In awe

The concept of awe was at first just a word that meant surprise or delight. After reading this, however, its complexity is existent and its importance is noticed. For me, awe is a temporary feeling in a momentary instant that illuminate all other feelings, senses, and thoughts. It’s the presence of something magical. Schneider asks “from whom or what does this leap emerge?...Through struggle, intentional living, and openness, one can find awe-based faith (147). In working with the girls and boys at Canal I faced many instances that made me question my values, my beliefs, and especially myself. We all like to find those moments where we pat ourselves on the back with pride. But what about those moments where we face ourselves and realize some of things you built yourself up to be are not actually consistent as we thought? What about when we are put in a position we have always talked about being in, emphasizing with ease “how we react in that position.” Because the truth is, you have no idea what it will feel like until you are in the middle of it all. While I sat in these moments of despair and reflection, I decided to not judge myself or others, and just listen to what the kids wanted. I opened myself to them as well and told them truth about my life when they asked silly or even inappropriate questions. Yesterday was my final day, and I worked with my friend, her teacher gave me her progress report. She was receiving D’s in two classes. It was time for me to get a little serious with her. I pulled her aside and told her how much I loved working with her and how great and funny and intelligent she was. I acknowledged her struggles at home and her frustrations with test scores. I reminded her of what she had told me about getting out of the life she was in and encouraged her to allow school to be her vehicle for change. I asked her if she felt she was giving her best effort. She looked up and down and eventually said no, she would try harder. It was moment the relationship changed. I felt like a mother, but in this case, it seemed necessary. My roles change with her sometimes but I always remind her how much I care about her and want her to be happy. As a friend and source of encouragement, Schneider struck me with his sentence that (as a caretaker) “to foster and encourage diverse childhood experiences, from sadness to gladness, unsettlement to bliss, repulsion to zeal (149).

She needs to know “there was a witness who cared”(152) that if all else falls around I will be there for her no matter what the condition. This is the love my mother showed me and as a 19-year-old, I obviously don’t have a biological kid to pass it on to but will give my heart to my friend at Canal.

Trying to Scrutinize The Inscrutable

I really enjoyed the first few pages of the reading regarding the idea of the inscrutable. Schneider vividly described the concept as a way of “cultivating awe”. This idea in itself shows a bit of self-contradiction the way I interpret it, but it also more clearly explains the idea of the inscrutable. These concepts can’t be scrutinized, but merely perceived and believed in. This cultivates awe because since these things can’t be 100% proven, they rely on faith. Early on he basically says that, “beyond every bounded faith resides an evolving, indefinite faith.” Almost as to say, “faith begets faith,” because often in life there are things we can’t explain and we get hung up on finding an answer and though we seldom do, we find a comfort in something to believe in. The next concept he introduced was the idea of struggle. He says that, “The way to the inscrutable is through struggle. Struggle jolts the system, dents the armor, and jars the rails. But struggle is only the beginning. The shock and the awakening are only preparatory. The next crucial question is how and whether one pursues, engages with, and emerges from one’s struggle. To the degree one does, one can see beyond it; one can both acknowledge, identify with, and yet somehow be more that that with which one contends” (Pg. 144). Typically, in a time of crisis we are too staggered to step back from a given situation and see beyond the physical distress and into potential reasons why, or as Schneider would say “the inscrutable”. This quote, for me, suggests that struggle is what provokes the thoughts of “what if?” Even further than provoking, it allows for us to be able to understand things we would have not been challenged to comprehend without the struggle. As a person with a lot to struggle with, this quote speaks to me and inspires me. Later on in the reading he brings up the concept of faith again in terms of Buddhism. I really liked this passage because I incorporate Buddhism within my philosophy of life often and so the words seemed more real to me. “…Buddhism corresponds very closely to faith in the inscrutable. The Buddhist precepts of magnificence, mystery, and responsibility; and the Buddhist ideal of maximal disidentification, selfless right action, and godless piety, are all values that echo a fluid center and existential faith” (Pg. 168). As I was already aware of the extent of faith involved in Buddhism, this formally put it into words making it clear to understand. Faith in Buddhism to me speaks to concepts like meditation, and the plight toward Nirvana, because these things don’t exactly have a physical aspect to access, but rather, it is something within us to find… I am ending my reflection with this quote solely because I find the message along with the wording of it to be beautiful. “Nirvana is permanent, stable, imperishable, immovable, ageless, deathless, unborn and unbecome… it is power, bliss, and happiness, the secure refuge, the shelter and the place of unassailable safety… it is the real Truth and the supreme Reality… it is the Good, the supreme goal and the one and only consummation of our life, the eternal, hidden, and incomprehensible Peace” (Pg. 168).

