August 5, 2024
Happy Monday, my friends! If you’ve been following along on social media, you know that I decided to cancel my trip last week and instead bring Scout home a week early. You also know that Scout now has his own Instagram profile (@scouts_big_world; https://www.instagram.com/scouts_big_world). Yes, I’ve become that pet parent. Getting to know Scout this past week as been a master class in wonder and curiosity. At eight months old, 15 pounds, and new to my apartment and our neighborhood, Scout is curious about everything. There are so many smells, sights, people, and other animals to learn about and investigate. On Thursday we went for an early walk and saw many people out with their respective dogs. Scout did fine with the first dog, but each one after that he growled. On our way home he saw a squirrel and about pulled me down trying to chase it. But as soon as the squirrel disappeared, he went right back to exploring the grass and flowers.
When does our sense of wonder evaporate and when does it come back to us? I was fortunate to attend college in a place where wonder and awe were not only infused into nearly every corner of the campus, but where wonder was celebrated and revered. I think about people like a certain professor who would wonder the woods looking for the foundations and remains of past structures. Though he studied those remains in their historical, religious, and anthropological contexts, he clearly also spent time imagining the shape and design of the structure, the people who lived, visited, and perhaps worshipped there, and the forces that brought down and forgot its existence. On campus there was a random lamp post set away from any actual path and in a wooded area reminiscent of the lamp post near the entrance to Narnia from the wardrobe. However, during graduate school and then as I began my career, I definitely felt some of the wonder leave me until one day at dusk light struck stone buildings in just the right way to remind me of that wonder I used to feel.
I think about Jack, Scout, and other children and animals for whom the world is big and so full of possibility. For Scout, just our neighborhood is a world of infinite wonder and amazement. Jack still finds wonder in his relatively small hometown. And I have started recognizing the magic in the world wherever it meets me.
How do you cultivate wonder in your life? Where do you find wonder?
Let us pray: “May you, in some altered state of sleeplessness or psychedelics or come-to-the-edge coming apart, access a cosmic view of the whole: span of sapiens, a sweep of your broom on the back stoop. Empires rising and falling like breath and your life: a flash of sunlight reflected in a hummingbird’s ruby throat. A cicada grows for seventeen years underground so it can sing for two days. The Appalachians were as tall as the Alps before they softened into bosoms. This singular morning, raspberries melt magenta in your oatmeal, honeysuckle hooks to the chain link fence, and you, stubbornly refuse to add to your suffering. When you sit waiting for your beloved who is making you late for dinner, may you have the fortitude to break the quiet by cueing up their favorite song. May we drink the jolt of pleasure that comes from remembering we are alive, soft sheets of moss supping from the same rock.” (~Rev. Molly Bolton, writing for enfleshed)
Blessings on your weeks, my friends! Please let know if there is anything I can do for you.
Faithfully,
Ben
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