A Feast of Awe

An intimate gathering of unexpected guests for a moment of rest, a moment of honesty, curiosity, and, quite possibly, a moment of awe.

“Every Feast will unfold differently and organically based on the ingredients of people in the room.
Every Feast does start from the same place. The fundamental belief that awe, wonder and enchantment are powerful forces. They power our sense of connection to each other and the planet. It reminds us that we're human. It can reframe how we see the world.”
- From the facilitator notes for a Feast of Awe

Last night, 6 partial strangers gathered in an art studio to talk about awe.

This was my second time organizing an event that I like to call 'A Feast of Awe' - a small gathering of individuals who come together from the environmental and social change space, all under the umbrella theme of reminiscing and rediscovering awe.

‘Awe’ is non-prescriptive. You can’t design for it. It kind of just happens. But what if we gathered people who don’t know much about each other (if at all) to share thoughts, ideas, and reflections on the ‘8 Wonders of Life’ most likely to induce awe. Those eight are:
- Moral Beauty (the goodness of people) 
- Collective Effervescence (that feeling you get when you’re dancing at a rave with thousands of people, or singing a song altogether at a concert, or praying in a large group).
- Nature
- Art
- Music
- Death
- Spirituality
- Epiphanies 

Before the gathering, I emailed everyone requesting them to refrain from introducing themselves by their LinkedIn titles when they arrived. Instead, we jumped straight into the conversation without the ‘network-y’ pre-amble. For a few hours, we experimented with connecting without any preconceived context. We were simply a group of people exploring the terrain of awe.

Little did I know that this group comprised of some awe-inspiring people; the director of one of the most influential environmental organizations in Canada, an artist whose work has become powerful symbols for the environmental movement, a philanthropist who has led development for the largest mother and child care center in Canada, a landscape artist whose paintings tell spectacular untold stories of the deep wood forests, and the founder of an international organization supporting women artisans and micro-entrepreneurs.

The ‘Feast’ itself started as a menu of conversation topics, and has since evolved to a small deck of cards including Appetizers, Main Meals, Dessert and even Digestif questions and prompts. The main objective was to communally nourish ourselves in a different way, recognizing that each Feast would unfold organically and uniquely, depending on the individuals present.

Everyone brought some food to share and sat around a small table to kick off the gathering. Some of the thoughts that were shared still echo in my brain. I’ve jotted them down at the end of this post.

The mechanics of The Feast of Awe is a work in progress, and I figured I would spend most of the next day thinking about ways to improve it. Despite doing a fair bit of that, I’ve been mostly immersed in this feeling of delight and surprise for the conversations that emerged and the emotions I felt. It’s been a week of anxiety and stress, but this Feast did more for me than I anticipated.  

I can’t say for certain if any of us experienced awe. But hearing people recount moments where they felt deeply connected to something vast and almost indescribable made me feel like I was, in turn, seeing the world through that lens. Without really searching for it, I started picking up on tiny hints of wonder today. I’ve hardly been anywhere awe-inspiring since last night, but this morning I made myself a frothy latte and became fascinated by the sound of the milk bubbles gurgling on my desk. For a moment, I bent my ear into my mug and giggled.

Maybe awe is contagious in that way.

If you’re interested in experimenting with a Feast of Awe, drop a comment below! I’ve made the first version of the guide available for download here while I work on improving the card version!

Thanks for reading.

- Laura

Anecdotes from the last Feast of Awe

• The speed of capitalism is different from the speed of life. Experiencing awe seems to happen when you’ve switched to the latter. 

• You can be a human ‘being’ and a human ‘doing’, simultaneously. 

• We are all story carriers, though we may not all be storytellers. 

• Awe is also fear. 

• Our lives are lived between two book ends. A front and a back cover. What matters is whether or not it’s a great book to read. 

• Awe exists in the macro - the incredible storms, the moon setting over a lake, the hike on the side of a mountain. But it can also exist when observing something as small as the fungus growing on your toe. A realization that you are, in fact, nature.

• Creating art can be a way to download nature’s messages and articulate them. Artists can be portals for nature’s messages.