And the Wonder Grew

 We live in disenchanting times, where modern life with its trappings and technology, its comforts and conveniences, its conflicts and compromises, often displaces whatever sense of enchantment we may have once known. It is hardly a new phenomenon, but this sense of alienation is something that has grown exponentially over recent centuries – more or less since the Industrial Revolution.

Indeed, more than a century ago, the prominent Unitarian minister Samuel McChord Crothers, who served in St. Paul before heading east to Cambridge, Massachusetts, lamented the tendency to see human beings as machines, an idea that had taken hold when Paley compared creation to a watch and God to a watchmaker. Crothers insisted that if we were going to compare humans to machines, then the essence of such a “thinking, loving, hoping machine is just as wonderful as if you called it a soul.”

Crothers saw religion, whatever else it might be, as our human response to wonder. Definitions and dogmas pale in comparison to experiences and expressions. And religious communities are somewhere we can come together to share those experiences and give expression to what they mean to us, to find our humanity amidst all that distracts us. Throughout the generations, people have been lured to religious community, in part, to make sense of their wonder. “They saw something that made them wonder,” said Crothers; “and the wonder grew ...”

In the preface to his book of Yiddish poetry, Abraham Joshua Heschel aptly summarized his own search for the holy when he wrote, “I did not ask for success, I asked for wonder; and you gave it to me.”  How different our lives might be if, in place of success, we too asked for wonder!

Now I will confess that before I read Heschel, many years ago now, I had not considered success and wonder to be polarities, so I was jarred at first by how he linked them. But as I reflected upon what he had written, I came to recognize how our desire for success in life often gets in the way of our enjoyment of life. We spend so much time cooking that we forget to savour the food. And so I was forced to acknowledge that my own ambitions and desires for success – yes, ministers can be ambitious – often intruded upon my ability to simply savour life, experiencing its wonders as ends in themselves. Even in the earliest years of school, I wanted to be first in my class, whether or not I actually learned anything. As an adult, I have sometimes cherished the prestige of a position more than I have been satisfied by the work alone. When playing a game, I play to win – and when I repeatedly lose at a particular game, I lose my enthusiasm for it and stop playing. Just ask my wife about billiards. Or Scrabble. While I can’t honestly say I’ve fully shed this tendency, I’ve been increasingly drawn to activities that inspire awe and wonder, that pique my curiosity, that allow my mind to wander where it will.

Like any other human institution, churches are full of people who, while driven to seek success, come to church looking for “something more.” We discover that, even with the accumulation of wealth and the achievement of fame, our appetites are never fully satisfied. Public acclaim and personal comfort never quite mask the sense that there is “something more” which somehow eludes us.

Now I generally advise against consulting dictionaries as a method to uncover the meaning of a word, since dictionaries are notoriously conventional, literal and shallow. That is, dictionaries have a tendency to reinforce orthodoxies, and to limit thinking as much as they might channel it. But in the case of wonder, my dictionary turned out to offer … well … a wonderful definition. It describes “wonder” first of all as a “miracle, prodigy, strange or remarkable thing or specimen or performance or event.” I love the strange part in particular. It goes on to say that wonder is also an “emotion excited by what surpasses expectation or experience or seems inexplicable, surprise mingled with admiration or curiosity or bewilderment.” When, like Abraham Joshua Heschel, we “ask for wonder,” we long for it in both senses of the word – we want to see firsthand the miraculous and the remarkable, and we hunger to experience that feeling of excitement when life surpasses our expectations.

In more traditional religions, this sense of wonder may derive from the supernatural, or a magical understanding of the miraculous. In our tradition, the sense of wonder is more likely to be found in the marvels of nature, which includes experiences that may seem everyday and commonplace – at least on the surface. But when we are open to surprise and the time is right, even the most mundane can lead us to feelings that are as deep and profound as the mystical experiences of others, which spark a sense of awe within us. Unitarian Universalists speak of the “direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.” This transcending mystery and wonder is experienced in many ways – when we gaze upon a beautiful vista, when we are caressed by the excited touch of a lover, when our ears tune in to the songs of the birds or the melodious strains of a violin, when the poems of the heart tumble from our lips, or when the golden silence of creation surrounds us in meditation or prayer.

An openness to wonder is something that seems to come more easily to children than to adults. Perhaps we adults are so busy seeking to understand and explain the world, if not actually control it, that we are unable simply to experience it. So wonder, in its pristine form, would seem to be the special province of children. In The Sense of Wonder, Rachel Carson opined, “If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder, so indestructible that it would last throughout life – as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.”

Orcas (Photo - Diane Maddox / Pexels)

I cannot help but think back to my own childhood and recall the numerous occasions when, with my father and grandfather – sometimes with both – I discovered the world of nature. In some ways, the memories of walks with my grandfather are more vivid, if only because they were less frequent. Grandpa’s farm stretched down to the ocean, where together we would wander along the tidal flats, watching the tiny crabs along the water’s edge and looking for the telltale signs of clams hidden beneath the sand. The first time I ever saw an orca rise from the water was not at an aquarium, but just off the coast of Point Roberts, a tiny American enclave south of Vancouver. Their common name – killer whales – frightened me, and I didn’t want to be near one, until Grandpa coaxed me to turn around and I saw one of these gentle creatures leap gracefully out of the water. On other occasions, the two of us would wander out to Lily Point, past the “no trespassing” signs at the end of the road. There the sandy cliff rises high above the ocean, where gulls and eagles alike soar above the wooden pilings – all that remains of the old cannery wharf – stretching out into Boundary Bay. The towering trees and the deer that took their refuge among them, the crashing waves and the rocks that glistened beneath them, the abundant life of the tidal flats and the gentle wisdom of my grandfather – all alike instilled in me a sense of awe and wonder that I have never been able to shake. And the wonder grew.

