Gazing at the Cross with Awe
Smudged cross of ashes on my forehead, I walk back to my seat. The desire for closeness with God begins to soften my hardened heart as I am reminded that I am dust. From the dust I was created and to the dust I will return. This truth profoundly humbles me every time. Created from the ground by God who created the whole cosmos, the grit and dirt of these ashes corporeally help stop me in my tracks. I can then take a long, loving look at where my heart is directed and repent. I begin to return once again to God who created me. Once again. I’ve been here before. Just last year, in fact. You’d think God would have had enough of my willful resistance (hardened heart) to signs of God’s presence or the prophet’s voice I so easily ignore. And, yet, God never stops loving and forgiving. God never stops being God.
In the 6th century BC, the Prophet Ezekiel exclaimed with zeal, “make yourselves a new heart. Why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies, says the Lord God. Return and live!” (18:30-32). The Book of Sirach also speaks to us: “Do not delay turning back to the Lord, do not put it off day after day” (5:1-7). In other words, don’t take God’s mercy for granted. Except, we do. Often and without apology, we “put off” responding to God’s adjuration to return and live. There is nothing passive about God’s appeal, but we ignore it so often because we can and because we live under the pretense that we have all the time in the world as our lives traipse by. The ashes, though, bring us back to the earth and back to the truth of things. We are invited, always, to return to the ground of our being, the ground of the soul, the birth of God in the soul as Meister Eckhart* so aptly expressed it in the 14th century. He taught this idea of der grund, a German term for the ground of our soul, where God’s mystery resides in us. We must let go of what we think we know in order to go to the ground, to the truth hidden in the mystery of God. It requires a descent and expansion of one’s mind and heart while allowing God to be God. When we stop trying to mold God into something we can fully accept and comprehend, we can step into God’s mystery.
How do we move from a hardened heart to an expanded heart in this mystery? An expanded heart welcomes the mystery of God, the mystery of Jesus’ life and death on a cross that continues to reveal itself over time. Often, our egos block us from seeing reality. I have to ask myself regularly, “Who am I to assume that I know more than God?” Job, a popular figure in the Hebrew Scriptures, puts his hand over his mouth after God humbles him and reminds him of his ignorance and utter dependence on God:
“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:...Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements–surely you know!...Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?...when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band,...and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped?’ Have you commanded the morning since your days began,...’ Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this.” (Job 38:1, 4-5, 8-9,11-12,16-18)
God continues and challenges Job, who finally responds, “See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth.” (Job 40:4)
Job’s willful resistance, caused by his ego, dissipated as God’s words became clear. It’s as if God is saying to us: “You know nothing. I know all.” I wish we all would just cover our mouths in order to stop speaking every once in a while. Maybe then, we’d better hear God’s voice.
Moving towards humility and an expanded heart requires what Richard Rohr, OFM calls a “path of descent,” characteristic of Jesus’ teachings and ministry that led him to death on a cross. Father Rohr wrote, “[For us, as with Jesus,] the path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.” In the ground of our beings, we relate the ashes to our conversion as we hope to see God’s truth more clearly. Without the humility needed to open ourselves to truth, we cannot grow spiritually. Father Rohr explains that, In order to grow, we can’t presume that we can see the truth of things and we need to be open to see something as if for the first time. While it’s difficult to vulnerably admit that we can’t see all truth or to admit we don’t know something, it’s crucial for us to begin to see as God sees. In order to do so, we must return to der grund, to the mystery of God, and see with eyes of awe and wonder. Inevitably, then, humility teaches us how to see God’s truth with more clarity.
Humility is the key to wonder. As humility grows, wonder deepens. You will see yourself as a temporary expression of God’s infinite and timeless unfolding. Aware of your impermanence, you become brother and sister to all life. You realize the common fate of all beings and find in that realization a compassion that embraces all beings. –Rami Shapiro, The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness
In a 2023 interview, Dr. Dacher Keltner** spoke about his two decades of research into the science of awe. In his book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life, Keltner defines awe as “moments when we have a sense of wonder, an experience of mystery, that transcends our understanding.” In order to live a good life, he writes, one must “find awe.” While the most common source of awe is in the moral beauty of other people, such as their “courage, kindness, strength, or overcoming,” awe can also be found in other ways, including the surrounding natural world. What I have found remarkable is that finding awe in the everyday can stop us in our tracks, hold us in amazed stillness and expand our hearts in the moment if we respond with openness and humility.
Finding Awe
I sat down to brainstorm the moments of awe in my own life, big and small. In the process, moments of joy came to mind. Jacob and Samantha, my 20-year-old twin children, love to hang out together. They often exchange witty quotes or funny stories. From the time they were a few months old, Samantha had the ability to make Jacob belly laugh like no one else. She was just looking at him with a huge smile on her face, bouncing around in her way, and he would simply crack up. He was mesmerized by her at times. My husband Doug and I would watch this happening, not able to hold a straight face, and just soak it in. We were, indeed, awestruck at the pure joy of their laughter. Today, they still banter with each other, making the other laugh. Witnessing their relationship “drives us out of ourselves, for joy” (Pope Francis).
Moments of awe and wonder are moments that are bigger than ourselves. These moments help us to return to the ground of our being, to what is real and true, even in moments of great sorrow. I will hold timeless the day the World Trade Center twin towers collapsed, killing over 2,400 people, on September 11, 2001. It literally rendered me motionless when, upon walking past a high school classroom in Indianapolis, I peered in to see the television on with live coverage of New York City’s twin towers, one with pillars of smoke rising skyward as news commentators tried to make sense of what had just happened. I sat down in a desk with the students and watched, with awe and fear, as a second plane collided with the second tower. Shortly after, the first tower fell. Time stood still for me, for all of us, as the unbelievable reality of a terrorist attack on American soil was taking place in front of our eyes.
