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We long to be eaten - as metaphor -, and we fear it. This is like wanting a lover to consume us, evidenced in acts in sexual engagement, and fearing it. And the rituals of appearance and scent are means for one to invite the other to the mutual intercourse, which is, by metaphor, comparable to being eaten, wherein the self is received into, the distance consumed in Intimacy. Awe, as feeling in response to beauty, then, is the means Grace seduces us to Grace.
Yet, if we do not allow the Source to usher us to Itself through beauty, we negate the seduction and the grace of beauty is lost to us, the object being objectified and becoming an end in itself - this is idolatry. We, then, remain identified as a body among other bodies, objects among objects. We try to quench our thirst from the streams, not the Wellspring.
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When we lose touch with religious awe, we defy our natural place in the Kosmos, contradict the nature of Life, and fail to relate appropriately to the Source. Rav Berg notes that when we have spurious religious fear, the emotion does not arise from anything foundational to our being. He writes, "Fear of losing the keys to heaven is no better than fear of losing the keys to the new Mercedes." The opposite is true, also: Awe, or the fear of the Holy, is natural and essential to individual and communal well-being, for such felt-reverence is fundamental to being and world. For example, when we are no longer in awe of living things, we use them for ourselves, we see them as things at our disposal. The world, without reverence, is desacralized, for we are desacralized.
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A loving-fear of Spirit has the ironic effect of lessening other fears. A ground of our lessening of fear of others and the consequences of making the right choices to follow and love the Holy is an awe-loving of Life and Nature. I have seen this true in my own life, for awful-love of God has the counter-effect of all inauthentic fearfulness. Genuine fear transforms spurious fear.
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Silence is the ultimate response to the Mystery. Silence is the most sublime confession of this Beauty.
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©️ Brian Wilcox, 2020
*Sources: Mirriam-Webster Dictionary. www.mirriam-webster.com (2020); Simone Weil. Love in the Void.
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