“Hey! How you been, Ray?”
He replied: “I just wake up every day and think about what I can do to make people happy.”
The goose bumps rise on my arms . . .
“Wow, Ray, you are an amazing person, my friend. Now tell me about what brought you in to the hospital?”
Ray fills me in on the details in the slightly strained and slurred speech that sometimes comes with cerebral palsy. My mind goes to work trying to diagnose this mysterious case of happiness.
We chat for another ten minutes about God and love and looking out for one another.
Finally, I say, “Sorry Ray, I gotta go . . .”
Leaving the room, I feel enlivened, yet also strangely humbled.
Encounters with moral beauty can take us aback, as in Leif’s story of awe—they have the power of an epiphany or unforgettable scene in a novel or movie. Philosophical analyses of spiritual epiphany, and novelists’ portrayals of personal epiphany, find that the experience is imbued with a sense of light, clarity, truth, and the sharpened recognition of what really matters. Leif’s story is titled accordingly—“A Ray of Light”—and follows the patterned unfolding of awe. Ray’s overcoming cerebral palsy strikes Leif as vast and mysterious. Ray’s generosity shifts Leif from his default self’s doctor-patient checklist to appreciating Ray’s kindness. Leif wonders why Ray is so happy. His body registers Ray’s goodness in goose bumps, a bodily reminder of being part of something larger than the self. He feels “enlivened” and humbled.
Empirical studies have charted the power of witnessing others’ courage, kindness, strength, and overcoming. In a study typical of this literature, people first view a brief video of an inspiring act—of Mother Teresa, for example, or Desmond Tutu—or a moving teacher. Or participants are asked to simply recall a personal encounter with everyday moral beauty. These encounters lead people to feel more inspired and optimistic. They feel more integrated in their community—that expanding circle of care. Their faith in their fellow humans and hope for the human prospect rises. They hear a voice akin to a calling to become a better person, and they often imitate others’ acts of courage, kindness, strength, and overcoming. Or they share stories of moral beauty with others, like the Norwegian who read the news story about the courageous Yemeni girl. Witnessing acts of moral beauty prompts us more generally to be ready to share and lend a helping hand.
In a compelling study in this vein, participants watched one of three videos. The first was a short clip from the television show 60 Minutes about Amy Biehl, a white American college student who was murdered by Black youths in South Africa. In their grief, her parents created the Amy Biehl Foundation (now called the Amy Foundation), funding youth programs that help underprivileged Black South Africans to better their lives. Or participants watched a feature about Joel Sonnenberg, who, at twenty-two months old, was badly burned when Reginald Dort slammed his truck into Sonnenberg’s family car while trying to crash into a woman he knew. Joel needed forty-five surgeries to survive. At Dort’s sentencing, which occurred years after the incident, Joel was the last to speak:
This is my prayer for you—that you may know that grace has no limits. We will not consume our lives with hatred because hatred brings only misery. We will surround our lives with love.
After watching one of these videos or a control video, the participants—white college students in the United States—could give money to the United Negro College Fund. The twist was that some of these white students had reported high levels of “social dominance orientation,” or SDO, an attitude that predicts increased prejudice toward Black people. Hearing the stories of Amy Biehl and Joel Sonnenberg, though, led participants to give more money to the United Negro College Fund, including white participants with strong SDO attitudes. The awe felt in encountering humanity’s better angels can counter toxic tribal tendencies.
Witnessing others’ acts of courage, kindness, strength, and overcoming activates different regions of the brain than those activated by physical beauty, namely cortical regions where our emotions translate to ethical action. These encounters lead to the release of oxytocin and activation of the vagus nerve. We often sense tears and goose bumps, our body’s signals that we are part of a community appreciating what unites us. When moved by the wonders of others, the soul in our bodies is awakened, and acts of reverence often quickly follow.
Reverence
As a child in Xalapa, Mexico—the “City of Flowers”—Yuyi Morales passed the days wondering about extraterrestrials, sometimes hoping they would take her away. Years later, when her son was two months old, her partner learned that his grandfather in San Francisco was very ill. They worried that Grandpa Ernie wouldn’t get to meet his only grandchild, so they left in a rush, saying goodbye only to Yuyi’s mother.
Once in San Francisco, Yuyi was prevented by immigration law from returning to Mexico. Lonely and isolated, speaking only a few words of English, she struggled. Caring for the new baby exhausted her. She knew no one. Every day, she cried.
So she took to walking.
She wandered the streets of San Francisco with her son in a stroller. One day, she discovered a public library and ventured in. There, in the quiet of a public space, a librarian transformed Yuyi’s life. She introduced Yuyi to books. Awestruck, Yuyi would learn to read English. She began sketching scenes from her imagination, which would become her own children’s books, including two about people of moral beauty to her—Frida Kahlo and Cesar Chavez—that have won international awards, most notably the Caldecott Medal. Yuyi’s most recent book, Dreamers, has an unusual hero—a librarian, archiving the wonders of moral beauty, and allowing goodness its own speech for the people checking out books.
When I spoke with Yuyi, she shared a letter of gratitude she sent to the librarian who inspired the story, whose name is Nancy:
Hola Nancy,
Do you remember me? I could never forget you. True, at first I might have been scared of you, guardian at your desk, and too close to the basket of baby books that my son always walked towards when we entered this unbelievable place. The children’s book section of the Western Addition public library.
At first I might have been afraid of you. What if I made a mistake? Or broke the library rules? Would you tell us to leave the library because we didn’t belong? Instead one day, you talk to me, in English I didn’t quite understand, and before we knew it, you were giving Kelly a library card. I was puzzled. Kelly was barely two years old. How could he have anything?
Today, Kelly is a 24-year-old lover of books. He also writes. And he often helps me review and correct my still imperfect English when I write the children’s books I create. Books like the ones you put in my hands. Nancy, ever since the library became my home, and books became my path for growth, you have been an amazing guardian. Thank you.
Yuyi’s letter of gratitude is one of many acts of reverence in which we appreciate moral beauty, and, more generally, mark the wonders of life as sacred. Subtle is everyday reverence—how we shift our speech with compliments, solicitous questions, and indirectness to show respect for others. Like many mammals, we momentarily shrink the size of our bodies in a subtle head bow or slouch of the shoulders to convey reverential deference. With a simple warm clasp of another person’s arm, we can express gratitude and appreciation, activating oxytocin release and the vagus nerve in the recipient of our touch.
We ritualize these ancient and simple acts of reverence into cultural practices. We create symbolic gestures, like the Anjali Mudra greeting gesture in India of palms pressed together and the bowing of head and body, to express respect and shared humanity. We find sacred objects to touch as physical reminders of the wonders that have given us awe—a deceased father’s tie, a rock from a backpacking trip, the menu from an engagement dinner, T-shirts from a favorite show. In many hunter-gatherer cultures, people carried around bones and skulls of deceased family members to appreciate their place in their lives. I still regularly touch a wristband Rolf gave me on one of my last visits to him and feel his presence somehow. Acts of everyday reverence, expressed in bowing and touch, for example, can be seen in religious ceremony, funerary rites, and christenings.