Rediscovery of Awe

This reading really related to my service learning because it was about seeing people for who they really are. In service it is essenial to do this because if you only see people by their cover than you aren't seeing the real person. Throughout this experience I have realized that on the cover people seem hard to deal with and careless, but if you really get to know someone as I did in service learnng you begin to understand that under someones angry cover there is someone who is eager to learn and be accepted. I think this reading, and this class has reflected this.

From Abigail: Rediscovery of Awe

The reading got me thinking alot about having the capacity to be moved. I related this idea with my service becasue it is relevant. People with HIV are not seen with a compassionate eye, but instead with disgust ot horror. The capacity to be moved by the lives that individuals must live tells a lot about a person. Maybe it was there mistake by their actions to have AIDS, but maybe it was not. At MAP the idea to be moved and act for the better and be present in the lives of these individuals has taken place and it can be done anywhere else if we wanted to. To have faith in the impossible is also raised in the rediscovery of awe and it is a hard concept to grasp. If a thing seems impossible and unobtainable then faith is the last thing on a person's mind. Yet, faith can take a person a long way. Faith is what I believe the clients at MAP have, which has them living!

Open Up And Say Awe

Open Up And Say Awe
By Justin Salter
“But again, we must begin with caretakers, the culture, and the milieu. We must begin with the development of trust-the inner knowing that no matter how many times one has faltered or disappointed, someone was there who helped one survive and carry on. We need to know there was a witness who cared. This development of trust leads to a sense of internal freedom-a freedom of both accessibility and expressiveness.” (Pg152-153)
I decided to begin my text reflection with a quote that talked about beginning with caretakers because of my desire to be a nurse. Also, it had to do with my service learning facility. I have discovered awe in helping others, and I feel this quote applies to me. By helping others I feel free from my faults, imperfections, and I feel like my life is meaningful. Nurses start their therapeutic relationship with trust and on an intrapersonal level people must start with trust to believe and act according to what they “know” is right. By working with the elderly, I feel a sense of awe in that 1 person’s actions can make so many people happy. It gives me clarity in an unclear world.
"We cannot have magnificence without uncertainty and we cannot have mystery without hope" (Pg 161). This is a wonderful way to express this point in one sentence. It is the uncertainty of things like God, aliens, and death that make these things so magnificent. It doesn’t take certainty to believe, but it takes certainty to trust. It is the uncertain things that we try to explain with the magnificent which in itself I think is an example of awe. The same goes with mystery and hope. When something is unexplained, people naturally try to explain it with something hopeful, thus heaven and religion are the hope in the mystery of life. Where mystery is explained science is usually the reason, thus the conflict between science and religion. Hope is an example of awe as well because it is that someone that was there who helped many survive and carry on, as stated in the quote above regarding trust, yet it is something that has no physical evidence of being fact.
“Magnificence and mystery are crucial mooring points, key touchstones in the encounter with life.”(Pg 173) This trust in magnificence and mystery are the way people live, love, and learn. It is awesome to believe and wonder, yet it is awful to think you have all of the answers. The real “rediscovery of awe” comes into play when people think about how much of their lives are affected by the unknown, and the act of thinking in general. Thinking is what makes us different from one another, and the uncertainty of life allows us to think and search. If people had all the answers, people would stop thinking and the reality of awe would become an unknown thing.

Chris Hedges Speaks on Osama bin Laden’s Death

Note from Julia--I thought this was so relevant to our last reading that I wanted to post it--please note that the notes and prompt for Rediscovery of Awe are below this post.

I also just added a video to the end of this post that is an incredible example of two mothers (one of a son who died in the World Trade Towers and one whose son was one of the attackers) reaching across the boundaries of the other through shared suffering and loss of 911.

Posted on May 1, 2011

Editor’s note: Chris Hedges made these remarks about Osama bin Laden’s death at a Truthdig fundraising event in Los Angeles on Sunday evening.

