When we feel the sublime, we connect with a warm and peaceful energy we love but don’t understand. Some call it God.
Sainte-Chapelle
Last year, my wife and I dressed up in our finest threads and exited our Paris hotel for another dalliance through the city of light. We walked by chalkboard bistros, plumes of cigarette smoke, and fresh flowers stretching out from the window boxes above.
Eventually, we reached the River Seine, and my thoughts turned to Vikings -- mainly the warlord Rollo and his 700 dragon ships that rowed up this very river to this very point a thousand years before.
Crossing the Pont Notre-Dame, my thoughts switched from Vikings to architecture as I turned to my left to see the most famous Cathedral ever built – now in its final months of renovation after a fire nearly destroyed, in one day, what took more than a century to build.
Turning right on the Île de la Cité, I went from a long stride to a fancy strut. Wrapped in my scarf, black coat, and carrying a long black umbrella as my walking cane / swagger stick, I put all my cards on the table and went all in on France.
Up ahead was my destination, maybe the most enchanting building in all of Paris: Sainte-Chapelle. Built by King Louis IX in the early thirteenth century to house sacred Christian relics like the crown of thorns, Sainte-Chapelle, according to historian Dan Jones, “is a Gothic masterpiece of almost incomparable beauty.”
With a steeple rising over one hundred feet, flying buttresses and stone pillars supporting its vaulted ceiling, and fifty-foot high stained-glass windows interlaced, Sainte Chapelle is splendor par excellence.
As we waited outside the chapel gate, I thought, “Here I am, a guy born in Pensacola, Florida about to walk through the doors of history… into the thirteenth century.” Snaking around the narrow walk inside the gate, I looked up to see my old friends, the gargoyles, stretching out to all of Paris. From kings and revolutions to Napoleon and Charles de Gaulle, these stone ghouls had dutifully stood their watch.
Turning down the chapel’s adjacent cloistered corridor, Chanda and I held hands as we walked. Up ahead, giant doors' soon swung open. I let her go first. Then I took breath and saw this:
Quietly shuffling to our seats, prisms of light shined through the towering stained glass, and soon, the music began. Instead of a priest holding the eucharist, four musicians stepped up to the altar holding violins and cellos. After a “bonsoir” and some French banter, they slowly rowed their bows upon the strings and began Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major -- one of the most beautiful songs ever written. Closing my eyes with the bending strings and vibrations, I floated off towards lands of enchantment. As the sunlight dimmed and the candles flickered with every musical note, I smelled the incense, sensed the vast space above me, and felt my favorite feeling of all: the sublime.
The Sublime. What is it? What causes it? What does it mean?
In The Laws of Human Nature, Robert Greene defines the sublime as “anything that exceeds our capacity for words or concepts by being too large, too vast… and mysterious.” The resulting feeling, he explains, is one of “awe and wonder.”
When we feel the awes and wonders of the sublime, Greene says we forget “the petty concerns of daily life.” In these brief and magical moments, he adds, we sense “the presence of something much larger than ourselves.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays offer even more insight into the sublime, going so far as to say what he considers the sublime to be and mean.
When you feel the sublime, Emerson says, you are at the peak of your existence, feeling “the few real hours of life.” In other words, when it comes to your life, there’s the sublime and there’s everything else.
When we feel the sublime, Emerson says we are plugged into something universally powerful, something he calls the “life force” that unites all of existence. The rising and setting sun, the singing birds, a perfumed flower, a soothing violin, beautiful art – all of this can clear our minds, open our hearts, and bring us to the sublime.
When feeling the sublime, Emerson says, “The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me.” As a result, “I am part and particle of God.”
Yes, you read that right. According to Emerson, when you experience the sublime -- that soothing ‘oceanic feeling’ outside your five senses -- you are feeling God inside of you.
When you resonate with the frequencies of nature or other beings and occurrences (like violins at a medieval church), you are becoming one with God. You are melting into the stillness of the moment. Your ego and anxieties dissolve, and the warm energy of God enters your heart.
Embracing the Mysteries of Life
When asked recently why he transitioned from atheism to what he described as “the shadowlands between belief and agnosticism,” my favorite historian Tom Holland answered that he ultimately found atheism to be “boring.”
When he hikes in the woods, he says he feels “a sense of closeness” with the animals, streams, trees, and sky. When he feels this oneness with nature, he feels the sublime, and in turn, feels that God might actually exist. Surrendering to the belief that God might be there -- with him and in him -- on these hikes and elsewhere has caused his life to become much “more interesting.”
Like Holland, I too want an interesting, mysterious, and magical life. Like Emerson, I too want time to feel “the few real hours of [my] life” as often as possible.
Mass on Thursday
So recently dear barbarians, after a thirty-year hiatus, I returned to the mysteries, magic, and wonders of a Catholic mass.
Harking backing to Sainte-Chapelle, I love the ostentations of a Catholic church. The vaulted ceilings, statued idols, sacred garments, and ancient ceremony -- all stir me with the sublime. Tucked inside my pew, I welcome the medieval wonders of superstition and ritual.
While I don’t actually believe in Catholic dogmas like the trinity, virgin birth, polytheistic saints, divinity of Christ, and all the rest, I do believe in Emerson’s God – that power source I can plug into to feel the sublime and surrender my burdens. And I feel the best place for me to kneel down, plug in, and surrender life's burdens is a weekly Catholic mass. (Probably because I was raised Catholic.)
And so every Thursday at 7am, you’ll find me at Saint Monica Catholic Church seeking the sublime. Why Thursday and not Sunday? Sundays are for families and couples; Thursdays are for lost sheep like me. Everyone is an adult and everyone is alone on Thursdays. We’re there out of necessity and not any sort of social or family obligation. There's no ego because everyone is admitting they can't do this life thing alone. As a result, I feel a kindred spirit with these beautiful folks who like all of us, are just trying to get through another day with less pain and more serenity.
When the priest asks, “Let us offer each other the sign of peace,” it’s my favorite part of the mass. As I turn to the strangers around me, I touch my heart and open my hand. I give those further away the peace sign, and they reciprocate back. I look them in the eyes, and I feel God come through me. I feel exactly what Emerson described – that we are all “part and particle of God.” In those moments of connection, I feel the sublime. And I’m telling you, I feel good.
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