Prescription for When the World Feels Too Crazy, Confusing and Overwhelming - a Generous Dose of Awe

“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” — Dacher Keltner

It got to me this morning—that quiet, accumulating weight of the world pressing in before I could quite name why. A headline here, a comment there, voices rising and tightening, each one a little sharper than the last. I could feel it first in my body, a low hum of agitation, like something inside me was bracing for a fight I didn’t want to have.

U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth and Pope Leo XIV quoting different biblical scriptures to suggest what we should do in the world today – war or peace. And I could feel the pull in myself, that familiar tug to take a side, to sharpen my own thinking, to step into the ring and make my case.

The backdrop for me as I wonder about what we humans are up to and worry about what we should do is the reading and re-reading of old and new books. Gregory (and his daughter, Nora) Bateson (Steps to An Ecology of Mind), Eric Hoffer (The True Believer), Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving), Richard Rohr (The Tears of Things), Gregory Boyle (Cherished Belonging : The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times) have been fascinating, smart, insightful - in some cases, wise if I could believe them to be true. And I've been having some new perspectives and practices after attending a five-day meditation retreat with John - if I could get hold of them!

Gregory Bateson would have recognized immediately what was happening to me this morning: schismogenesis, the way we get caught in escalating loops where your certainty feeds mine, your fear feeds mine, until we are no longer responding to reality but to each other’s reactions. A system spinning faster and faster, with no natural off-ramp.

And yet, at the very same time—this is what undid me a little—thinking of Artemis II making its way home, astronauts looking back at Earth and describing it not as fractured but as whole, not as opposing camps but as one fragile, radiant, life-holding sphere. A spaceship, really, carrying all of us together whether we like it or not.

How do we understand what's happening so we can figure out what to do, what's our path?

On the ground, Eric Hoffer reminds us how easily we become true believers, drawn to the clarity of “us” and “them,” especially when the world feels uncertain. It steadies us, gives us footing, but it can also narrow us, sometimes without our even noticing. And then there is Gregory Boyle, who keeps offering a different center of gravity altogether—not argument, not persuasion, but kinship. “We belong to each other,” he says, not as a slogan but as a practice of cherishing, especially when it is hardest.

Richard Rohr helps me understand what was happening inside me. First the anger—quick, almost electric. Then, if I stay with it, something more tender underneath: grief. Grief that we keep hurting each other this way, grief that we forget who we are to one another. And if I don’t turn away—if I don’t harden or rush to fix—there is a wider opening waiting.

Compassion and love. Erich Fromm writes that the only sane way to face the world we live in is with love – caring, compassion, connection, kindness. Richard Rohr says that if you do not transform your pain, you will 100 percent transmit it.  The meditation leader reminded us of a world of human heartbreak when the only effective response is love. It all makes sense on one level.

Our neighbor and someone in our extended family have just died within the last few days.  At Easter Sunrise service others shared their losses and grief as well as joy.  We could do it, hold all this together psychologically because we were all physically and spiritually together like Cashmere folks have been doing for over sixty years on this hill above the little berg...AND we were in an awe-filled natural setting.

Perhaps that says a lot of how we hold the whole human journey which offers the possibility of transformation – with love and in AWE.

I've talked a lot about compassion and love, let me expand on the transcendent state of AWE. Awe is the sensation that arises when we encounter something so vast, beautiful, or unexpected that it stretches beyond our usual way of understanding the world. When we visited the Grand Canyon, the woman next to us, said, "undamn real." That pretty much captures the experience.

As Dacher Keltner describes it, awe comes when we are in the presence of something that transcends our current mental frame—whether that’s a sweeping landscape, a powerful piece of music, an act of moral courage, or a sudden insight about life. It often carries a mix of wonder and humility, a quiet recognition that there is more here than we can fully grasp. For a moment, the mind pauses. The need to categorize, judge, or control softens, and we are simply present to something larger.

At the same time, awe reshapes not just our thoughts but our bodies. It quiets the brain’s stress circuits and lowers levels of cortisol, the hormone linked to chronic stress, while also reducing inflammation in the body—one of the drivers of many diseases. Awe can slow the heart rate, deepen breathing, and activate the parasympathetic nervous system, helping us shift out of fight-or-flight into a state of calm connection.

People who experience awe more frequently even show signs of better overall health and longevity. In this way, awe becomes more than a fleeting feeling—it is a kind of whole-body reset, softening the self, widening perception, and restoring a sense that we are held within something larger and life-giving.

Awe kicked into gear as soon as I opened myself to it this morning.  On Flowery Divide hill you can see and smell the lupine, the balsam root, hear the birds of all sorts chirping to each other; looking to the west you can see pristine snow on the highest mountain tops. It makes awe easy if I get off my screen for a moment and step outside. 

