My eight-year-old granddaughter came home from school and told a story using the phrase “awfully good.”  Eyes rolled when I asked what do you mean by “awfully” good?  We talk from time to time about words she picks up from school.  You can imagine the interest she has for such talks, thus the eye roll.  

Awe has come up in our talks before.  The word of such unexplainable good or surprise that can lead one to confusion, fear, or the sit-down-quiet of I don’t have any idea what to do with what I am seeing or hearing or feeling—something along the line of a pregnant Mary meeting an angel called Gabriel.  Awe, if we ever have the wonder to experience it, is likely a once-in-a-lifetime moment we’ll never be capable of explaining.

Good is known in different ways.  Good happens many times in a lifetime.  The frequency of good, though, does not diminish good’s value and wonder—say, for instance, good’s repetitiveness in the Hebrew genesis creation story.  We talked about how our neighbor uses the phrase “she has a good heart.”  And how our community uses good to describe the day or affirm what someone has said.  Good doesn’t need an adverb…good is good.  

I turned and looked out the window and said, the more we engage in the natural, the more we listen to our indigenous siblings, the more we touch nature, the better we understand how good good is.  If we allow good to be good, then we can reclaim the indescribable of Awe.  And if we do, we just might be lucky enough to one day experience awe.  “Wouldn’t that be a story to tell,” I asked as I turned back from the window.

She was dancing across the kitchen floor.  Obviously, I’d talked far more than any eight-year-old would hope because they’d told a school story to their papa.  Well…good enough.