Growing My Wonder

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We all know the feeling of a season dragging on. It may be a season of the year or a season of life.

Recently, I shared that I have been wandering about in a winter of my mind. This winter of mind is much like the winter outside my door. I've hunkered down not wanting to do much beyond the walls of my home. My sphere revolves around me and my beloved and this place. Marriage has been wonderful, but no marriage, however great, can take the place of an awakened spirit. In fact, I believe that both of us have been struggling with this winter of mind. You, too?

So what a relief to find a book that perfectly described the condition and teaches a way to work beyond it. I identify with the following paragraph. My name could well be placed in the parentheses and it would be accurate.

(They) are indifferent, stoic. We recognize them [the wonderless] by their fat hearts, dull ears, sluggish eyes. They have large empty spaces between their thoughts and connections to a purpose larger than themselves. They fight to get and keep control. They stand rigidly stationed at the hub of their universe. Nothing's sacred except what affects them personally.

A Piece of the Solution:

Wonder reminds the wonderless of the unknown, those things out of their control or outside of their experience: mysteries to be solved, meanings to unravel, spiritual realities to face.

A sense of wonder can be a bother. It takes time and energy to see deeply. Wondering disrupts peace and tranquility. Wonder stirs fires. Wonder opens strange doors. Wonder finds stories in the forest when it is so much easier to plow through and get on home.

So this is why I've been riding around in a truck that rumbles through town plowing snowbanks.

It will be why I have a date in March with my grands to play in the mud. I mean it. We're going to get good and dirty. I am making rivers and dams and we're going to sail twigs and boats downstream at the end of the drive you see here.

It's the reason that my computer is going to be shut down more often. The television has already been given the boot.

It'll be why I am scanning the clouds, breathing deeper, and looking at the moon in the middle of the night.

It's why I'll continue to join my beloved for morning devotions when I don't always "feel" like it.

In the end, my hope is that I will have found that I have been on a perpetual quest for wonder...that I have enjoyed a sense of awe in this world that God has given and in the people that He allows us to know and love.

I'm not going to limit my wonder to the little screen before my face nor the larger one that sends out messages that I don't wish to receive. I'm going to slow down. I'm going to listen to more birdsong and not only symphonies or praise music.

In the end, too, I hope that I will have walked closer to God. That I will praise Him more, thank Him more, worship Him more, appreciate Him more, know Him more.

Quotes have been taken from Awakening Your Sense of Wonder: Discovering God in the Ordinary by Janet Chester Bly.

Please join Melissa at The Inspired Room for more discussions on The Disconnect Challenge:Revisited.