Awestruck

Dear Brandeis community,

Last week, Sandee Bisson shared an article with Nicholas Cole-Farrell and me, entitled “Why Scientists Say Experiencing Awe Can Help You Live Your Best Life.” In it, psychologists and researchers share their work on how the feeling of awe can boost health, wellbeing, and our capacity to connect to other people. Sandee was excited, as were we, because awe is central to our work in the CREATE and BUILD spaces (the A in CREATE stands for “Awe,” in fact), rooted in Rabbi Heschel’s description of awe as that which reminds us that life takes place under wide horizons. In fact, when we set about articulating ethical creativity as a model—an approach to design thinking that embeds Jewish ethics in both the process and the outcomes—we put awe and wonder front and center:

As was the case when we encountered the work of Dr. Lisa Miller at Columbia University, it is always affirming to find researchers exploring the scientific causes for the value of what we do. (And if any of you know Dr. Craig Anderson at UCSF, whose work is cited in the article, please put me in touch!)

This morning, I was struck by another invocation of awe, in poet Adrienne Rich’s debut collection from 1951, titled A Change of World. I am much more familiar with Rich’s work from the 1970s, which established her as a feminist icon, but I saw a reprint of the 1951 book at a shop recently and picked it up. The poems are formal and much more decorous than the work that made her name—but they are exquisite. I’ll end here with “Vertigo,” and its demands for signs and wonders.

As for me, I distrust the commonplace;

Demand and am receiving marvels, signs,

Miracles wrought in air, acted in space

After imagination's own designs.

The lion and the tiger pace this way

As often as I call; the flight of wings

Surprises empty air, while out of clay

The golden-gourded vine unwatered springs.

I have inhaled impossibility,

And walk at such an angle, all the stars

Have hung their carnival chains of light for me:

There is a streetcar runs from here to Mars.