Sometimes moments of awe and wonder are filled with both beauty and sorrow at the same time. The day before my mother’s passing, I sat in the hospital room with eight of my siblings in awed silence as we listened to her labored breathing. A conversation ensued about the difficulty of caring for our aging father. During the discussion, my mom’s breathing had increased in intensity. In response, my brother, Greg, stood up and walked to her side. Greg said clearly and confidently in my mother’s ear, “Mom, we promise to take care of Dad. We won’t abandon him. We’ll do all we can for him.” My mother’s breathing slowed significantly, as if those were the exact words she needed to hear. In stunned amazement, no one said a word and we all wondered if then she would finally let go. She passed away the next morning.
Dr. Keltner teaches that awe occurs when we witness acts of courage, selflessness, love, kindness and compassion as well as suffering. As I contemplate my children, the aftermath of 9/11 and all of the heroic acts of the first responders, and my siblings in the wake of my mother’s death in 2011 along with their generosity and acts of love toward my father since then, awe and wonder resound in my soul, the ground of my being. As a follower of Christ, though, it is Jesus’ life and how he faced his arrest, trial, torture and death with stunning humility that brings me to my knees.
Jesus’ Life and Death
Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat, but if it dies it brings much fruit. (John 12:24-26)
Jesus began his ministry in full following the death of John the Baptist. Not at all what the people of Judea or the church leaders expected in a Messiah, Jesus soon made it clear where he stood, in the ground of his being. His journey began with the message of repentance as he emerged from the desert and we could say that Jesus’ heart expanded as he began healing and restoring the outcasts, the untouchables and the impure in his midst. What stopped Jesus in his tracks? The sincerity and longing with which the poor and forgotten literally reached for him in order to be healed. The scribes, Pharisees and elders of the temple did not need healing, in their own estimation. Instead they desired someone to bolster what they perceived to be most important and necessary for a life of honor and a place at the heavenly banquet. In their minds, following the Law of the Torah exactly rendered them perfectly worthy in God’s eyes. Their reality did not match Jesus’ reality. They were grains of wheat that refused to fall because they were confident of their own truth. They simply wanted Jesus to validate what they already professed and how they already lived. A “path of descent” or humility would mess with their vision of God's kingdom and how one earned that right. They did not desire change or transformation. They knew already what was needed, leaving no room for Jesus’ concept of an expansion of who they thought deserved God’s mercy.
I am fascinated by how awe moves me to stillness, humbles me and expands my heart. I can only gaze at the cross, now a symbol of the ultimate act of love known by humanity. I gaze at the ultimate act of descent and surrender to people (including his own disciples who he had traveled with for three years) who did not understand Jesus. His closest companions could not figure him out until afterwards when he rose from the dead and Jesus revealed himself to them. In the moment of greatest suffering, they abandoned him because of misunderstanding, fear and doubt. I am awestruck by Jesus’ loyalty to God and determination to do what he needed to do. As human and divine at the same time, Jesus felt every pain, physical and emotional, trusting in God’s vision for the world. Sometimes when we know something is going to be painful, we try to imagine it in order to prepare ourselves for it. I imagine Jesus, who knew well how to live in the present moment, received each blow, including the abandonment of his friends and family, one moment at a time. I ground myself, facing the cross, facing my own crosses that I carry each day, and try to remember that I am not alone. I have not been abandoned, even in my darkest hours.
With humility and opened hearts, we gaze at the crucified one, knowing that, “Jesus on the cross is life’s compass” (Pope Francis, Ash Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020). Knowing this, we can hear the Prophet Micah’s words anew: “You have been told, O mortal, what is good, to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) While Jesus’ humility is unsurpassed, we believe that God’s justice and mercy do not echo the world’s notions. Always favorable to the forgotten, neglected, poor and marginalized members of our society, Jesus showed us a different way to love our neighbor. Jesus, himself, was forgotten, neglected, poor and marginalized in his passion and suffering. Jesus’ humility halts our very steps.
Howard Thurman (1899-1981), American author, philosopher, theologian, mystic, educator and civil rights leader, wrote the following:
How do you walk humbly with God? How do you? How do you walk humbly with anybody?...[By] coming to grips with who I am, what I am as acutely and as fully as possible: a clear-eyed appraisal of myself. And in the light of the dignity of my own sense of being I walk with God step by step as [God] walks with me. This is I, with my weaknesses and my strength, with my abilities and my liabilities; this is I, a human being myself! And it is that that God salutes. So that the more I walk with God and God walks with me, the more I come into the full-orbed significance of who I am and what I am. This is to walk humbly with God.
Gazing at the crucifix, I can pray with confidence Pope Francis’ prayer, “Jesus you love me–transform me. Jesus you love me–transform me.” With all humility, I can be my truest self, standing in the ground of my being, as signified by the ashes, as I allow God to expand my heart and mind and step into God’s mystery with awe and wonder.
“Ashes are thus a reminder of the direction of our existence: a passage from dust to life. We are dust, earth, clay, but if we allow ourselves to be shaped by the hands of God, we become something wondrous.” (Pope Francis, Ash Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020)
Call to Action: In the comments below, reflect on how receiving ashes is meaningful for you. Or share moments of awe and wonder in your own life. How does Jesus’ ultimate gift of love stir in you awe and humility?
Blog Notes:
*Meister Eckhart (1260-1327) was a German mystic, Catholic theologian and philosopher.
**Dr. Dacher Keltner, interviewed by Krista Tippett of On Being, is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Greater Good Science Center. He is known as an emotion scientist.
Song for Contemplation: “Beautiful Things” by Gungor
