Rebirth of the Democratic Spirit in America: The Numinous Democratic National Convention

In memory of Lanny Jones, a great and joyous spirit

When the morning Stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted for Joy. William Blake. Job 38:7 Plate 14.  

Introduction

The 2024 Democratic National Convention was huge and kaleidoscopic with each of us having our own impressions of special moments. We can imagine a range of reactions to the DNC along a spectrum from manipulative/manic to authentic/transcendent. For instance, a colleague from England suggested to me that it was “manic”—a word that implies being too emotionally high and likely to collapse, even defensively high with too much “joy” as a response to despair. The Republicans would have us believe that the convention was way over on the side of manipulative/manic. They are characterizing it as a honeymoon of false joy in the face of the harsh realities besieging Americans with the pressures of inflation and immigrant invasion, the two realities they promote as being the actual state of affairs in America. My own emotional reaction was on the opposite end of the spectrum. The DNC felt authentic and transcendent to me.

In the United States, we traditionally do not talk much about the spiritual and the political in the same breath. We have had a strong and healthy history of separating church and state that has allowed people of many different faiths to exist side by side in relative peace, but not without friction and factionalism. From the right we are now hearing more and more about the Christian Nationalist movement that advocates a Christian government to protect democracy. Perhaps in reaction to the Christian Nationalists’ claiming the United States as their own, a potent and real spiritual dimension emerged in the DNC. The spiritual impulse that came alive at the DNC is not nearly as consciously calculated or as explicitly articulated or as tied to a specific religious tradition as is Christian Nationalism. But there was an undeniably strong presence of spiritual imagery, energy, and emotion that arose spontaneously in the four-day event. At times the convention had the quality of a revival meeting but not one tied to the Christian revival tradition with which we traditionally associate revivalism. Part of the deep sense of relief at the DNC was in its stark contrast to the dread that comes with contemplating what a Christian Nation under Trump might be. In this essay, I want to share some reflections about my experience of the spiritual as it emerged in the DNC. These reflections are not grounded in any specific religious tradition but are based on an encounter of the holy or sacred in a lived emotional experience.

What is “the numinous”?

The emergence of spirit in the Democratic National Convention led me back to Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy, published in 1917 and which I first read as a college student of European Literature and Religion some 60 years ago. Paradoxically, The Idea of the Holy is much more about the emotional experience of what Otto calls the “numinous” than it is about ideas. Otto explores the emotional foundations of our experience of the holy and he does so from the point of view of the study of comparative religions.

Otto asks a big question. What is at the heart of the experience of the Divine? For Otto, what is essential is not the particular faith to which one adheres but the emotional experience of the holy that is common to people of all faiths and those of no specific faith at all. Otto places emotion at the center of the experience of the holy and he calls this experience the numinous (from the Latin for “to nod”). The numinous is charged with electrifying energy that evokes the most powerful emotions.

Stefano Carta, an Italian Jungian psychoanalyst writes of Otto’s notion of the numinous:

….the numinous is a paradox, containing positive and negative aspects, both of which we may experience simultaneously in any encounter with the Divine. Some of the positive emotional qualities of the numinous include: sublimity, awe, excitement, bliss, rapture, exaltation, entrancement, fascination, attraction, allure and what Otto called an ‘impelling motive power.’ Some of the negative emotional qualities of the numinous include:  feeling overwhelmed, fear, trembling, weirdness, eeriness, urgency, stupor, bewilderment, horror, mental agitation, repulsion, and haunting, daunting, monstrous feelings that “overbrim the heart.”

Can we locate any of these emotional reactions in our experience of the Democratic National Convention? I should add that the encounter with the numinous in the DNC was amplified exponentially by the emotions being shared in a communal gathering with an enormous release from feeling so isolated and alone.

I have picked four moments from the DNC in which the emotional encounter with the numinous reawakened spirit.

1.           The Spirit of the Depths.

An angel locking the gates of Hell with a key, miniature from the Winchester Psalter, British Library, London. Wikipedia: "Hellmouth"

The long dark night of the soul is often called “The Night Sea Journey”. Not only can individuals be devoured in a soul crushing world, but entire communities can be taken down into the belly of the whale in such dark dystopian times. Three women narrated their abortion experiences in a post-Roe world and took the whole convention down into the darker depths in a raw encounter with the negative emotional aspects of the numinous. Watch this video and pay attention not only to the three courageous women but to the audience’s emotional participation in the stories. You will witness the emotions that go along with sharing the negative aspects of the numinous:

“feeling overwhelmed, fear, trembling, weirdness, eeriness, urgency, stupor, bewilderment, horror, mental agitation, repulsion, and haunting, daunting, monstrous feelings that “overbrim the heart.”

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/dnc-speaker-hadley-duvall-abortion-amanda-zurawski-rcna167413

Such horrific experiences can be thought of as encountering the numinous, dark side of the divine in the form of descent, terror, and dismemberment.

