Wondering about Wonder

When did we lose our sense of wonder?  When did we start looking at a sunset and forget to actually see it?  I watch Olivia and she is fascinated by the strangest things.  She can't get enough of ears and feet lately.  She shrieks when she sees them and will climb over anything and everything to get a closer look or taste :)  Watching her experience her world for the "first" time makes me think, when did my world become so drab?  Feet and ears don't fascinate me anymore, well except for the ears of old men when they get huge, hairy and kind of floppy (its a badge of honor I look forward to carrying)- I just learned the other day that your ears never stop growing, I wonder why.  My world has become normal, I daresay even mundane at times - that is CRAZY.  How can a world full of beauty and mystery become commonplace? 

One of my favorite documentaries is the Planet Earth series.  The series takes the viewer to places all over Earth - places I could never even imagine seeing.  One episode explores the depths of the oceans, where new species continue to be discovered every year.  Strange animals live there, with glowing translucent features, and appendages that appear to be straight out of a bad sci-fi movie.  Another explores the great rivers of the world and in particular shows rivers running red in Alaska as millions of salmon return to the exact location their lives began in order to spawn.  It is one of the most incredible feats in all creation right alongside the migration of millions of animals across the deserts and savannahs of Africa.  I am inspired to go and see for myself.  I realize how little of this world I have seen with my own eyes and I am propelled towards visions of seeing the sunset across the ocean, and watching it rise across the crest of a mountain - to see the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall, the Pyramids in Egypt, to see an Elephant in the wild, or a great migration of birds.  I am reminded of how little my world is when I think of how little I have seen.  Those are only places and things don't even get me started on the different people groups of this world - beauty in every corner of the earth.

I fear that I get up everyday and look at the world around me and am no longer astonished by what I see.  Olivia lives in a state of nearly eternal surprise...and delight.  She stops everything to examine a doorknob, and is taken back by the sound of rain hitting a window.  When she sees a person she has never seen before she begins to study their features and with a squeal, she announces her presence.  Something just does not add up.  If the world is truly full of beauty and mystery, and yet my vantage point yields normalcy and boredom - something is off, broken perhaps.  I think its me.  I think I may be broken.  I know I may never look at a doorknob the way Olivia does, but I sense I may be seriously lacking some imagination when it comes to the world around me.  Where did my imagination go?  Unfortunately because I am often so self absorbed I miss something incredible because it does not fit into my ideals.  I think the next time it rains, I will try to be less annoyed at getting wet and instead experience the sillyness of water falling from the sky.

The world around me screams of beauty.  How can I spend even a single moment missing that?  I want to regain my sense of wonder; I want to be in awe of something truly grand; I long to be caught up in something far more reaching than my little cubicle of a world.  Tonight I will ask the Author for eyes that can see the world He created in all its splendor and glory.  I long to be amazed.  Tomorrow when I wake I will see the sunrise... perhaps for the first time.

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Give it a Rest

I am weird.  I opened at my store today - that's 4am - and yet here I am out to coffee again at 8pm thanks to Ang who is doing bedtime solo tonight with Olivia (Thanks!).  There is something about drinking a hot cup of coffee, listening to music, and losing myself in thought.  As I relax and allow my mind the room to stretch out, my heart begins to be drawn into another world.  I wander off to a place as beautiful as the sun setting across a sky littered with mountains and trees.  The music is like a - well normally its a sweet sound but right now its Barbara Streisand - WHAT!  How is this playing right now?  Well Plan B good thing I have some Death Cab for Cutie (they are not nearly as weird as their name suggests) on my computer - that's more like it.  I feel like its a place where my heart can breathe. 

In our world quietness is going out of style, right alongside rest.  As we cram more into our days and lives we end up with less, we lose the depth that life offers.  In a place with no talking, where I am left alone with my thoughts I am slowly lead out to a place of peace, of solitude, of rest,  It is often in this place that I sense the words of the Father gently penetrating my heart.  Loving, tender, honest words -the kind that resonate deep within and leave me changed, undone.  I feel like this when I have my flyfishing gear and I am out in the middle of a river, serenaded by the rushing water, so loud it blocks out every other noise.  The river's roar silences the noise in my life in a strange way - freeing me to enjoy the structured cadence of my casting and the way the fly slowly drifts onto the water.  When I fish, its rarely about the fish, its more often about the way that fishing quiets my insides, stills my soul, and molds my perspective into that of my Maker.   

Rest is critical because it creates space in our lives.  We are all too comfortable with no space, no time, no breathing room.  We live on the proverbial hamster wheel and seem all too at home there, running at breakneck speed through our life until something intervenes and forces us to stop.  I see it everyday at work- the stress, the frenetic frenzied frantic pace of peoples' days and I am no different, but it does make me wonder - for what?  For what purpose are we so consumed with activities?  What are we afraid of missing out on?  What are we afraid of seeing in ourselves if we take the time to stop and look?  Certain types of poetry and music function most precisely when natural rests are built in, breathing points, places to stop and allow truth, or beauty, or wonder to set in.  God rested in the midst of Creation.  Why can't I stop and rest?

 If some things are more beautiful with space, with breaks, with rest then I wonder if my life would be richer and more beautiful with a bit of the same medicine.  Maybe that's the way it was designed to be - I think I will give that a shot.

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