Religion column by Tim Weidlich: Embrace a sense of awe into your life

The Oxford dictionary defines "awe" as "a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder." The is an onomatopoeia which is a word that is formed by the sound that it describes.

So, awe is the sound we make when facing something or even someone that is vastly bigger than ourselves, or much greater than we are.

I recently stayed at the Lake McDonald Lodge in Glacier National Park where I sat on the shore and watched the lake at sunset as the fish surfaced to catch the bugs, the sky radiated with colors of blue, purple and pink, the mountains framed the falling sun and the colors of the sunset. I stood in reverence at the overwhelming display and without thought or effort I let out my breath with the sound ... AWE!

Making time for experiencing these kinds of "awe" environments comes from my four values I use to guide my life.

These values of beauty and discovery connect me to my soul, the part of us that make us uniquely human, and is the best expression of my creation by the God who is the Creator of beauty. There are many ways to create and to experience beauty: enjoying stirring music, creating art, turning a run-down home and yard into a place of peace and beauty, writing connecting and moving s and books, bringing a divided nation and world together into peace.

But another way to experience awe and wonder is in the places of beauty in our world and in our universe. God created a beautiful garden for humans and animals to grow, and as image-bearers, our best expression of our Creator's design is to create beauty.

John Muir wrote of his time in nature, especially around Yosemite Park (he advocated for this area to be declared a national park). "One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books." Books can tell of the experience of wonder, but they cannot BE the wonder.

Muir also said that "Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike."

King David journaled about his experience of wonder and awe in creation. One night, he must have been on his roof, and rather than looking out over the rooftops to spot the bathing Bathsheba, he looked up past the curtain that opens at night into the vast universe he was part of, and he wrote this ...

The heavens proclaim the glory of God.

The skies display his craftsmanship.

Day after day they continue to speak;

night after night they make him known.

They speak without a sound or word;

their voice is never heard.

Yet their message has gone throughout the earth,

and their words to all the world.

Most of us FEEL something awesome, transcendent, life-giving when we get into nature, but how do we use that beauty to heal us?

One veteran came into our unit in Montana for the PTSD program. He was like a stick of dynamite with a very short fuse. He had learned to protect others from his angry explosions by leaving a triggering conversation walk outside.

I take walking breaks every day during work because I know the power of renewal by nature's beauty, so I would watch this veteran explode out the doors and begin his walk. He would walk with his head down looking at the sidewalk, he would walk quickly with a conversation going on in his head. You may be familiar with these kinds of conversations, when you rehearse the issue that triggered your anger and telling off that person in your head. This veteran was not really in nature, nor was he enjoying the healing of beauty.

Another veteran came into our program for PTSD and military sexual trauma. We were walking VA parade grounds used for training soldiers going into war beginning in the late 1800s with the Spanish American War. This area is a large field that was used for tents and barracks to house them. Today it is an open space with trees and mountains in the background. We have a Native sacred area on the grounds and often the deer or elk come on the grounds in the fall to get away from the surrounding mountains filled with hunters.

This veteran told of a life of abuse by his family, by his foster family and then in the military. His life experiences were filled with destruction and chaos. God, he said, seemed pretty absent to him.

But in an awe-filled moment that I'll never forget, he paused our walk and pointed to the mountains just north of us. The Missouri River runs through these mountains, Lewis and Clark called this area where the river entered the ancient and majestic mountain range "The Gates of the Mountains." This section of the river is a Blue-Ribbon fishing area filled with river boats and fishermen from around the world dotting the river's edge fly fishing in their waders reminiscent of a "A River Runs Through It" scene.

Pointing to those mountains, he said, "but when I go up there, all of my sadness and memories of abuse, fade away." "It was," he explained, "the awesomeness of the mountains, the obvious creativity and care for these wonders" that made him wonder if there was some higher power that could make him whole. The beauty of nature created a silent wonder about the possibility of beauty in his future.

John Muir said, "Keep close to Nature's heart ... and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean."

Henry David Thoreau said, "I took a walk in the woods and came back taller than the trees!"

Consider these ideas for purposefully adding AWE into your life.

1. Schedule regular breaks: Create a work-rest rhythm to your day. We pride ourselves in hard work, but as Steven Covey talked about in his habit of sharpening the saw, if we don't rest, we will have to work harder and harder to get the same amount of work done. Get out from under the florescent bulbs and take a walk in nature.
2. Leave your work to enter God's beauty: As I walked in the mountains around Bozeman with a friend recently, they said, "I could just sit here all day to just take it all in." I have a difficult time sitting anywhere for any length of time, but the rest challenges my belief that worth comes from my work. Beauty breaks also inspire me to create beauty in my work, rather than merely completing tasks.
3. Create beauty: My growth and time in creation's beauty have turned into hobbies for creation of beauty. One veteran came into our addiction recovery program tried working with clay, then painting. He created incredible busts from the clay, then watercolors and other mediums, he even sold many for people to bring the beauty from his recovery into their homes. "You know, Chaplain, this is what comes out of my sobriety, but when I am drinking, I lose this!" I work with creating bonsai, photography, taking an 1890s home and restoring the house and yard to be a place of renewal and peace.
4. Listen for the Creator's voice in the beauty: While letting beauty and nature in, you may find the author of beauty speaking to you. What does the Creator of beauty, including creating me, want to say to me in this beauty? Just as King David said that the heavens display God's craftsmanship, the Apostle Paul said that you are God's masterpiece, literally, God's poem. The soul seems to speak clearer in environments of beauty.

Henry David Thoreau wrote this: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

"Awe is a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder." – Oxford dictionary.

Edward Abbey wrote this wish for others to experience this awe when he said: "May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds."

Tim Weidlich is the father of three children and owner of a recovering historic home in Helena. He pastored for 30 years before becoming a hospital and mental health chaplain at the Montana VA. Contact him at