Modest Awe

I’ve known Big Awe a few times. I play my memories of it like social media videos, though there’s nothing small-screen about them.

It’s a summer night when I’m 10 years old. I’ve cast myself down on a carpet of grass in the deepest shadow I can find so I can study the constellations. But behind them, far beyond, I see the Milky Way spangled across the sky. Suddenly, though my back’s to Mother Earth, I’m floating in space. Because Earth is in space, I see, we all are. Right here is “out there.” I feel Big Awe.

Summer again, an evening 15 years later. It isn’t night yet, but the squall line racing in off the Atlantic is bringing the dark. I’m never going to make it two miles across the sand to where the car’s parked without getting drenched. No matter, because I’m already waist-deep in the surf at Cape Point. Technically, it’s land, but the narrow spit of the Outer Banks thrusts far, far out into the ocean, and this is its farthest reach. Here, the warm Gulf Stream and cold Labrador Current collide. Waves are washing every which way; some even come from behind me. The wind says, “Perhaps you should get out of here,” and I nod assent, grateful I haven’t had to leave before feeling the give and take, the balance … and Big Awe.

It’s late afternoon this past New Year’s Day. Winter has enforced its claim with thick snow and ice. I’ve laced on boots I haven’t worn in more than a decade to gingerly creep over to the hilltop to look at the Mississippi some 200 feet below. But my eyes are drawn to big birds riding the currents forced up when the northeast wind hits the bluff. They’re grey in the grey light, but then a gap opens in the stratus, and sunlight pours through. The head and tail of the bird hovering a few yards over my head blaze into white. I’m looking at my first bald eagle in the wild. And it just floats there, letting me marvel, then turns a single feather and drifts away, leaving me glad I can still feel Big Awe.

Few days now bring Big Awe, though. I have to manage with Modest Awe.

I bought an old mountain bike this summer and named her Summer Day; we rode to Riverview Park on one of the last days of the season. It’s not far, but there’s a pretty good elevation gain. There are open views of the River there, too, different from that of my hill. I stopped at one of the overlooks. Birds were wheeling and gliding in the rising air before me. They weren’t eagles. They were turkey vultures, a common, even everyday sight. Yet fine to look at on the wing, I thought, glad to feel a modest awe.

A law of bicycle riding is: Elevation you lose you’ll have to work to get back. But elevation you’ve gained, you get to spend. I enjoyed a long, effortless coast down from Riverview Park. This, I thought, might be what birds feel as they ride the wind. This might be a day of not-so-Modest-Awe after all.

The Reverend Doug Job does interim ministry for congregations in transition and keeps good memories and friends made while serving a church in Cape Girardeau. He's grateful to live for now in Hannibal, Mo., on the cheap end of Cardiff Hill, a few minutes' ride from a million-dollar view. You may share your awes with him at revdarkwater@gmail.com.