Scott’s Column: More on Awe

Often I get asked after a sermon, “What’s that book you mentioned?”

For our autumn series on Awe, the main text I’ve used is Dacher Keltner’s Awe: A New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.  

There are also many other books I’ve referenced as part of this sermon series.  I thought I’d list them all in one place in case you want to follow up on any of the topics.

Introducing this series, I also used Mark Leary’s The Curse of the Self, which also reappeared in my sermon on mystical awe, about how to quiet the self.

That Sunday I talked about the physiological responses to awe, including crying.  Recently (well after the sermon, so I didn’t use it that week) the New York Times had an article exploring why humans cry and the different types of crying we do.  Check it out.

On Moral Beauty, I also used David Brooks’ Road to Character, a really good book in which he explores a handful of historical figures and what moral virtues we might learn from their lives.  The book ends with what he calls “The Humility Code” which is a great summarization of a life of good character.

Preaching on Wild Awe, I used William Wordsworth’s The Prelude, Loren Eiseley’s essay “The Flow of the River,” and David George Haskell’s The Forest Unseen.  I also referenced Hannah Malcolm’s Words for a Dying World on the grief we are experiencing as the climate changes.

World Communion Sunday, we stepped aside from Keltner’s Wonders of Life for one Sunday, but I did talk about the wonder of communion.  I used Mary Luti’s new book Do This: Communion for Just and Courageous Living.

When I preached on Collective Effervescence I talked about the importance of dancing in a group.  The philosopher Martha Nussbaum reflected on the role dancing played in Rabindranath Tagore’s efforts to create an Indian national consciousness.  I talked about this discussion in her book Political Emotions.

For Musical Awe, I relied a lot on Emily & Don Saliers’ A Song to Sing, A Life to Live: Reflections on Music as Spiritual Practice.  On the origins of music, I referenced Ted Gioia’s Music: A Subversive History.

The role of awe at the beginning and ending of life drew me to research two texts that often undergird my thinking, even when I don’t mention them in the sermon–Allison Gopnik’s The Philosophical Baby and Martha Nussbaum’s Upheavals of Thought.  One bit of Nussbaum I did reference, was her idea that grief is a type of wonder.  Michael Cholbi’s Grief: A Philosophical Guide was also helpful in this sermon.

In my sermon on Sacred Geometries, the moments of awe in reaction to visual designs, I used video game designer Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken.  Susan Sink’s discussion in The Art of the St. John’s Bible was the first place I turned in trying to start a sermon on this topic.

For Mystical Awe I returned to William James’s discussion of mysticism in his Varieties of Religious Experience.  I drew even more from David Yaden and Andrew Newberg’s recent updating of James with the latest neuroscience in The Varieties of Spiritual Experience.  I also read an excerpt from Michael Pollan’s bestselling book on psychedelics, How to Change Your Mind.  And I took one idea from Cassiday Hall’s new book Queering Contemplation, which one of you asked about after worship wanting to know more about.

I haven’t yet written the final sermon for this series, which will discuss epiphanies.  I’m considering using something from Susan Neiman’s discussion of wonder to help us combat evil from her book Evil in Modern Thought.  But I’m not yet sure where the reading, research, and study will lead me this week.