Wonder

I was in Baja earlier this year and we had the chance to go out on the boat a couple of times.  Having seen whales many many times before, I knew that there was a possibility of seeing them.  Having looked for them as often as I have, I no longer expect to see them, nor do I expect not to see them.  Yet every time I'm on the boat, I feel this unbridled excitement welling up.  Of course, those of you who know me well know that unbridled excitement in me tends to look something more like tempered boredom (and tempered boredom tends to look like melancholy disdain).  So it's not as if I was doing backflips on the boat waiting for whales to show up.  But I was excited at the possibility.

We didn't see any whales, but that didn't make the boat ride any less enjoyable.  I've been thinking that we'd all be more faithful and eager followers of Christ - and certainly better human beings - if we approached our entire lives that way.  Of course I am the proverbial pot preaching to the proverbial choir of black kettles.  It's easy to feel a sense of imminent wonder when faced with the possibility of encountering great lumbering monolithic beasts while floating on an immense field of wet molecules sliding past one another.  It's much more difficult to approach daily life in that way.  I've been trained to look for whales in the right circumstances, yet, I'm certain that I miss the little miracles that happen all the time because I don't know what I'm looking for.  But this is the essence of what Chesterton was talking about when he described his yachtsman.  A guy who sets out to explore new worlds gets lost and lands back where he started.  As he nears the land, he gets to experience a great flood of emotions including both the excitement of discovery and the comfort of homecoming.  As sojourners in this world, our lives should mirror that experience.  We are surrounded every moment by the possibility of new miracles and an unseen metaphysical world even as our lives may seem so mundane.  Ironically, sometimes it takes a grand experience (like a journey to Africa) to begin to view the everyday things in this way.  The fact that I can open my mouth, cause my vocal chords to vibrate together, and produce sounds that you understand as language is absolutely magical.  Knowing that we are held down to the ground by the same invisible force that causes our entire planet to loop repeatedly around an great big ball of gas, burning billions of miles away is astounding.  And breathing oxygen is simply a miracle.  Though I've been surrounded by grand and unusual circumstances for a month, it's the daily things that I am beginning to see as miraculous.