The Growing Capacity to Wonder
I am spending the holidays with my 10 month old grandson. He wonders at everything in his new earthly life. It’s beautiful to see how wonder moves him into experience and understanding. His innocent wonder is not the wonder I am asking us to consider in our Holy Nights inner work tonight.
My grandson’s wonder is innate and instinctual. The soul’s capacity for wonder is more conscious and actively chosen. We must remember to wonder.
His wonder is graceful and constant. Our soul’s wonder is often awkward and erratic.
Somewhere in our youth wonder loses its openness and becomes desire for the immediate need. We become eager to live in the familiar and lose interest in the unknown. We focus on appearances and stop seeking the mysteries. We become impatient or resigned. Our attention to what is beyond our worldly experience is often brief, distractable and superficial.
And too often we come to rely on doctrine, dogma and conformity for our guidance when we seek enlightenment.
As I watch my grandson, I see wonder that is original and solitary for him. We don’t tell him what to wonder at or how to wonder or what to learn from his wondering. We witness and encourage and watch to gently guide him away from dangers he is too innocent to recognize.
When our self-aware souls choose to wonder at the natural world, the heavenly world, or the human world, we find no doctrine, no dogma and no conformity. In our adult wonder we are blessedly alone and creative. Rarely is there anyone witnessing, encouraging or guarding.
In wondering we become artists, scientists, shepherds and wisemen. We become comfortable with the unknown and the sublime. Our wondering becomes graceful and constant and grows in its capacity. Our capacity to wonder keep us innocent and makes us wise.
Now on this night of Nativity, reflect on your capacity to wonder. Look at something of nature and wonder. Look at an image of something divine and wonder. Think of someone you love and wonder.
Wonder is the capacity you will need each of the Holy Nights. All the Inner Christmas messages ask you to wonder.
Tonight wonder at your growing capacity to wonder.
And go to sleep and have wonderful dreams.
I so like this Lynn. I love this idea that in wondering we become scientists, shepherds, artists, etc. I have always felt like there is an important gift that I have to give the world, but I feel discouraged that at 34 I still haven't discovered what that is. But this idea of wonder opens up a whole new path of discovery. I like this very much. I will be working with it.
ReplyDelete(And thank you for opening up comments for those without an account.)
In gratitude, Elizabeth.
I have been spending this year contemplating wonder. I am completing a manuscript entitled The Gift of Wonder, School as it Could Be. It is both the story of my first six years as a Waldorf class teacher, but also an investigation into the nature of wonder, how it transforms over the course of childhood and what we as teachers and parents can do to nurture wonder. I enjoyed reading your thoughts about wonder.
ReplyDelete....yes, it's great to wonder, in my case I take it as an inner impulse to percive what "really IS", and I've learn that if I Am carefull and just do that... percive consciously without thinking or trying to name, categorize, compare with prior similar perceptions, without being judgmental, etc... beautiful things happen that we haven't invented the words to describe them yet. : )
ReplyDeleteThank you for the your suggestion to stop and wonder. This is something that I love about being with small children. I can see the world through their eyes and remember the wonders of everything around us. It is rare for me to wonder during my alone time as an adult in quite the way that I did tonight with this meditation. In gazing at a stone from the Oregon coast, I noticed whole communities with life and history that had happened in that one stone. Covered with holes, it housed many insects and other critters that dug into it for shelter. In just one of these many tiny holes, more than 50 grains of sand still remained. The rock was made of different kinds of rocks, in swirling patterns that were pressed together by age and time to become one. I thought about all of these things, and how many complex communities full of life and variation exist in the macrocosm that we call earth. I am surprised that until now, it sat on my shelf, only attracting a glance, and a moment of admiration here and there... what a pretty, stripy, textured stone. There is so very much going on everywhere we look. No wonder small children want to stop continually when out on a walk. When looking anew, I see that there is way too much of fascination in a few square inches of earth, to want to rush down the road at what is my normal pace. It is of so much greater value to TRULY LOOK. This was only a few minutes of my meditation. I also thought about the goddess Kwan Yin, as well as a photo of my young son, who was once a premature baby and is now becoming an accomplished ballet dancer. So many miracles to wonder at...
ReplyDeleteDear Lynn,
ReplyDeleteI wonder about Internet :) and I am amazed at how your messages arrive to my end of the planet.
With apperciation of your support for the inner year, I wish you a blessed winter festival.
Jasminka (Croatia)
when you live away from the U.S. for years the Christmas carols take on, perhaps, a deeper meaning because you listen to the words more...or you make up your own texts out of what you remember...LOL.
ReplyDeletethe one I have always liked and the is high up on my list even now is the chorus from We 3 Kings(Norway, by the way, has a King)...
Star of Wonder star of Light...star with royal beauty bright...westward leading, still proceeding...Guide us to Thy perfect Light.
we are, afterall, all connected....
I love the word WONDER. I find the moments of wondering both calming and exciting - even though much of my attempt at wondering last night was WANDERING! There's not much wondering about why I wander ! but I guess that meditators will find it easier to shut out the distractions and diversions.
ReplyDeleteThe flame that I wondered at, and the beach pebble (by candlelight), filled me with awe at their contancy, agelessness, and antiquity. I wondered at the colours; over half a rainbow in the flame; monochrome lighter and darker with sparkles in the pebble.
I look forward to more wonderous nights ahead. Thank you Lynn x
Wow, is someone trying to tell me something? First a dear friend forwards this link to me. Then, out of the blue, a song that's been on my iPod for quite some (that somehow I had never listened to before) pops up on my iPod while taking a walk trying to restore my soul. The song was Susan Werner's "Don't Explain It Away". I've been struggling this past year even though there was no obvious reason. Restoring a sense of wonder may very well be what I've been missing.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Lynn.
ReplyDeletethis makes me think of Rilke....I used to keep this on the fridge to remind myself in moments of angst and uncertainty that maybe I cannot have the answer now and I can live with the question...
"...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poe
It's three continents since I've felt free enough in time to put fingers to keys and join in these most fruitful reflections!
ReplyDeleteLyn, I wonder is it necessary to distinguish our child wondering from our current ponderings?! I surprised my family when as a young adult I said I could remember looking through the wire fence at the chooks in the back yard and being simply fascinated. They all assured me I was too young to observe that - maybe two at the most.
Then having dropped out of kindergarten I was sitting on the footpath running pebbles of gravel through my fingers. A lady passed by and said 'shouldn't you be at school?' 'I'm too young' 'Would you like to be in school?' No, I'm happy doing what I'm doing now'!
Currently, having finished a 12 year project of writing a book: Edmund Rice - Restoring the Circle to the Celtic Cross, I am wondering how we can bring this man's wisdom and integrity to bear in addressing the financial mess in Ireland. It will soon be time to write but not yet!