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Listen:
“What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations.”
— PSALM 1 04 :24 (THE MESSAGE)
Reflect:
Adulthood has a way of robbing us of the feeling of wonder, doesn’t it? Is there poetry in taxes? Is there amazement in doing the dishes? Not really. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said that “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement....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 don’t know how Rabbi Heschel had the energy to greet each new day with amazement. And yet, part of me thinks that would be wonderful—to be surprised by what the day holds or in awe of those around me. Perhaps we can start today. Look around you. What ordinary wonder have you missed?
Maybe we need a random list of things to wonder about. Like why does that cloud look like a dinosaur? Why do crickets chirp at night? What random things do you wonder about? Write them down as a reminder to wake-up each day looking for awe and wonder in the world around you.
Blessing:
You stand, stone still, at the edge of disheartenment.
You hold this heavy certainty:
nothing changes, nothing lasts.
You feel hollow. And yet, this world is full.
Warm earth pushing up new seedlings,
unfathomable oceans teeming with mystery,
and the miracle of your very body— fragile as it may feel— carries the possibility of creating something new.
We are all swimming in wonder.
So why can’t we always feel it?
Your blood feels cold with each tiring loss.
Good things, beautiful loves, pried from your fingers, leaving them to feel empty now. But still.
Even if, today, hope does not come, may the lights at a neighbor’s house glow like a jack-o’-lantern.
May the sounds wafting through your window—
a barking dog, kids running amok, the buzz of a television rehearsing the day’s calamities— remind you that we persist somehow, under a distant shadow,
But joyful anyway.
May the sun shine down and touch you.
And may you bask in it, feeling the low murmur
of the ground steady beneath your feet.
And as the earth makes turns creakily toward night,
let the day fall in behind us.
“What next?” We will say to the night sky,
before we close the door
and consider its answer tomorrow.
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