My weekday morning book is entitled, “Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark by Julia Baird. It’s a combination of memoir and scientific findings, and reminds me a bit of Katherine May’s “Wintering”, which I love. I find myself highlighting occasional phrases or passages. Recently, I was struck by these lines, and jotted them down in my notebook:
“We spend a lot of time in life trying to make ourselves feel bigger–to project ourselves, occupy space, command attention, demand respect–so much so that we seem to have forgotten how comforting it can be to feel small and experience something greater than ourselves, something unfathomable, unconquerable and mysterious.”
I turned these words over and over in my mind. So often we think of being small in a negative sense. As being disempowered or vulnerable. To make someone feel small is to belittle or demean them. The idea that there is a flip side to this, that such a feeling might be positive, was intriguing to me.
Julia Baird goes on to write, “This sense of smallness seems to be a key to a true experience of awe.” She writes about how architects designed vast interiors in cathedrals to inspire “a sense of smallness, and consequently, awe.” She notes that researchers have tracked people’s reported experiences with awe and found that “on average, they encountered something that inspired awe every three days, such as ‘music played on a street corner at 2 am, individuals standing up to injustice, or autumnal leaves cascading from trees.'”
I mixed these ideas in my mind: feeling small, feeling awe.
Then, I went to the beach:
There is assuredly some comfort and peace to be found in feeling small.
Nix the comfort zone 
Your words and images are reminders of how small and really insignificant we all are in the universe. As you conclude, smallness contributes to the AWE!
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I was also thinking that looking at the small things in life contributes to awe. So much wonder in this world!
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What a wonderful quote! Thank you for sharing it. Your final line resonates with me. I think that “feeling small” is one of the reasons I too go to the coast as often as I can, even if only for a few hours (we live 1.5 hours from it). I’ve always felt that my whole being realigns when I stand at the edge of the surf and listen to the ocean’s roar. I’ve that that perhaps it was the rhythm of the tides, or maybe being at sea level. But now I think it is also the vastness around me that makes me feel small and complete.
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I think “realigns” is the perfect word to use! I know exactly what you mean by it!
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Your images of the vast sky alongside your words make me feel comforted by feeling small. Feeling awe. Merry Christmas!
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Merry Christmas to you, too!
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Three cheers for the small and for the awe.
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[…] too long ago, I wrote a blog post about the value of feeling small (here). This moment reminded me that there are times that feeling small and powerless is really just no […]
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This is one of the reasons that I have found going to services at my congregation important. In general, although it’s not a cathedral, sitting in the large room with the enormous windows out on to tall trees (that’s how UU building tend to be designed) has had that awe-inspiring smallifying effect–with words! And–forgive me for dumping here– this is what I miss now that “my” minister has moved on and we have an interim who tends toward the folksy and everyday in her manner. The service now just doesn’t offer the same service it once did, it lacks a certain gravity, a sense of stepping out of everyday life in which I always am striving to be large.
Thanks, Molly, for these two meditiations on “size.”
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