2.          The Spirit of Mothers and Daughters

Madre y Nina by Diego Rivera. Oil on canvas, 1939.

On the opposite end of the spectrum of experiencing the numinous at the DNC was Michelle Obama’s speech. Below is a video clip of the highlights of her speech. Again, focus not just on Michelle but on the crowd’s emotional reactions to her—both in their wildly enthusiastic embrace of her or in their silent, rapt attention to her.

Whether you were at the convention in person or watching on television, you could feel the presence of the numinous as defined by Otto:

“sublimity, awe, excitement, bliss, rapture, exaltation, entrancement, fascination, attraction, allure and what Otto called an ‘impelling motive power.”

As Michelle Obama gained momentum in her talk, the attention of the crowd grew more intense. It felt as if she was a central force in the whole world in her transfixing and transporting rapture. A friend of mind said that she was “channeling”. I would fill that in—she was channeling the divine in a numinous encounter with what can only be described as sacred and holy. The rapture was particularly poignant in her describing the depth of love between mother and daughter in her own experience and in Kamala Harris’ experience. Both mothers knew about selfless giving to their daughters, to their neighbors, and to their communities. And they both had fierce wills and focused intention to make something meaningful of their lives. It was a spiritual lesson in mother/daughter motivating drive, love, and compassion.

3.          The Spirit of Fathers and Sons

Man and son standing with hand raised towards serpent. 6th century BCE. ARAS record #3Ka.001.

Nothing more powerfully communicated the emotional reality of a direct experience of the numinous than Gus Walz’ unfiltered expression of a son’s love and pride in his father. What makes it all the more extraordinary is that this expression was totally non-verbal in a word-saturated event. It was pure emotion and felt archetypal in connecting us with the sacred love between father and son and the vision for a purposeful life in the community that grows out of that love.

It was so pure that some felt compelled to denigrate it. Gus Walz’ face was an uncanny mirror of his father’s in a more unbridled form and yet carrying the same emotional intensity and fierce internalized sense of moral responsibility for his fellow human beings. We can imagine that tapping into that electrifying, spirit filled energy is what promises to sustain the momentum of the DNC in the hard work of the next phases of the campaign.

4. Blue Rhapsody

Another way of evoking the numinous is through the emotions that are stirred by color. The choreographers of the DNC seemed wired into a natural understanding of this as their use of blue was stunning. Of course, the Democrats are identified as “blue”. There are “blue states” and “the blue wall” is comprised of the upper midwestern states that hold the key to this election as battleground states. We sing the “blues” that carry our soulful suffering in the world. But the blue of the DNC also seemed to speak directly to another powerful pair of emotions: oceanic oneness and spiritual transcendence. We are all part of one planet and our very survival depends on our learning to share a unifying vision. The DNC bathed in blue and soared in blue.

Conclusion: The Rebirth of the Democratic Spirit

Birth of the sun at dawn. 21^st Dynasty, Papyrus of Queen Nedjmut, Third Intermediate Period

The DNC included despair and transcendence—two poles of the emotions associated with the numinous.

Prior to Biden stepping down in what felt like Trump’s inexorable march to the White House, I was in despair, feeling alone and isolated. But in fact, I was languishing with millions of others in some weird bardo state. In our encounter with the numinous in the DNC, we were now joined together and the words of the psalm spoke to our collective soul:

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning" Psalm 30:5.

Joy that knows despair is not the same as manic flight. That this can be a shared, collective experience of the numinous is truly a miracle. The Democratic party is a political organization. It is not a religion. But, something of the spiritual got aroused in the DNC and is contributing enormous energy to the country and to the Presidential election. Maybe the DNC was both manic and manipulative as well as authentic and transcendent, leaning far more to the latter in my opinion.

And even if what I say Is only partially true, I believe that the spirit awakened in the numinous encounter that the DNC ignited will spread around the country in a positive contagion, in a renewed vision of the spirit of America.

I had an uncanny personal experience of this a few days after the convention when my wife and I were taking a Sunday drive. I was marveling at the towering redwoods and rolling golden hills of the late summer Northern California landscape when the words of Pete Seeger singing Woody Guthrie’s “This land is your land, This land is my land” popped into mind, totally unbidden and lost to mind for decades.

I realized that the song was the gift of the 2024 Democratic National Convention to me and to millions of others who shared in the transformative event that reclaimed from the exclusive possession of the Republicans the words and positive emotions associated with “USA” and “Patriot”. Those of us who identify as blue can now share with those of us who are red the chant of “USA” and the feeling of being a “Patriot”, hopefully not in a jingoistic nationalism but in a world embracing multi-culturalism.

This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me

Thanks to Kako Ueda and Allison Tuzo from ARAS.org for their invaluable help in selecting images.