"Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it" Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Where I sit today, is a gorgeous morning. The air is clean, mildly cool, with cloudless blue sky. There is a grapefruit tree and a tangerine tree, right outside the door, both laden with fruit. The image transports me to a early childhood memory of my grandmother's house in Laredo, Texas where I first saw grapefruits hanging on a tree. My siblings and I would have grapefruit wars, throwing them at each other. Because we were so young, we had no capacity for aiming them so it was all fun and wonder. It was my first awakening to a realization that the fruit we bought at our neighborhood grocery in Houston, actually grew from trees. That is the great Wonder of childhood, where life is fresh with discovery.
The fall season brings the culmination of nature's peak productivity. As we mature, the seasons initiate the awareness of time passing, the cyclical processes of life, and the often harshness of winter. That magical sense of life recedes in a sea of knowledge and experience, tossed up only now and then when a door of awareness briefly opens. What triggers those openings is really a mystery. Most likely, the actual trigger point is unique to each individual psyche, although we have our theories and teachings that give some direction to those moments when we recapture a sense of wonder.
This Sunday, I am reminding you that one of the reasons holiday practices endure is that they offer the space and a bit of magic for our hearts to spark that freshness of life that is young and innocent. Without that spark, especially in times of crisis, whether personal or collective, we cannot move beyond fear, sadness, or a world weary attitude to remember the Truth that life is ever renewing itself in an endless stream of creativity. In the ongoing uncertainty of the Pandemic, our own receptivity to all the ways nature and the human spirit work to sparkle in December, can replenish our Wonder. (Susan Nettleton)
"Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.” Emily Dickinson
For Thomas Trahern's (1636–1674) poem of childhood innocence and the hint of it's return, follow the link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/.../wonder-56d22507c0b42