The title of the speech was short. Three letters, even.

Awe.

With such a modest preamble, I did not predict that I would be reining in tears like a corset. The presenter offered a menu of scenarios in which awe makes a showing. The first surprised me. 

Collective Effervescence is the name she pinned to those events where a crowd of people are caught up together in excitement. A concert, a stadium full of fans, a parade, and a wedding can each offer enough joy to pour into each person in a way that erases isolation. 

Nature was the second flavor of awe. When we witness the vast expanse of a mountain range, or a murmuration of birds, or a smattering of stars, we feel an inner connection almost as if we too are majestic, or flying in sync, or neighbors of the moon. 

Music made the list. Even though I know this, and have been reminded many times, it still catches me unaware when the notes begin their dance. Benjamin does not consider it too early for Christmas songs, and their effect on me is instantaneous. 

Visual Design is perhaps a fancy name for art. I confess that when I saw the Mona Lisa in person I was preoccupied by an intense conversation with my daughter and the masterpiece did not garner my attention. But I have been shushed by the presence of a ballroom full of quilts, telling myself that the creators of these pieces deserve whatever they ask for in life. 

Spiritual awe was next on the speaker's list. I have met this one in prayer, and in praise, and in the wonder of a newborn baby. 

Life and Death are a pair of conjoined twins. The death of my own stubbornness gives life to trust in God. In a blood and bones way, feeling the miracle of a first breath, or a last gasp brings us to that threshold of eternity where words do not suffice. 

The speaker's last example was Moral Beauty. Rather than offer the audience an explanation, she gave us proof. One was a story of forgiveness, to such a degree that my heart began to shake. Then she showed a video of a boy whose body did not behave, yet whose father filled in with his own limbs to take them on races and runs and swims. The boy's disability became the excuse for heroics and sacrifice to fill in the gaps. 

I happened to be sitting next to a woman whose own son had wrestled with physical tethers, but is now an angel. My own son, the one who loves Winter Wonderland, still presses against his limitations. But seeing this child being given wings by his father broke me. What will my own child's flight be like? What mountains will be his to climb? What stars to wish on? Not because Benjamin's own father has the stamina to carry him, the one who is pushing seventy. But because his Heavenly Father does.