I know that because of this announcement, that reportedly Osama bin Laden was killed, Bob wanted me to say a few words about it … about al-Qaida. I spent a year of my life covering al-Qaida for The New York Times. It was the work in which I, and other investigative reporters, won the Pulitzer Prize. And I spent seven years of my life in the Middle East. I was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. I’m an Arabic speaker. And when someone came over and told Jean and me the news, my stomach sank. I’m not in any way naïve about what al-Qaida is. It’s an organization that terrifies me. I know it intimately.

But I’m also intimately familiar with the collective humiliation that we have imposed on the Muslim world. The expansion of military occupation that took place throughout, in particular the Arab world, following 9/11 – and that this presence of American imperial bases, dotted, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Doha – is one that has done more to engender hatred and acts of terror than anything ever orchestrated by Osama bin Laden.

And the killing of bin Laden, who has absolutely no operational role in al-Qaida – that’s clear – he’s kind of a spiritual mentor, a kind of guide … he functions in many of the ways that Hitler functioned for the Nazi Party. We were just talking with Warren about Kershaw’s great biography of Hitler, which I read a few months ago, where you hold up a particular ideological ideal and strive for it. That was bin Laden’s role. But all actual acts of terror, which he may have signed off on, he no way planned.

I think that one of the most interesting aspects of the whole rise of al-Qaida is that when Saddam Hussein … and I covered the first Gulf War, went into Kuwait with the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, was in Basra during the Shiite uprising until I was captured and taken prisoner by the Iraqi Republican Guard. I like to say I was embedded with the Iraqi Republican Guard. Within that initial assault and occupation of Kuwait, bin Laden appealed to the Saudi government to come back and help organize the defense of his country. And he was turned down. And American troops came in and implanted themselves on Muslim soil.When I was in New York, as some of you were, on 9/11, I was in Times Square when the second plane hit. I walked into The New York Times, I stuffed notebooks in my pocket and walked down the West Side Highway and was at Ground Zero four hours later. I was there when Building 7 collapsed. And I watched as a nation drank deep from that very dark elixir of American nationalism … the flip side of nationalism is always racism, it’s about self-exaltation and the denigration of the other.

And it’s about forgetting that terrorism is a tactic. You can’t make war on terror. Terrorism has been with us since Sallust wrote about it in the Jugurthine Wars. And the only way to successfully fight terrorist groups is to isolate themselves, isolate those groups, within their own societies. And I was in the immediate days after 9/11 assigned to go out to Jersey City and the places where the hijackers had lived and begin to piece together their lives. I was then very soon transferred to Paris, where I covered all of al-Qaida’s operations in the Middle East and Europe.

So I was in the Middle East in the days after 9/11. And we had garnered the empathy of not only most of the world, but the Muslim world who were appalled at what had been done in the name of their religion. And we had major religious figures like Sheikh Tantawy, the head of al-Azhar – who died recently – who after the attacks of 9/11 not only denounced them as a crime against humanity, which they were, but denounced Osama bin Laden as a fraud … someone who had no right to issue fatwas or religious edicts, no religious legitimacy, no religious training. And the tragedy was that if we had the courage to be vulnerable, if we had built on that empathy, we would be far safer and more secure today than we are.

We responded exactly as these terrorist organizations wanted us to respond. They wanted us to speak the language of violence. What were the explosions that hit the World Trade Center, huge explosions and death above a city skyline? It was straight out of Hollywood. When Robert McNamara in 1965 began the massive bombing campaign of North Vietnam, he did it because he said he wanted to “send a message” to the North Vietnamese—a message that left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead.

These groups learned to speak the language we taught them. And our response was to speak in kind. The language of violence, the language of occupation—the occupation of the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—has been the best recruiting tool al-Qaida has been handed. If it is correct that Osama bin Laden is dead, then it will spiral upwards with acts of suicidal vengeance. And I expect most probably on American soil. The tragedy of the Middle East is one where we proved incapable of communicating in any other language than the brute and brutal force of empire.

And empire finally, as Thucydides understood, is a disease. As Thucydides wrote, the tyranny that the Athenian empire imposed on others it finally imposed on itself. The disease of empire, according to Thucydides, would finally kill Athenian democracy. And the disease of empire, the disease of nationalism … these of course are mirrored in the anarchic violence of these groups, but one that locks us in a kind of frightening death spiral. So while I certainly fear al-Qaida, I know it’s intentions. I know how it works. I spent months of my life reconstructing every step Mohamed Atta took. While I don’t in any way minimize their danger, I despair. I despair that we as a country, as Nietzsche understood, have become a monster that we are attempting to fight.