In Awe of Death

My mom died from cancer when I was 14. Although her death wasn’t unexpected, it stunned me nonetheless.

One particular moment in the days following my mom’s death stands out. The night before the funeral, there was a wake in which her dead body was laid in an open casket so mourners could say their final goodbyes. For various reasons, I did not want to see my mom’s body, and I awkwardly tried to avoid it. Our priest – a good friend of mine, as well as my mom’s – must have noticed. He slowly walked up to me and, tenderly, asked if I’d like to go with him to see my mom one last time. He took my hand into his and we made our way. I believed I was supposed to feel sad and maybe even angry, and I felt those emotions as well. But, more than anything, as I gazed at my mom’s dead body, what I most felt was awe.

Dacher Keltner’s recently released book “Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life” most surprised me with its’ discussion of how often death evokes awe. In a study of 2,600 narratives coming from 26 countries, as described in the book, stories of death and awe were common. In a surprising demonstration of this, Keltner – the pioneering Berkeley psychologist most responsible for leading the way for a new science of awe – tells a story in the book similar to my own. As his beloved brother, Rolf, lay dying of cancer in front of him and his family, Keltner recounts:

“I felt small. Quiet. Humble. Pure. The boundaries that separated me from the outside world faded. I felt surrounded by something vast and warm. My mind was open, curious, aware, wondering.”

Keltner defines “awe” as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world.” Given this definition, it’s easy to see why death so often evokes awe. When I stood in front of my mom’s dead body, for instance, I felt dumbfounded by questions such as “where did my mom go?,” “what does life mean?,” and “what is eternity?” These vast mysteries went well beyond anything my 14-year-old mind (or any mind) can comprehend, but my wondering led me to develop curiosities and eventually gain insights that have impacted the rest of my life. Of course, I wish my mom had lived much longer. At the same time, I wouldn’t be the person I am today – in a positive sense – if I hadn’t had to face her death like I did.

This connection between death and awe is, at least in part, why so many people become so fascinated by the morbid. For example, dark tourism may enable individuals to feel awed and to probe essential issues of life, death, sacredness, and meaning. I have led courses in the Psychology of the Holocaust, for instance, including trips to Holocaust sites in Europe, and rarely have I seen students so absorbed or impacted by phenomena being studied as when we directly encountered the overwhelming memorials of death we visited.

JJ Montalban | Unsplash

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The Emotional Life of Jesus

When I imagine Jesus – similar to when I imagine the Buddha – what initially comes to mind is someone who was pretty emotionally flat or emotionally neutral. If there’s an emotion I associate with Jesus, it’s one of serenity. Maybe this is because, when I consider Jesus, my mind’s eye turns to paintings and statues I’ve seen throughout my lifetime, such as the one my mom hung in our living room when I was a boy. In these, Jesus seemed to be beyond human emotion.

Heinrich Hofmann’s 1894 Painting | Wikimedia Commons

I’ve long been fascinated by emotion. Part of what inspired my calling to Psychology as an undergraduate were experiences at the University of Wisconsin helping to do research in influential emotion labs exploring embarrassment (with Dacher Keltner) and interest (with Judy Harackiewicz). In graduate school, at the University of Minnesota, I conducted research investigating correlates of emotional well-being, including anxiety, depression, hostility, and happiness (with Pat Frazier). I’m generally curious about how individuals feel, and I watch for non-verbal indications of how people react to life. It seems to me that someone’s emotional life reveals something deeply important about who they are.

I’ve also long been a follower of Jesus. Surely, a lot of this has to do with being raised in a Christian family in an often times Christian-dominant culture. But, there’s also something about the stories of Jesus that intrigue me. There’s something about who Jesus was that seems different, countercultural, and stunning.

It wasn’t until recently that I started to seriously explore the intersection of these two parts of myself. That is, I’ve started to wonder about the actual – not the imagined – emotional life of Jesus. In contrast to the sense I’ve received in some parts of Christianity to which I’ve been exposed, as I read it now, Jesus was a person of deep, passionate emotional intensity.

To explore Jesus’s emotional life, I did a focused study of the Gospel of Mark. This Gospel generally is considered by Bible scholars to be the earliest Gospel – written about 40 years after Jesus’s death. As the progressive Bible scholar, Marcus Borg argued, this account of Jesus’s life likely includes elements of both metaphor and remembered history, but the emotions attributed to Jesus, as discussed below, seem most likely to be traceable to the historical Jesus. As one reads this Gospel, there’s also an evident sense of immediacy to it, which lends itself to an investigation of Jesus’s emotional life.

To better understand context, as I read through Mark, I noted passages that described where Jesus chose to spend his time. He seemed to spend a lot of his days by the water (1:16; 2:13; 3:7; 4:1; 5:1), in the mountains (3:13; 6:46), in Synagogue (1:21; 3:1; 6:2) and, maybe not surprising for someone who didn’t seem to have a home of his own, in other people’s homes (1:29; 2:15; 3:20; 14:3). He seemed to frequently withdraw into nature to get away from the demands of the crowds, and to pray (e.g., 1:35; 6:46). This begins to give an indirect glimpse into Jesus’s emotional life.

In looking for more direct descriptions, what most surprised me in studying the Gospel of Mark was how often Jesus seemed to experience great irritation, sometimes to the point of almost seeming impatient. Jesus was said to speak “sternly” (1:25). On several occasions, he was described as being “indignant” (1:41; 10:14). At one point, Jesus looked at his skeptics “in anger… deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts” (3:5). When he finds people selling in the temple courts, he drives them out, overturning tables in anger (11:15-17).

Being Moved by Story

In the past few months, I have become quasi-obsessed with the experience of being emotionally moved. I reported on new research about that experience a few weeks ago, and also discussed how someone sharing something “soulfelt” often might prompt a feeling of being moved or touched in others.

I suspect when one becomes more aware of an experience such as this, one starts to pay more attention to it. And so it has been with me.

Jennifer Isaac

A few weeks ago, my beloved college celebrated its 50th anniversary with a faculty & staff talent show. My friend and longtime collaborator, Jennifer Isaac, shared a Moth-award winning story about her brother that moved everyone in my aisle to tears. I suspect storytelling – along with a few other major modes of expression, such as music – are particularly likely to move people. With Jennifer’s permission, I share her edited story below. It’s also available by video beginning at around 1:21:00

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Flying: A Personal Story
By Jennifer Issac

Religious and Spiritual Struggle During Adversity

Marian Fontana was living a good life. She had been happily married to her husband, Dave, for 17 years, with whom she had a young son. Marian had frequent “conversations with God,” as she put it. As a normal part of her daily life, she would thank God for all that was going well and ask God to bless others in need.

Then came September 11^th, 2001.

When Marian saw the World Trade Center crumble on television, she knew her life was crumbling as well. Dave was a New York firefighter who was called to the scene. After sensing his death, her initial response was to wander into every church in her neighborhood to pray and pray and pray for Dave’s life. But, this prayer was to go unanswered.

After several months of total grief, Marian started to see beauty again. However, her spiritual life was different. As she stated in the PBS documentary, “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero:”

“I couldn’t believe that this God that I’d talked to in my own way for 35 years could… turn this loving man into bones. And I guess that’s when I felt that my faith was so weakened… My conversations with God that I used to have, I don’t have anymore… Now I can’t bring myself to speak to Him… because I feel so abandoned…”

Years later, Marian is doing better. She has written a memoir about her experience (“A Widow’s Walk”), and she reports being less angry. Yet, as she said in a live chat organized by PBS 10 years after Dave’s death, “[I] still don’t have conversations with God the way I used to.”