We are full of Wonder

I'm having a jolly good time in my studies at the moment. The first few weeks of term were, as always, fairly stressful as I started a new section of my course and learned to navigate a new set of requirement that came along with my latest unit in Modern Theology. My tutor put a new spin on my struggles, however, which has really affected my outlook on it.

Rather than seeing these big questions (y'know simple things like the nature of God and what not!) as things to be anxious over or pin down instead I can see it as play. I can enjoy feeling small and exploring something so much bigger than me. Instead of worry, I can wonder. Since taking this approach I've really started to enjoy myself and my work has improved because of it.

This mini-academic breakthrough made me wonder how much more fun things might be if I took this approach more often in the rest of my life. We take ourselves very seriously don't we? Always stressing and dashing about as if our lives depended on the next task on our To Do list. And yet these things rarely matter as much as we make out that they do. The ironing will wait for tomorrow, the essay will get done at some point, dinner from the freezer will be fine again.

 

The garden. Always seems like a very sensible place to wonder!

And yet while we are dashing about, trying to force an answer out of the mysterious or structure into the chaotic, I wonder if we are missing the things that we can know right here and now in the ambiguity and messiness of our lives. As I've tried to wonder more and stress less this week I have found that the answers actually flow a little faster. When I stop trying to pin God down he pops up all over the place, taking me by surprise all over again.

To me it seems that it is often the most human of things that we deny ourselves. So what do you think? Time to wonder this week? I'll be the one with my head in a bunch of flowers and my mind on the mysteries of the Incarnation! Life, eh?!