Be Astonished

*Originally published on my Wordpress blog 07.31.2020

 I was one of those kids who could easily be awed by the world. I wanted to stop and see everything. I wanted all the answers. I felt all the feels. I was the kid who sat in the pew in the Catholic Church and wondered about all that ritual, all those foreign words, and what it all meant. I was the kid who thought about death and who saw shadows and light everywhere. I was already in love with the mysteries of life.

I lived on the edge of mystery through graduate school. The pursuit of mystery post high school was surely enhanced by whatever my drug of choice was that week. I danced through long nights of wonder and creativity, infatuated with the unknown and then losing it.  Broken-hearted. Always there was a deep emptiness when the highs wore off and the friends were gone.

But wonder and creativity dissolved into jobs and bills, marriage and kids. Mystery faded into mundane details like laundry, breakfast dishes, baby puke, and headaches.  Sure there were flashes of mystery:  the day my dad died unexpectedly, the majesty of dawn in Yosemite Valley, the fragility of a newborn, the tears behind Jackson Browne’s For Everyman.  Those flashes were powerful and those cracks in the days reminded me that I am beyond small, that I am incomplete, that I am connected, and that I am temporary.

Life moved on. Kids moved out.  The mundane moved over and made room for Peggy Lee. Is That All There Is?  I’d been focused on school, work, family, all the maintenance that it takes to be a successful human being in this culture.  I was exhausted and without vision. I wasn’t thinking about mystery.  I was being rational and thorough. The mystery was missing and I didn’t even know it.  I did know, however, that I was in trouble. 

Around that time, someone walked into my life who made all the difference. This person was a friend of a friend and turned out to be the one who ultimately saved my life. But how does that even work? How is it that when I needed help, help would show up? Mysterious, heh? This person became my partner back into the world of mystery and wonder, the world of intensity and truth. We sat together week after week, one hour at a time, taking apart the demons that had ousted mystery and laid claim to my soul. It was a wrenching yet exhilarating process. It reminds me of life.

Why is it that certain people come into our lives? All these people that we meet, people with whom we work, or share our children, people with whom we play.  Why this person or that person?  And why now?  Maybe there is no exact reason, maybe not for every person, but I can’t help wonder how that happens. Sometimes, down the road,  we actually find out why and sometimes we don’t. And what about the force behind chemistry and connection?  How is that two people are drawn to each other - as friends, as romantic partners, as teacher and student.  And in that last one, who is the student and who is the teacher?  In my experience, it is not always what it appears to be.

The whole romantic connection is mysterious. How is that people meet and “click”,  as they say? What in the world is that force? There’s more than just a practical piece. It’s not just that they check all my boxes.  Usually it seems like there is a chemistry, a spark, that creates some kind of attraction, some kind of magic. I don’t get it. There is an undeniable draw. Why?

What is the power behind love that, when love enters a room, it changes everything about that moment?  Perhaps grief or confusion or despair are sitting in the room but then love, veiled in a human being, walks in the room and the room changes. Or consider the mysterious power of love to fan out into the world.  Love will enter a space and change one person, who will then leave with the love.  The ripple effect will multiply that love and send it out to make an impact on other people.  That’s the way the world goes ‘round, eh?  Via the power of love.

What about the mystery of connection and the powerful but not always recognized truth that we are all connected?  Confused?  See the item above.  Human beings, whether they acknowledge it or not, form a web of connection. When you pull on one part of the web, the rest of the web will feel it.  Maybe it’s not just human beings? Maybe it’s living beings. I was on a dawn bike ride recently and struggling with some not small sadness. As I rode past a pasture, I stopped to take a couple of photos of the gray foggy dawn. There were two horses on the other side of the pasture. I stood there, feeling the sadness, and watched them. I was startled to see them both look up at me. They began to amble over to the fence where my bicycle and I were resting. I was taken with this. How did these horses know I needed a little company? Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they were just doing what horses do but I prefer the notion that some mysterious connection linked them to me in that moment.

Here’s an idea that depends on Faith. How is it that, in the end, things usually do work out the way they are supposed to?  Accidents happen. Babies die. People lose their job. Homes burn up.  Bad things happen and it might take months to get past the event. It might take years to get to the end, to find the value in some undesired event. It seems as if, eventually, the path is made clear. I’m not suggesting that the unexpected event is minimized but maybe, just maybe, something good came out of something that was seen as tragic or unfortunate. Connect the dots in reverse. Then you’ll see.

Now for perhaps the biggest mystery of all. Where are we before we are born and where are we after we die? Maybe we are no where. There’s room for that. And maybe we are somewhere. I don’t know. I’ve tried on some different beliefs for size but that’s all I can do is try them on. I’ve tried on the notion that somehow we are infused with the energy of consciousness at birth and then that conscious energy vanishes at death. That doesn’t ring true for me. I think of the laws of thermodynamics. The first one is that energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system. If I think of a living being as being energy of some kind, well, it’s not going to just disappear. But then where does it go? Reincarnated into another body? Or off to some other universe or something? I mean, really, it’s kind of absurd to ponder and I suppose not worth pondering.  At this point, no one can know the answer to that question. Like everything else here, that mystery gets left on the table.

Remember that kid above who was awed by the world? She was a kid. And kids often live in the moment. She didn’t know much beyond her small world but she had curious eyes and an inquisitive mind. She wanted to know answers. The thing is she still wants to know answers.   She still wants all the feels. She still sees shadows and looks for light in the strangest places. She is a seeker. But what I know about seekers is that they are often earnest and unwavering. They look with intensity for that which they are seeking. And when they find it?  They are astonished.  The poet Mary Oliver had something to say about this: