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Rev. Kelly Crocker, Co-Senior Minister

“What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?” Rachel Carson

In the predawn hours last week, these words of Rachel Carson’s came to me as I stood outside in the cold staring at the lunar eclipse. I couldn’t remember seeing this before and I had no idea if I would ever see it again. It was a moment of realization of how easily we go numb. Our eyes adjust to the wondrous world around us and it all becomes “ordinary.” Yet, we know there is no such thing as “the ordinary.” As the Hindu guru Nisargadatta Maharaj said, “The other world is this world rightly seen.” In other words, there is nothing that can’t be experienced as wonderful or “other-worldly,” if only we have the eyes to see it.

This month's theme, wonder, gives us the chance to pay attention to how we are looking as much as what we’re looking at. Yes, this month is about finding wonder out there in the world, but maybe the equally important work is rediscovering our ability to reorient our sight, to cultivate wonder-filled eyes. When was the last time you were caught by wonder?

Mary Oliver beautifully captures this work of orienting ourselves toward wonder. She writes, “Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be Astonished…” 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.”

What Carson points out to us is that the world children inhabit is the same world you and I inhabit. Catching wonder was never about time. Wonder is always about being present and aware.

For instance, who falls to their knees with awe in the presence of dandelions? Or a common shell on the beach? Or the sound of rain? Or the smile of one you love? Rachel Carson’s words offer us a path to wake us up—again—to the wonder of such ordinary objects. For her, it’s all in the looking.

For the month of December, we invite you to honor the wondrously ordinary things in your life. Instead, look at the world around you through the questions Carson suggests: “What if I had never seen this before? And what if I knew I would never see it again?” If you would like, please share photos of your wonder on our Facebook FUS Community Virtual Gathering Space (www.facebook.com/groups/fusmadison). Take a moment to show one another all those times when you are caught by wonder, when you took a moment to stand still and be astonished.

Rachel Carson’s work was grounded in a sense of wonder. She wrote, “If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the