Nature is often the vehicle for experiencing awe when we pay attention. For me even watching Nature on PBS – like last night the baby elephants and the human interaction in Northern Kenya as the natives heal the orphan babies and release them into the wild, the huge starry Kenyan sky are awe-filled. Also certain types of music induce awe. And especially I am (like most humans) moved by moral awe and elevated when I hear, see, or remember stories of deeply caring acts. (This is one reason we share stories of kindness, connection, and compassion in our weekly compassion circle. I've also started doing this with our youth kindness circle at church. It's not only instructive but elevating - it optimizes our system for wise action.)

For me (and maybe you) right now, the best thing I can do to deal with the world and figure out what to do and how to be is to start by being more intentional with opening myself to awe.

I’ve finished my walk for today but now I’m planning a sort of birthday walk with friends to a place called Ancient Lakes.  It’s near Quincy.  I’ve come to think of it as astonishing. You drive through what feels like ordinary land, then suddenly the earth opens, basalt cliffs rise, water appears where you don’t expect it.

It all happened between about 15,000 and 13,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age, this land was carved by the great Missoula floods—cataclysmic surges of water released when an ice dam broke again and again. Water hundreds of feet deep raced across this basin, reshaping everything in its path in a matter of hours or days. What feels solid and permanent now was once fluid, violent, remade.

Standing there, or even imagining standing there, something in me shifts.

The arguments of the morning don’t disappear, but they soften at the edges. They take their place inside a much larger story. The scale of time alone begins to widen the frame—fifteen thousand years held quietly in these cliffs, these lakes, this unexpected waterfall in the desert.

I imagine the upcoming walk.

The openness of the land letting my eyes—and maybe my thinking—stretch out a little. The cliffs rising, reminding me of scale. The waterfalls reminding me how often reality exceeds my expectations. The birds moving through it all, untroubled by the human need to be right.

No one out there is trying to win.

And maybe that’s the point.

I think again of Gregory Bateson, and how awe might interrupt the loop of schismogenesis—not by solving it, but by widening the field in which it exists. I think of Eric Hoffer, and how awe loosens the identities we grip so tightly. I think of Gregory Boyle, and how awe draws us back toward kinship, toward that felt sense that we are part of something—and someone—larger. And I think of Richard Rohr, and how awe helps us stay in the movement—from anger, through grief, into compassion—without getting stuck along the way.

The awe science, as it turns out, echoes the mystics. All the founders of the great religions started with experiences of awe which led them to urge us toward universal love and unity. (Where religions have taken it is a different story.)

Awe quiets the part of the brain that spins stories and judgments on repeat. It softens our defenses, expands our perception, and makes us more generous, more curious, more willing to see complexity.

More willing, perhaps, to come back to one another.

I haven’t taken the walk yet.

But already, just holding the possibility of it—of stepping into something vast enough to reset my perspective—has begun to loosen something in me. The world is still noisy. Still divided. Still in need of courage and truth and wise action.

And though we can't get aboard the spaceship Orion, the Artemis II crew reminds us we are on a spaceship - a marvelous one which beautifully supports us, we can widen our frame to try to take this in:

Remember the scale of things. The age of things. The quiet persistence of a world that holds us all, whether we agree or not.

And so we can go on our human journey these beautiful spring days with invitations to step into love, compassion and most especially AWE.

You may think this is an escape from reality, but it is just the opposite! It's a connection with reality and a chance to allow ourselves to skillfully discern what we can effectively do and be in the world.

In our confusing, crazy, overwhelming moments, how might we step into awe—intentionally—and let it widen our hearts enough to help us find our way, together, toward the good life?

(And let me throw in totally lateral research around cognitive functioning and reversing mild cognitive impairment - the latest wildly impressive intervention? Strengthening the legs. We can use awe walks or runs to build strong legs and intelligent, wise minds at the same time. And... if you take a few pics, a little phototherapy for added joy. And if you take along a friend or two and experience some love and kinship.)

noticing acts of goodness can give us moral awe; these are the folks that did our community meal last night

ok, this has nothing to do with awe, but its a little phototherapy. It makes me smile. He's not ruffled by anything at the community meal.

Flowery Divide today looking East as seen on my awe walk

another pic facing looking west this time as captured on my awe walk today. That red pole is home to John's weather station.

I have this pill bottle. I wrote THE AH and underneath it says transcendent emotions and experiences. I keep it on my bookshelf to remind myself that it's good medicine - using AWE to get into The AH. It doesn't just feel good. It's gets my head on straight.

Sunrise service on Flowery Divide, April, 2026

If you'd like to see inside a community meal click here

If you'd like to hear the vibe I hope our community meals has, click here.

Now housekeeping. Don't ask me why, but sometimes the blogs go to spam. Check there if you have not received one in a week or so. It happens to both John and me even though we have marked not spam.