Wonderers

My kids have been making fun of me because every day I look up beyond the trees and exclaim, "Can you believe how beautiful the sky is?"

No matter what is going on in my life I am enchanted by the clouds, by the blue, by the infinity that waits beyond. I often find myself wondering, 'If this world holds the kind of beauty that takes my breath away every day, what will the next one be like?'

I can't help it. I'm a wonderer. 

My hope for my kids is that they never lose their sense of wonder, and if they do misplace it  I hope that they remember to look up to find it again.

Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.

                                  ~ E.B. White

It's not like anyone every purposely loses their sense of wonder. Really, it's not as though it CAN get lost. It just gets buried, I think, underneath too much stuff we think of as grown up, or real life.

We forget to watch a sunrise, or a sunset. We forget to marvel at the magnificence of the night sky, the moon and stars getting lost in city lights. Our to-do list replaces boredom. Every waking moment can be filled with podcasts, audio books, movies, music, sermons, or television.

[caption id="attachment_636" align="alignnone" width="500"] Photo Credit: .: mike | MKvip Beauty :. via Compfight cc[/caption]

We let busy-ness take over and accidentally surrender our God-given natural curiosity.

I think this is why I am so drawn to children. Even if I didn't have my own (awesome) kids, I'd be spending my day hanging out with them. They are the best conversationalists, the best at comfortable silences, and the best wonderers. Kids don't care what 'science' tells us - they'd rather figure it out on their own. Right or wrong doesn't matter so much. The more fantastical the better.

Summer is the perfect time for wondering. The colors are just right, it's hot enough that laying around doing nothing is acceptable, and there are bugs everywhere. I never realized how important it was to just sit around and think, watch, and wonder until I forced myself to do it regularly.

Wonder is the beginning of  wisdom. 

                                      ~ Socrates

For the last few weeks I've been allowing myself to lay in bed in the mornings, pondering the stuff of life. I've given myself permission to sit in a chair in the backyard dozing to the sounds around me. You can call it the practice of being present, focusing on the now, meditation, or what it is: wondering.

The stuff to get done can wait.

Giving myself the freedom to get lost in amazement for what is around me has loosened my tongue to talk to others about it, too. I find that I am surrounded by fellow wonderers, other brave misfits who are comfortable with unanswered questions. They're also just as comfortable with my absolute belief in something that they may disagree with, and I am the same with them. We can sit back and smile and wonder at how we each came to our own conclusions, no anger, just amazement that we're each so unique.

May you always have room for wonder in your heart, friend.