Verse 72 of the Tao Te Ching says

“When people lack a sense of awe,

there will be disaster.”*  

Lacking a sense of awe, of wonder at the beauty, variety, and miracle of life, we cut ourselves off from spiritual power, closing ourselves to anything greater than ourselves. We see life as mundane, not a mystery, as a given, rather than a gift. 

Without awe, we are a pinball, bouncing from bumper to bumper, setting off lights but unaffected by the contact. 

The disaster Lao Tzu warns of is not some foreshadowed doom. It is simply the lost opportunity. Without awe, we are not truly alive. 

Plants seek the sun. They send out branches in new directions and 

   angle their leaves away from each other to gain as much access as possible to life-giving light.

People, worried by warnings, put on sunblock. They become afraid of life. We turn the source of life into an object of fear—a threat.  

Lacking a sense of awe, we turn this powerful force into something awful.  

Without awe, we become seduced by the material, addicted to stimulation—focused on the satisfaction of wants, which can never be fully satisfied because they are appetites and thus recur. We move in the everyday world, caught up in the coming and going, the to-ing and fro-ing, instead of experiencing life. We pervert life, twisting it into a mere sequence of transactions.  

The disaster is buying and selling flowers, rather than gazing at and smelling them.  

Sitting on our front porch, I see a butterfly alight on the purple butterfly bush to feed. It is small and largely black—nothing spectacular, it would seem. But it has a spot of bright orange and one of pure white on each wing, small dots of color that shine in the sun, exalting its otherwise drab appearance and revealing itself as a creature of wonder, a small piece of beautiful creation. 

Some of the leaves of the butterfly bush catch the rays of the sun at such a perfect angle that they sparkle in dozens of places, tiny dots painted on a green canvas like a dew-bejewelled meadow glistening in the sun or some magnificent night sky full of stars that glitter against a canopy magically turned green. 

The opportunity for awe is all around us.   

* This is, of course, only one version of the Tao. Several other versions give this verse a more political cast. I prefer to think of the Tao as a guide to the spirit rather than as a handbook for princes. (Though it certainly has much advice for the sage-ruler.)  

Words and picture © 2009 AtHome Pilgrim.

All Rights Reserved.