The Spring feels like a much needed breath of fresh air after what has seemed like a long winter…and an extended season of cave time in these Covid times. Everywhere I look is sprouting and blooming, as if to praise the blue skies, and reach for the warm sun. The child in me wants to sniff every flower, and marvels and sighs with each sight of the purple blossoms in the jacaranda trees that bloom every year at this time. Awe and wonder are medicine, a necessary nourishment for our soul…we can starve from the lack of them. After times of strife or stress, wonder is a remedy, a soothing balm. The innocence of just being present, witness to the beauty and the magic of the rhythms of life, feeds my heart and calms my mind.
‘I am restored by beauty’ is a refrain in a much shared Navajo prayer, and has become an oft-repeated mantra for me in my life. Yes, the beauty of nature in her most resplendent spring bloom and the exquisite heart-piercing beauty that music and art can be, but also the beauty of the order of things beyond our reckoning.. and the beauty of the tenderness that arises with truth. Beauty is an atmosphere, a way of seeing as well as what is seen…when it is accompanied by the wisdom of wonder. Wonder reminds me to take a deep breath, to really take in and feel the moment, to connect to it. In some way beauty and wonder are qualities of true presence.
Wonder opens our heart and mind to the beauty that is…and takes us beyond ourselves to what can be. May you have your own ‘Renaissance of Wonder’ this Spring, and may you be restored by beauty wherever you can find it…
Note – A Renaissance of Wonder is a poem by Lawrence Farlinghetti, and a the title of a book about J.R Tolkien and company.