We need wonder
Some days we wake up in a world that is not a friend of grace or mercy. At least, it doesn’t feel so. And the news puts a spotlight on what we do know to be true: we do live in very unnerving, unpredictable, and broken world.
In the conversations I have with people from different parts of the country (and world), I know that most have been tainted with a kind of bafflement. (Some more than others.) Wondering, “What’s next?” “Where do we do from here?”
And it hurts my heart when it feels like insecurity and pain win.
A few years ago, talking with my friend Phil Cushman in the grocery store, we shook our heads about our world’s fragile nature, as if to say, “Where do we find—and create—sanity and sanctuary? And where do find hope?”
“It helps when I distinguish between big world and small world,” he said to me.
With that, a light bulb came on. You see, with big world, news is in your face, and stoked with anger. And often, cruelty. No wonder we feel as if our control is demoted.
Going down any of these roads, take me too easily into darkness. Or, yes, some days, a stockpiling rage. And then, a little voice says, “Terry, you need a Sabbath Moment.” You need time in a safe and spiritual space. A space that nourishes hope, and fuels inspiration.
When life does indeed feel upside down, we ask, “How can I ever make a difference in a broken world?”
“What does it mean to create safe places?”
“How can we created places of sanity and sanctuary?”
Well that’s just it, so let us begin here: We—every one of us—do make a difference in the small world.
The small world is the place where we stand. Today.
It is the place where we care, and where we give a damn. And hug and give and try and love and fall down, and get up and repent, and cry and embrace, and challenge and reconcile and heal. Where we stand up—knowing we will not “close our eyes” to injustice—because we choose to make a difference with mercy and kindness.
So. I put my pen down. (Yes, I do indeed write Sabbath Moment with a nib pen.)
And head outside, to wander a wee bit. The sun still high in the sky, and the warmth is reviving and energizing on my skin. And the garden gifts instantly catch my eye. And I smile real big. Anemone blooms—as if faces of laughter, and exuberance. A hummer is at the saliva, here for his afternoon happy hour—and still flapping his wings 50 to 80 times per second. And in the grass nearby, a wood frog lingers, so I chatted with him a wee bit. On one of the roses, new buds, promising Autumn offerings. This I do know, the garden and nature gifts remind you that any “time piece” is of no need, or importance.
Yesterday, my Atlantic magazine arrived. The first article, “The Missing Ingredient of Modern Life. Why we need wonder,” by Ian Bogost.
“I’ve come to believe that wonder, the most immense of our sensations, is the antidote. Wonder can rise up anywhere,” he writes.
Oh my. Yes. And Amen.
And now, it’s paradigm shift time. The question is not, “Where did you feel unsettled or undone today?”
Rather, “Today, where did you see, find, savor wonder?”
“Where did you embrace passion and the delight of wholeheartedness?”
The good news: wonder is not detoured by life’s unkindness.
The Celtic church had a word for these moments of transformation. They called them thin places. “A thin place is anywhere our hearts are opened,” writes Marcus Borg. “They are places where the boundary between the two levels becomes very soft, porous, permeable. Thin places where the veil momentarily lifts, and we behold (the ‘ahaah of The Divine’) all around us and in us.”
Yesterday, Nancy and I were grateful for the visit of Charles and Hillary Reyburn. (Charles is a deacon in the Diocese of Fresno, where I’ve presented.) They rode a WA State ferry from Seattle to see us. It was their very first time on a ferry. (An incredible vista if you’ve never been.) And Charles couldn’t help replaying the story I’ve often shared, “Looook!”
Speaking of wonder, it is a story worth re-telling.
A woman stands at the window and stares. We are on the morning commuter ferry, from Vashon Island to Seattle. A snow-covered Mount Rainier dominates the panorama. It stands prominent, imperial in the dawn light (14,400 feet above sea level). (And it is true. Here in the Northwest, the first time you see Mount Rainier, you do a double take. Some Divine-sleight-of-hand. Where’d that mountain come from?)
The woman is wide-eyed, as if she is surprised by the mountain. As if she is seeing it for the first time. All of the other early morning commuters (and there are many) go about their business. Reading the newspaper. Drinking coffee. Paying bills. Talking with friends. Napping on benches.
“Looook,” she announces loudly, “we can see the mountain. Everybody looook!”
She has the demeanor of a person “not all there.” You know what I mean. She is clearly one of those people who “embarrass” us. (Or realistically, one of those people we choose to ignore.) As other commuters walk by, they (we) knowingly smile at one another and roll our eyes. She’s not normal, we tell one another in code.
“Looook,” she says again, pointing this time, almost reverential, “the mountain.”
I’ve seen the mountain a thousand times, but I figure, “What the heck.” So, I put down my book, and look. The rising sun has just crested the Cascade Mountain ridgeline. It looks as if it is sitting in a saddle between two peaks. The shaft of light from the sun glistens on the snow face of the Cascades, the color of a good English beer. It hits the Puget Sound, and dances across the water, now a golden pathway from the ferry to the sky. Mount Rainier, backlit and venerable in this morning light, appears etched, as if a great artist rendered it in charcoal or pen and ink. The water of the Puget Sound is gun-metal-grey, and calm.
To the south is Tacoma harbor, where a crescent moon hangs in what I can only describe as a melancholy blue sky.
I do not pick up my book again. I look. A morning vista as sacrament—a dose of grace; a brew, fortifying and settling.
“Looook,” the woman is talking again. “The mountain. Everyone looook, the mountain.”
To exit the ferry, we walk by the woman (still standing, still pointing, still talking), wondering, I suppose, what went wrong in her life, what finally snapped, and what made her leave her senses. How sad for her. We walk hurriedly, you know, in order to take care of those more important obligations awaiting us in our day. However. On this morning, the “crazy woman” is my sage. My seer, my rabbi, my priest, my pastor. She is my reminder. For whatever reason, she sees the day with delight, and without the extra layers of defense. (Or if you’ll permit an impenitent play on words, she seizes the day, carpe diem.)
This week I’ll be writing Sabbath Moment from England, where Nancy and I will be spending a month in the Cotswolds, our time for Sabbath replenishment. We will be visiting our favorite gardens, and cathedrals, both enlivening delight.
Quote for our week… “Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” e. e. Cummings
BULLETIN BOARD
Today’s Photo Credit: Welcome to the Pacific Northwest, and the Puget Sound. This photo taken in Port Townsend, a WA State ferry guided and led by the Rainbow… And thank you to all, I love your photos… please, keep sending them… send to tdh@terryhershey.com
POEMS AND PRAYERS
Dear God,
This week is a doozey.
If anxiety produced a sound, it would be deafening right now.
Open my ears to the sounds I need most: the wild geese overhead, Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace (1972); the sound of my friend on the other end of the phone; the sugar-high laughter of children who need us to dial down the doom.
If fear could be seen, it would be obscuring everything else.
Open my eyes to the sights that I need most: my puppy underfoot with a toy in her mouth, ready to play; the brightening of my neighbor’s eyes under their mask when I pass them in the stairwell; that sidewalk covered in an oak tree’s fallen leaves like nature’s confetti.
If sorrow could be tasted, the bitterness would overcome me.
Open my mouth to the sweetness I need: words of kindness; deep, unhurried kisses; and absolutely as much Ben and Jerry’s as I deem necessary.
Help me remember that you are in the other side of Tuesday, no matter what.
Amen.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
Music for the Soul…
New–
Sanctuary – Carrie Newcomer
