The Sublime

In the opening passages of The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis describes the difference between the sublime and the pretty.

Lewis calls upon Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s story of two tourists standing before a magnificent waterfall. One called it sublime; the other called it pretty. The first one got it right, in Lewis’s estimation; the second did not. “Pretty” might be the right word for a delicate alpine flower, something that reminds us of God’s wisdom and care (“Consider the lilies of the field…”); but the sublime speaks to a display of the overwhelming scope and force of nature, reminding us of God’s majesty and our small place in the overall scheme of things (“Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord…”).

One of my first experiences of the sublime occurred when I was in middle school, at a YMCA summer camp in the San Bernardino mountains of southern California. One day we hiked up to a high meadow, and, for the night, spread out our sleeping bags on the ground. No tents. When night fell, I patted out my makeshift mattress of pine needles, crawled into my sleeping bag, and turned over to observe the sky. I was completely unprepared for the scene above me, a teeming crowd of stars with their display of brilliant infinities. I felt like I was free-falling through the universe. It was deeply unsettling, almost terrifying. I had to turn over and hug the ground if I was going to sleep.

Later, when I was 20, I spent an evening in the chalet of a British mountain climber in the Swiss Alps of Canton Vaud. A violent electrical storm was coming up from the Rhône Valley, flashes momentarily illuminating the rugged outlines of the Petit and Grand Muveran before us. He turned off all the lights, threw open the draperies, and stood before the living room window to take in the overpowering show of force in this, the “theater of God’s glory” (as Calvin put it). It was his habit to do so.

These days, I am rarely aware of the stars above me. At night, I have a roof overhead. West Michigan skies are often cloudy; even on clear nights, urban light pollution dims all but the brightest bodies. When thunderstorms come, I batten down the hatches and try to ignore them. I wonder, though, if we do ourselves a favor by insulating ourselves from the power and magnitude of nature, the raw experience of the sublime and its pointed lessons in humility—so familiar to the psalmist and yet so rare for us. 

Years ago I read an article by a fellow who argued that the rise of atheism in the west was largely due to our over-engineered lack of awareness of the celestial dome above. I first rejected the explanation out of hand. But later I thought there might be something to it. After all, a thinker of no less weight than Immanuel Kant claimed that the experience of the “starry heavens above” triggers in us a sense of awe and reverence. The passage, from the concluding portion of the Critique of Practical Reason, is inscribed on his tombstone.

Now I am of two minds about the matter. Does the “sensus divinitatis,” as Calvin referred to our awareness of divine majesty, lie largely dormant within us for lack of appropriate circumstances? Might backpacking become a spiritual discipline for our times? Or, at least, a little unprotected exposure to the elements? Would stepping out from our sheltered existence from time to time put us in auditory range of the heavens as they pour forth speech that declares the glory of God, teaching—or reminding—us of the first lesson in true piety in an age short on awe and reverence but long on pride?

Header Photo by Gregory Hayes on Unsplash
Lightning photo by Brandon Morgan on Unsplash