Let the Whole Church say, “Wow!”

In the last few days before my dad’s death a few years back, we moved him from his apartment living room into the spare bedroom of their apartment. He had been in and out of consciousness, and his bed was set up facing a wall. I think it was my wife, Lynne, who suggested that we rotate him so that he now faced a window when he sat up and could see outside. It was on that day (a day or so before he died) that he started to say, “Wow!” about everything. When he saw my mom, he’d say, “Wow!” When we showed him a picture of his deceased son, Matthew. “Wow!” When family, visitors or nurses came in. “Wow!” Even when he was just looking outside. “Wow!”

He was in a state of crossing over at that point and taught us a powerful lesson about awe and appreciation.

In today’s gospel, Jesus takes his friends, Peter, James and John, up the mountain with him, and Jesus is transfigured before their eyes. This was a mountain-top, wow kind of moment.

I wrote in a homily a few years back, “When we’re on the mountain top, we get this sense of love and belonging that we may not get in everyday life.  It may not always be as profound or grand as in the gospel – but these experiences open us up and give us a sense of reassurance, connection or even just a knowing that everything is going to be OK.”

I have always loved the spiritual writer Anne Lamott who names, “Wow!” as one of her 3 essential prayers (with the other two being Help and Thanks as described in her book Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers). She says that these mountain moments are “wow” moments “because you are almost speechless, but not quite,” and goes on to say that “when we are stunned to the place beyond words, spiritually we’re finally starting to get somewhere.”  And she says that WOW is a prayer that we can and need to say – over and over again.

Wow can happen under so many circumstances, and Lamott says that there are uppercase WOW’s and lowercase wow’s.  They sometimes come when we least expect it and in the strangest places.

When we say, “Wow!” we’re acknowledging something bigger than us – that we are a part of – but that we are not in charge of. In many ways, it “rightsizes” us and helps us to remember that this world is not just a mess of pain, loss and hardship. There is beauty here. There is joy here. There is connection here.

I also find that awe and gratitude go together often, and the more wow’s I have the more grateful I become.

One message from today’s scriptures is that our God is an awe-some God and that our world is an awe-some world. Pausing (hopefully often) to let wonder and beauty in as we say, “Wow!” is as important a prayer as any that we can say.

And to give a slight new twist to a line that Fr. Jim says at the end of mass, “And let the whole church say….Wow!”