bring on the wonder
Rabbi Joshua Abraham Heschel
It seems like the last week or so there has been a bit of a recurring theme in my life. I've tried to sort out how to be aware of the holy-ness around me on a daily basis, and yet I still find myself having to will myself to do it. It seems ridiculous to have to tell yourself to focus on others, the world around you--basically, everything that's not oriented around me, or my own plans. Then I wake up this morning to read this in my Inbox--the daily lectionary, fresh from Luke's Gospel:
Luke 18:15-30
[15] People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to
do it. [16] But Jesus called for them and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these
that the kingdom of God belongs. [17] Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."
And then I tried to think about how a child sees the world. I thought about the kids in an orphanage in Bulgaria, whose eyes lit up at the sight of a cheap plastic pinwheel, or the curiosity of my fifteen-month old nephew. Children have a limitless capacity for wonder. They never cease to be amazed, surprised, shocked or excited to learn something new. And somewhere between adolescence and adulthood we beat it out of them. Dreams and curiosity are exchanged for facts and mastery of information. Once we've mastered the information (or at least know how to consult the right sources, people, or the internet) there's no room left for wonder.
A few years ago I heard a quote from the great Jewish writer and teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel:"I did not ask for success. I asked for wonder and You gave it to me"
I need wonder. I need to be stirred from my slumber by something so out-of-the-blue, so beautiful, so unexpected, that it reminds me of the kingdom of child-like faith.
This morning there was an article on CNN about a piano that was mysteriously found, perfectly in tune, in the middle of a Massachusetts forest. The picture of the policeman inspecting this out-of-place piano was about as close as our rational "adults" come to wonder. But why not? Where better to play piano than in the middle of a forest in autumn?
I need to be more awake, more aware.I need to have my eyes open to the glory that's all around us.I need wonder--primarily because I've "pushed you down deep in my soul for too long."
