In Wild Wonder

It seems essential to continue to examine wonder. We spend our days working to overcome despair and fear. We take time to meditate, be in nature, and hold our beloveds. Maybe, as we spoke of in another blog post, we even take time to weep and wail.

But Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan notes, “Concentration and contemplation are great things, but no contemplation is greater than the life we have about us every day.”

In the end, no matter how well we manage to hold our balance, ground ourselves, and be there for each other, we can become identified with all of that work and practice and forget to be amazed by the life all around us.

Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement . . . to get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

I can imagine holding that wild wonder and that radical amazement and how that would change how I walk through the world.

Like the child in the picture above, all I behold blows my mind! Walking in the rain today, the incredible art of the drops of water hitting puddles on the concrete. The mist wrapping all the sharp edges in its soft blanket. The metallic smell of the damp air in my nostrils. Umbrellas with smiling humans beneath them brush against each other intimately. The silver gray of the Salish Sea melds nearly seamlessly into the darker textured gray of the overcast. Every single drop, every unique scent, every inadvertent brush, every shade of color or lack thereof is totally and forever amazing.

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
― Mary Oliver

There it is. St Mary captures everything I’m trying to relate in three short instructions.

So, there’s your work for this week (and beyond). In radical wild wonder, pay attention, be astonished, and tell us all about it.