All of these childhood memories and countless others came flooding back to me years later when I accompanied my daughters to Cattle Point, near Victoria. Although we were some forty miles southwest of Grandpa’s farm at Point Roberts, across the Strait of Georgia, the familiar sight of Mount Baker hovered on the eastern horizon. I was hesitant about the excursion at first, but Cindy took the girls out onto the rocks and I couldn’t help but follow along. The salt air and the gentle breeze, the cool water and tidal pools teaming with life – it all conspired to overwhelm me. So familiar and yet so strange, I found myself gripped by the wonder I knew as a boy – but this time, I was cast in an unfamiliar role. Rachel Carson maintains that, “If a child is to keep alive [their] inborn sense of wonder … [they need] the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with [them] the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”

I'll confess that it was only a few years ago that I was reaching a weary stage. I was bored with life. I didn't have much of a sense of what the future might hold for me. I didn't really care as much as I once did. And then I became a grandfather. I am now the old man in the story. and what I have discovered is that children in our lives lead to our re-experiencing the world as a wonderful place – that it is small children who lead us to rediscover the joy, the excitement, indeed the mystery of a world we once knew.

While this echo across the years reminded me of walks with my grandfather, and taught me the importance of children in keeping us enchanted with the world, it was not a singular event, but one of many. I noticed it because of the seashore – and the expectation, or at least the hope, of whales nearby. But there were, of course, countless times and numerous places when my daughters rekindled my sense of wonder – accompanying them on outings with their own grandfather, feeding the graylag geese in the heart of Reykjavík, gazing at the paintings in the Van Gogh Museum, listening to the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, or welcoming the deer and foxes at our country retreat. We are surrounded by wonder, both natural and human crafted, if we only stop to notice it. And it is often the children in our lives who demand that we pause and insist that we pay attention.

Science and technology sometimes erode our childlike sense of awe, even though there is no inherent conflict between science and wonder.  While I would never seek to stand in the way of the progress of scientific knowledge and technological advancement – well, hardly ever (AI is currently testing my feelings in this regard) – a part of me quietly rebels against the disenchantment of nature that has accompanied our expanding frontiers of knowledge. Simply put, the magic of a trick is often lost when it is explained. Though it is not true that ignorance is bliss, I take great delight in those scientific discoveries and explanations that raise more questions than they solve! My sentiment echoes that of Harry Emerson Fosdick, who once remarked, “I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.” Yet, even at the risk of disenchantment, I have an insatiable appetite to know and understand.

Of course, at its roots, the scientific spirit springs forth from the curiosity that wonder evokes. Just think, for a moment, of the late Carl Sagan … or Jane Goodall and Stephen Jay Gould, for that matter. Are not scientists such as these intoxicated with a sense of wonder? As Sagan said with such eloquence and enthusiasm at the beginning of Cosmos: “our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millenia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival.”  

Whether by accident or design, it seems true that we have evolved to wonder and it is equally true that wonder lies at the heart of both science and religion. At least the best religion. Thomas Carlyle observed that, “Wonder is the basis of worship.” Whatever else you may seek here, you probably don’t arrive at church on Sunday morning seeking just another everyday experience. I would imagine that, whether you are conscious of it or not, you come here Sunday after Sunday – in some measure, at least – to exercise your sense of wonder, the same quality of wonder you first knew as a child.

In most religious communities, worship centres on showing devotion to God, but that singular focus doesn’t work for us – it’s insufficient, perhaps even alien to our needs and desires. Liberal worship or services, call it what you will, has many purposes, one of which is to help us reclaim for ourselves a childlike sense of wonder without succumbing to the merely childish or infantile. We know how religion has often served the latter rather than the former. But to the extent that our worship can nurture in people that childlike sense of wonder, encourage our curiosity, and motivate us to ceaseless exploration, then the church will be – dare I say it? – successful in its mission. This will not be mere success – success as a goal – but rather profound success, which is a consequence of our quest for knowledge and understanding and authenticity. It will not be the kind of success we might ask for, or some imagine that we deserve, but rather the quality of success that comes as an unmerited gift to those who stand in awe before the unfathomable majesty of creation.

There is a poignant scene in Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town, in which the central character, Emily, returns to her hometown, nine years after her death, to look upon a scene from her childhood. As she readies herself to return to her resting place, she turns for one last look at the people and place she knew as a child. “Good-by,” she says, “Good-by, world.  Good-by, Grovers Corners … Mama and Papa.  Good-by to clocks ticking … and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths … and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you.” She looks toward the narrator and asks through her tears, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?” The narrator nods, “No,” then, pausing briefly says, “The saints and poets, maybe – they do some.” Even across the threshold of death, Emily retains her childlike sense of wonder. “Oh, earth,” we say with her, “you’re too wonderful ...”

If we open our hearts and minds to allow wonder to take hold of us, rekindling our curiosity and reminding us that the earth is precious – that we are precious – then we just might come to realize that despite whatever evidence there may sometimes be to the contrary, this is, as Louis Armstrong used to sing, a wonderful world … and that we are a part of the wonder. Then we will be numbered among the saints and the poets, realizing life while we live it – each and every moment. So let us not ask for success, let us ask for wonder. And may our wonder forever grow.

A sermon delivered at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Winnipeg.