Awesome Wonder

In several other Pages in this lengthy series, covering four college years of personal conversations between the reader and me, I have referred to sublimity, sometimes reverie that may become special for devout persons.  To acknowledge that one has experienced it is to make the person open to an accusation of a kind of senility or fantasy that he or she wants to avoid, so as not to be written off in areas in which the person wants to make contribution.  It is worth dealing with in this series, principally for those, perhaps few or many in number, who experience spiritual sublimity, or hear about it from the witness of another.  I mention elsewhere that for a space of about two years, or thereabouts, I awakened in the morning with a clear sense of actually hearing a hymn.  It was like a dream, but was always a hymn I knew well.  The experience passed, not from any resistance on my part.  In fact, I was disappointed that the few minutes of sacred melodies and words had faded from my hearing before I made morning ablutions.  The experience comes in repeated episodes, goes away, leaving years of omission – and then returns.  It may be natural.

After seven or so years from the first experience somewhat changed, it returned.  It commonly occurs just before I go to rest late, or awaken in the night, or sitting at my desk.  It occurred and faded away after some minutes. Then, for some minutes, I reproduced in my memory what I heard.  What I heard sounded like a men’s choir of one voice with no instruments.  I have studied the occurrences in myself, knowing that I am of a sound mind, well educated, not given to fantasy, accepting life for what it is, and desiring to be normal to the day I die.  But, it happened again about a half hour ago while I was at my desk. I turned immediately to my computer to capture the moment, and found a day that fitted this kind of theme.  [The following pressed graciously on my consciousness: (Sunday -5/6/12 – 1:30 pm) – Awesome Wonder; then (Tuesday – 5/8/12 – 6:45 am) – Fairest Lord Jesus; then on (Wednesday. – 5/9/12 – 7:50 am) Jesus Loves Me.]  I am writing about it to help my own analysis and understanding – which is ongoing.  This time the words and music were again from the hymn Awesome Wonder.  The hymn originated, if I recall rightly, from the Swedish tradition, and like so many Swedish hymns, has a magnificent melody and appeal both for the human condition and a respect for God, and the work of God.  I do not remember that the hymns coming to mind have been repeated as one might expect in these reveries, but sometimes they appear again.  I will record the titles – if the beautiful moments return.  I may lose them now that I make public a private beauty that I perceive is a kind of prayer, growing out of daily dreaming that underlies what I have become in faith.  Because my primary preoccupation relates to spiritual issues, especially as they relate to life – mortal and immortal, I am not surprised that one is captured for some moments by an overflow of reverent worship from decades past.  Expressions of faith have become a part of me.  They seem special.  I doubt that they are meant to be explained.  One wonders if this pattern may be implied in the Psalms.  It might be daydreaming.

For several reasons, I include this private repetition of experience in these Pages.  When I first entered college, a fellow student noted that she had been held up in her own spiritual journey by thinking she had to have personal experience like that of another student.  She was able to proceed when she searched for spiritual truth and life on her own, taking responsibility for what she gained and living by it.  That mature insight was excellent.  There is something very personal in one’s spiritual quest that seems to belong only to that person.  One feels the force of this insight in the Apostles: Paul, John, and Peter.  The Apostle Paul reluctantly refers to spiritual experience he had that, dramatic, he is reticent to reveal.  I am sure he must have felt that others might feel inferior in that they did not have his experience.  We can be verified in faith. I wonder if the above may not be related to the Christian analogy of the spiritual substitute for drunkenness: And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. (Ephesians 5:18-19) There is a private worship that can give strength and verification to the person of faith, a worship that like nearly all else can be made into an oddity and obsession.  We want to be genuine.