"Still, what I want in my life..."

"Still, what I want in my life

is to be willing

to be dazzled —to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even

to float a little

above this difficult world.

I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.

I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —that the light is everything..."

-excerpt from "The Ponds" by Mary Oliver

Last spring, Megan exposed me to this poem. She highlighted this section of it - it spoke to her and it immediately resonated with me.  I have returned to it many times and even had the image above made for her as a birthday gift.

Mary Oliver's words have articulated a longing so many of us have - we want to be moved to wonder.

Wonder is a trait that every child has, they must, as they are experiencing everything for the first time.  We experience with them when having to answer all the "why" questions they have. Their wonder draws them to imagine worlds and stories and people and games and so much more. But then as we grow we are told and believe that we must focus, we must take life a little more serious.

We are drawn to this because it helps us understand the world we live - we need facts, we need knowledge. Often in our quest for knowledge we discover that power and influence closely follows. At least this was the case for myself.

Around 14 years ago, I remember vividly praying every morning "God grant me knowledge".  At that time I was in the midst of going to school at a small bible college, I felt overwhelmed because I wasn't able to recall verses at will to defend an argument nor was I well versed enough in doctrine to engage well. I knew I believed in God, that my faith was rooted in some thing I could not fully describe, and that I was drawn to proclaim and engage it with my life.

So I prayed and prayed and prayed.

Now, yes God answers all prayers. How those prayers are answered are a whole other conversation. From my experience, it has been very hard to know exactly how God answers - though in this case I feel like the answer was 'Alright'. Like a parent who has been pestered from their child for that new toy, I was given what I desired but I was not prepared for the cost or weight of that.

In gaining knowledge, it should come as no surprise that I found myself enjoying being right. I loved imposing that knowledge on others, some times with grace but often it was peppered with bit of arrogance. In one case, I had the audacity to go up to a senior pastor and tell him that he wasn't preaching properly and that he was "going easy on the congregation" (which in hindsight was simply me preferring a different preaching style).

Then I encountered Abraham Joshua Heschel's words:

“Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.”

Convicting words. Challenging words, for in asking for wonder we ask to encounter the living God. In asking for knowledge, I was asking for power - for myself.

God's gift to me was knowledge and I didn't understand how different that is from wisdom. At the time of my request, I still had some wonder in me but I quickly became drunk on the elixir of influence that can come when one begins to be seen as knowledgable by those around them.

As the years have passed, the comfort I once found in knowledge has grown small and the deep longing to be stirred by wonder has taken root.  Lately, I've begun to be dazzled by sunsets and mountains, in the love found in those passing glance of the person who is my forever, and in the unexpected moments that point me to Divine.  I've begun to see the importance of both knowledge and wonder, how it is not an either/or but a both/and. In many ways, I have found a new prayer - that I might be reminded that "the light is everything".

May you today, be so moved...