Three men known to be wise, three men whose years of study and learning had brought them to the brink of leaving home and books behind, three men accustomed to pondering in comfort, packed up three camels with a few blankets, some hard tack and took off across a vast desert. 

They travelled by night so they could follow a certain star that hung in a sky billowing with stars.  And oh, what a sight!  It was as if the canvas of knowledge they had carefully composed and painted in their imagination was ripped open, and the mystery and miracle of the universe exploded around them. 

Night after night, they travelled through wilderness, the stars glittering and sifting around them, while the leading star shone steadily.

Moving through darkness, swaying to the gait of their camels, they were guided by the light of their faith in one star and sustained by awe.

In his Meditation, Father Rohr has this to say about the relationship between awe and wisdom.  “Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.” 

The shepherds, too, were stunned by awe, also outside, at night, and under the stars.  An angel among the stars tells them they will find the Savior for all humanity as a baby lying in a livestock manger.  They believe and make haste to behold and bring him praise.  They, too, were wise.

For both the shepherds and the wise men, the revelation and the message are given and received outside, in God’s created universe.   This setting is no casual detail.  It is essential to the meaning of the story.  God’s universe, God’s planet Earth and all its creatures including us are filled with God’s Spirit.  When we respond to the creation, we feel awe.  We are connected with the transcendent.  We sense God.

Rohr draws a line from awe to faith.  “Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition; faith is attachment to transcendence, to the meaning beyond the mystery…  Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith.” 

Is the sickness at the root of the destruction of our environment, our fellow creatures – and consequently, ourselves -- the refusal to feel awe and wonder? Those who would turn our world into a market place think only of money, power and winning.  They dismiss and disparage anything that might prick them with awe.  They do not allow themselves to be changed by the transcendent beauty and mystery of nature or of love.  They would not have heard the deafening angel choir shouting hallelujah amongst blazing stars and they certainly would not have been  caught dead falling on their knees! 

At this moment, the actions of the Trump Administration are threatening to turn our national forests and national parks into a marketplace for oil, timber and minerals. They have gutted the work force of the national forests and have announced the roll back  of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule which for 25 years has protected 44 million acres of America’s last wild forests and their towering old growth. 

An amendment has recently been introduced in Congress that would rescind the Department of Interior’s obligation to manage and maintain our national parks.  Without this fundamental directive, our parks will be laid wide open to exploitation by private interests.

Appallingly, a marketplace is proposed  and poised to invade the Western Arctic and the Arctic Refuge.  These vast, Alaskan lands lit in otherworldly pinks and lavenders in winter and infused with life and light in summer, are breeding grounds for birds that span both hemispheres, the home of the last great caribou herds and polar bears who are already struggling to survive in a warming planet.  Wetland fringed coastal plains, upland tundra and mountain peaks drained by clear rivers constitute one of the planet’s most biologically dynamic ecosystems.  The American Arctic epitomizes the spirit of wilderness, the planet God created.  Indigenous people, now desperately organizing to resist the destruction, call it “The Sacred Place Where Life Begins”.

We seek out wilderness – whether the hushed paths of the Redwood forests, or the well-trod ways through forest preserve and lakefront.  We seek the centering and healing, moments of awe and the awareness of the transcendent.  Gratefully, we remember that we are part of, not at the center of, the universe.  As the shepherds trembled at the skies inhabited by angels and the Three Kings trusted the one star in  star filled nights,  we, too, need these experiences of awe to help us on the road to wisdom.  

A holy enchantment radiates from the world our God created for all.  It sings God’s spirit.  We dig it up, cut it down, drill into it and poison it at the peril of our own souls.

https://www.protectthearctic.org/i-can-help

https://act.wilderness.org/a/roadlessrepeal-nl

*Father Richard Rohr is an influential Franciscan thinker, writer and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation.   His most famous book to date is The Universal Christ.

----Melissa Foster