Part VI – The Standing Ovation Within

“The mind, that ocean where each kind / Does straight its own resemblance find;” – Andrew Marvell

Sometimes the body responds before the mind does. A shiver, a wave of goosebumps, a few uninvited tears – these are small physical ways of saying, “I recognise this. This is true.”

It’s as if an older, wordless part of us rises to acknowledge what the conscious self is only beginning to understand.

I once felt it standing in an old cathedral. I looked up at the ceiling and for a second couldn’t tell where the architecture ended and heaven began. The stillness of that space reached past thought. Tears came – not from sadness or joy, but from something deeper and harder to name. It felt like recognition, not revelation.

That’s the strange thing about awe: it bypasses analysis. The body seems to remember something the mind has forgotten. Goosebumps and tears aren’t dramatic signs of emotion; they’re reminders that truth, when we meet it, is not an idea but a physical event.

Perhaps faith, in the end, isn’t about certainty or belief. It’s about recognising what feels undeniably real – and letting the body, in its quiet, involuntary way, applaud.