Seeing Wonder

For those living in the US or other places in the world within the temperate zone, it is spring, a time of flowering and vibrant green leaves emerging from winter’s dormancy. For us living here in Delhi, spring happened back in February. The earth now is about as dry and dusty as it will be all  year. Temperatures rise to over 100’s F/4o C, the air fills with a powdery dust so light that it hangs in the air for days without settling. It is the kind of weather that scratches the eyes and lungs and makes you long for the monsoon rains to come.

But the dust and dry air are only one reality. There are other worlds to know, whole worlds inside of this world. We walk by them, unaware, every day. Some people like Louie Schwartzberg, make it their life’s work to help us notice, to really look at the world around us so we can see its wonder.View his TED Talk on the hidden beauty of pollination and you can discover for yourself. Even house flies are beautiful, I realized, as I watched them hovering over flowers here in his film where a hummingbirds pivot through the air chasing an insect, monarchs and bees fill the heavens as if moving inside a surrealist’s dream, and bats plunge their heads into the rich  liquid red center of a flower.

We need people with hearts to see the world with eyes like Mr. Schwartzberg’s to help remind us of what Fredrich Buechner speaks of in Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation, “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

The world is full of beauty, even if I feel I can’t see it from my window. Do you, like me,  long to touch wonder? How will I make space in my life to look for beauty, for wonder today? That is a question I am asking myself this morning.