about 4 months on sabbatical, living and teaching in a small community outside of Edinburgh, Scotland. Although the entire experience truly was amazing, one particular episode stands out. In some ways, this episode is what first inspired my interest in mystery and awe.

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“Awe is the best of man.” (Goethe)

As Goethe suggests in the above quotation, there long has been speculation that the emotion of awe may be one of the most meaningful kinds of human experience. Only in the past decade or so, however, have psychological scientists seriously attempted to understand this emotion.

Part of this emerging literature are attempts to measure the proneness to experience awe. The assumption in this research appears to be that the tendency to be awestruck in everyday life varies across individuals, more than likely on a bell-shaped curve. That is, whereas some individuals may not experience awe all that often, others may experience awe fairly regularly.

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