Into Wonder
This morning my son-in-law sent me a video of Felix, my two-week-old grandson, emerging from a snooze, turning his head, hearing music, feeling the touch of his humans and the physical comforts of being alive in the world, and widening his eyes in wonder, as though awakening from a spell into a state of pure wonder. Pure wonder! How could it be otherwise? That’s what I’m holding onto today.
Because wonders do abound. My life is small, but brimming with gifts, and if I can just put aside the chronic guilt, I mostly just feel grateful and surprised. In the course of this week, in this small life of mine, I walked along a wooded trail and had a peregrine falcon pointed out to me. I saw a group of local children building a ramshackle fort out of of driftwood, and joyfully jumping into the surf. My car picked up a twig on its underside, and it sounded metallic as I drove along, like kitchen utensils or tambourines rattling around, and my friend and I popped the hood and laughed at our own incompetence, and like many problems, the stick soon fell away of its own accord, and all was well.
I watered my oak trees, grown from acorns, thriving. I gathered lemons as large as grapefruit and made very fine lemon ice cream. I received a letter from an old friend in the mail and promptly wrote one back. I had a socially distanced coffee and rant with my West end friend Aristotle, a tentative bike ride with Monte, and a two-dimensional zoom visit with friends in L.A., a type of interaction that always leaves one wanting, but is still a precious link. A certain boat shone like silver as it bobbed around on the choppy sea, the dusky sky melted into mauve and pink, and a full moon rose above the hills.
I’m not ignoring the other big Out There. Sometimes history accelerates, and we are able to see huge, transformative events galloping along in front of our very eyes. That's what's happening now. It's a strange, disruptive time within a strange, disruptive time, and I have decided to view it with a guardedly hopeful perspective. Somehow the pandemic itself further underscored the inequities and cruelties that have gone on too long, and even if one were clueless and in denial, technology has rendered the horrors undeniable.
Meanwhile, with a "president" (I'm fond of the new nickname, Bunker Boy) and GOP who are wholly corrupt and complicit and fuel the fires of hatred, everything has exploded and there's no going back. I can only hope that the momentum will be sustained and translate into votes come November, and we can wipe the slate clean and begin the long hard process of healing and reimagining...not just going back to the way it was, but reimagining how it can be, and making that real. It's possible. The vast inventory of vital skills we are learning these days includes persistence, perspective, and patience.
It takes faith to see it that way, and a long-term kind of commitment, but this is not just theater, not just an outburst. This is widespread, diverse, and serious. It’s life and death, on many levels, and I am on the side of life. So if you too perceive a flicker of hope here, let that illuminate your path.
Somewhere there are words for all of this, but I cannot find them. I only know that it is an honor to bear witness and take one’s place in the epic procession of experience, and I’ll do my best to do my best. Felix has the right idea: we start by listening, seeing, filling up with wonder.