Joy And Awe

"Star of the Sea," 13.

What young Edh feels when a wagon passes bearing the image of the goddess:

joy;

renewal;

awe;

"...an unspoken underlying fear...." (p. 582)

"Joy" and "renewal" could be Easter.

Rudolf Otto argued that holiness was a synthesis of awesomeness and righteousness. Awe - apprehension of the mysterious, uncanny, "awful" and transcendent - is a kind of fear. As CS Lewis argued, we fear the proximity of a man-eating tiger, a ghost and a "great spirit" in different ways. In the third case, there is a sense of our unworthiness, not of any physical threat or danger. Edh's strong religious sense influences her personal development and also has social, and even historical, consequences in appropriate circumstances. There are potential timelines in which Edh:

dies young;

preaches endless war,

preaches war, then peace.