Service on Facebook, but with audio issues. YouTube version will be better. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seeyouonsunday/videos/447699361572094 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKaSXjDrLHk
I lived in Costa Rica for six months, or so, right on the Pacific Ocean. So, the first day I was there had this magnificent sunset. I brought my camera out and took pictures. The folks I was staying with had been there a couple of years longer than I had. Early on, maybe the first week I was there, they said, “Every night has a beautiful sunset, you can’t take pictures of all of them.”
Challenge accepted. But no, I couldn’t take a picture of every sunset for six months. But I could stop and notice. There was one day we were in a hurry and the truck got stuck in the sand of the beach we had to cross. We had a choice to be really stressed out or to remember we were in this beautiful place, with a beautiful sunset, and birds and fish and monkeys.
As I thought about it, I started to think that wonder is one of the first things to go. Kids learn from us, and we learn from each other, that to be an adult is to know things, to be certain, to know how things work, or at least pretend. Or maybe it’s our cynicism–there are sometimes really nice sunsets because… of the air pollution or smoke… Cole Arthur Riley writes about how we celebrate the spiritual maturity “that honors the profound and the grave, even at the expense of the simple and beautiful.” pg 31.
It makes the call to enter the kingdom of God as a child something to talk about, to really think about. Because that could mean all kinds of things. At the church I was at Costa Rica, there were those who decided it meant not thinking too hard about the Bible, not looking at the context, not asking questions, and just accepting… which actually sounds nothing like children.
And children can be a little self-involved–it takes time to learn that there is a world beyond themselves, they have to be taught that.
“Wonder requires a person not to forget themselves but to feel themselves so acutely that their connectedness to everything created thing comes into focus. In sacred are, we are a part of the story.”
Wonder and curiosity and awe, to behold the beauty, to admire it, brings love to it. And to love something is to to care for it.
And those things are going to be a little different for each person. Because airplanes are basically magic, and there is no lection on propulsion and physics that is going to convince me otherwise. And that narwhals are ocean unicorns. And sunsets over the ocean can always be amazing. And how our bodies work, how thoughts move and how bodies heal… it’s a wonder. And how people can be moved to kindness, and joy, and hope, how people can behold beauty even in this world that can be so full of darkness and violence. Wonder is a salve for the pain in this world, to behold the beauty and realize the pain doesn’t make it less beautiful.
Or, as said by Doctor Who: “The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things or make them unimportant.”
“Wonder includes the capacity to be in awe of humanity, even your own.”
And for us to recognize that we are part, and where our part in the sacred story is, we need to know ourselves. It isn’t about what we do that makes us part of the story, it is who we are. To wonder at the world, to wonder at ourselves, we have to live into our callings, to be fully who we are, to live fully into who God made you. And that means each of us has a calling. A calling then isn’t something that only religious people have. it isn’t some job you take just because it’s a passion and there’s no money in it. It’s not what you do, but who you are while you do it.
“For many years, I believed calling was synonymous with work. I know now it to be much more than this. It is how we will spend our days. How we help our grandmothers inch up the stairs to bed. The way we bathe ourselves in the evenings. How I hold this pen. And it is both dream and dread, for vocation does not always feel good or easy. And it may only be true for a season.” Black Liturgies p. 49
We get so focused on what kids are going to be when they grow up, we forget to help them understand themselves today. Cole wrote: “Ask me what I want to be, but not before you ask me who I want to be. Ask me who I want to be, but not before you ask me the more searing question of who I am.” p. 45
It is ongoing. It means as you change, how you live out who you are changes. As your body and capabilities change, it changes you, and how you live out who you are. Our calling is to learn ourselves, to learn how to live as ourselves.
And “the process of knowing the self should be relentless” p. 46 Because we’re always changing. Changing, learning, growing, becoming is part of what it means to be human. But maybe we can hold on to a few pieces; things that bring us joy, taking a moment to be in awe, letting the world surprise us.
And that might mean we’re into things that might seem childish. It might mean we stop at every sunset. Maybe we stop to say hi to every dog. Maybe we stop and notice the colors in soap bubbles.
Cole suggests, if you’re not sure if you have forgotten how to wonder, take 5 minutes to do nothing but wonder about things. Preferably outside. Pick a flower or a cloud or a blade of grass or a favorite piece of music or doodle. You don’t have to focus on it the whole time, use it as a muse or inspiration instead of a focal point.
5 minutes is a long time during worship, but
Let’s take a moment and wonder, and notice, breathe to notice our insides and breathe notice the world, breathe to notice our neighbor, and to notice the creatures around us.
Notice the colors, the sounds, the feel of the air and the sun on your skin, notice your skin that feels, and wonder, behold, marvel, and love it all.