Unity Connections

We are concluding our Summer of Awe series this Sunday with the grandeur of epiphany! Who doesn't love a good epiphany? Epiphanies are those big ‘aha’ moments whereby our current understanding of life gets rearranged in such a way that a whole new perspective suddenly becomes known. In his book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life , the author Dasher Keltner summarizes the experiences of epiphany from the participants in his study of awe as follows: “Around the world, people were awe struck by philosophical insights, scientific discoveries, metaphysical ideas, personal realizations, mathematical equations, and sudden disclosures that transform life in an instant. In each instance, the epiphany united facts, beliefs, values, intuitions, and images into a new system of understanding” (pg. 18). I have come to consider that we are in an experience of collective epiphany. Of course our individual experience of a new understanding depends on where w

Summer of Awe Series  I hope that you have been taking time to notice the plethora of opportunities for awe and wonder that life so freely affords us.   This Sunday we will consider the power and purpose of Mystical/Spiritual Awe. The term mystical here simply means a direct, personal experience of the Divine. There are a plethora of these opportunities to connect. As we discussed last week, many of us feel this powerful connection while “walking in the Cathedral of nature” as Dr. Lisa Miller puts it. In his book Awe , author Dasher Keltner explores how our spiritual life actually grows out of experiences of awe.   Keltner refers to mystical awe as “…the feelings of encountering what we call the Divine, {meaning} what we feel to be primary, true, good and omnipresent” (pg. 195). Such experiences draw us closer to the power and presence of the Divine within and all around us. They also fulfill a deep and fundamental human need. The awe-inspiring body of work recently published

  Wild Awe Last weekend while camping, I experienced firsthand the reprieve that time in nature  offers.  This was no doubt magnified by my concurrent reading of the book, Awe by Dacher Keltner. As the Universe would have it,I was literally reading the chapter on Wild Awe which speaks to the emerging science behind what so many of us have experienced in nature! Not surprisingly, a growing number of Americans report feeling the greatest connection with the Divine while in nature. I have long appreciated that experience myself without the need for scientific data, but it is truly awe inspiring to consider why that is and how it works. It seems to affirm the fullness of divine intelligence imbued in every aspect of life – including the energetic power of nature itself to calm our nervous systems and put us in touch with the majestic vastness of the cosmos, and our small, but powerful place within it. Keltner’s explanation for why he decided to embark on this study of awe is tell