Wonder is the real story . . .


Spectacular Moment
It’s so curious to me that when I sit down in the early morning, as I have just done, I have no idea what will come through my head, into my fingers, and onto the page.  It strikes me as odd, and yet why should it?  This morning is just another series of moments as are all the hours and days of my life.  I’ve made a practice to write at this time of day over many years.  As such, I come to the morning with an expectation that both random & ordered thoughts, perceptions, feelings, apprehensions, mood, and inquiry will culminate into an understandable progression of words.  Even after decades of proof that I’ll have something to say, I’m still surprised . . . amazed at the fact that this occurs every single morning.

I suppose my wonderment over my morning writing is akin to the awe I can find in every breath, every new dawn, and every tear spilling down my cheeks when my heart overfills with feeling.  When I really think about it . . . What part of living isn’t something of the extraordinary?  Sometimes I toy around with the fantasy that I have been in stasis somewhere . . . out there, then dropped onto earth in an unremarkable body with the necessary skills of language, knowledge of culture, etc.  Common enough in both appearance and manner to navigate without standing out.  What would it be like to experience being human?  How would it feel to splash water on my face, smell a loaf of bread baking in the oven, run my hands over my dog, feel the sun on my face, see the sky go pink at sunset, breath in the freshness in the wind after rain.  

Is this story really a fantasy?  We drop in here from somewhere, out there.  Sure, we’re less than fully formed, but we grow.  As we do, we become equipped with language, and the tools to navigate the earth to varying degrees.  Shouldn’t wonderment be THE experience of being human?

I just took the dogs outside, and to my delight it was snowing.  Big, white fluffy flakes of snow were drifting downward all around me.  In a flash I was a child again with wholehearted enthusiasm deep in my timeless soul.  Delight, wonder, joy came bubbling up to meet the flakes falling on my face.  That felt like a true, human moment experienced in what some would call the ordinary happening of snow falling out of the sky.  Is it ordinary?  In spite of my best thinking, I can’t see snow falling as ordinary . . . for me, it’s magical.

Maybe we live in a world divided between the mundane and extraordinary aspects of life.  If any one of us allowed ourselves to be fully present to what we refer to as ordinary I think we’d quickly change camps.  Who among us could not be inspired with reverential astonishment at feathers, pine cones, rose petals, prairie grasses blowing in the wind, stars, the eyes of an infant, a salmon swimming upstream, the touch of a loved one, crystalline flakes of snow . . . everywhere is the possibility of wonderment.  So how is it that we can call all this ordinary and rarely live in a state of awe?  It’s a paradox, n’est-ce pas?

Doesn’t it seem just a bit backward that wonder is the exception?  What would likely happen If we let  wonder into our ordinary experience?  Maybe there are a few things we’d have to let go of . . .  such as . . .

While standing in the snow tracking a flake as it travels downward through the atmosphere I find I cannot hold on to resentment.  In it’s place I sense the cyclical order of life.  Watching the raven overhead perform an aerial ballet while cutting through the sky in razor sharp movements I feel no fear, only courage.  Under the devoted gaze of my border collie loneliness withers and hope begins to bloom.  Watching salmon give their all against the current of a tiny stream I realize that seeing them in their final swim actually dispels the despair I can feel in quiet hours.  Their efforts inspire my will to press on my life’s journey in spite of overwhelming obstacles.  My anxieties, anger, impatience, shame, self-hatred all seem to vanish under the spell of wonder at the ordinary things around me.  

Why isn’t wonder our ‘ordinary’ experience?  Can the world we have created exist in care, connection, patience, courage, goodwill, serenity, joy . . . Or, does the world, as we know it today demand instantaneous responses, competition, anger, resentment, suspicion, greed.  

I’ve been accused of being a dreamer, being an idealist, a Pollyanna wanting utopia . . . Oh, shame on me!  If we aren’t supposed to dream big, work for a caring world where all can thrive, and never rest until those dreams come true, then what the hell are we doing here?  

I only become fearful, ashamed, despairing, and resentful when I take my eyes off the field of wonder, and descend into ‘REALITY.’  I believe, actually, that reality is what you choose it to be.  Suppose that we have the power to create our own reality.  Why not turn things on end . . . Make what is usually called ordinary the extraordinary.  We can choose to let ourselves relax into silence, hear our breathing, feel our beating hearts, see what is before us as if we had never seen it before.  Genuine existence is wonder, and only that.  Anything else is a lie.  Don’t believe it.

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . . 


About the painting . . . Spectacular Moment. . . aren't they all?