Wonder

This is me wondering about something. I wonder what I was wondering about? Wonder is like that - it is gorgeously imprecise and incomplete. It always leaves the most important part to your imagination (a bit like my mother's stories when, in the middle of telling, she would go to the kitchen to get the desert and come back and all would be asking "and?" and she would say "and what?" and not be able to remember what she had been relating).

The slogan "The wonder of Woolworths" does not do justice to the word for me - except that it was in Woolworths that I was introduced to electricity. My father bought me a 4.5V battery, lampholder, a flashlight bulb, some hook-up wire and a switch, and the rest is history.

Here I am designing something way back before I
had discovered the ruler: I wonder what it was?

My glockenspiel and deep in thought
in the front room at 16 Broad Street 

I can wonder all manner of things in a sand creation,
and certainly have not yet grown out of doing so.

My favourite self portrait

I like stories, films, photographs, paintings that have an element of wonder in them.  It encourages you imagine more than is stated, so you get more for your money.  Some people say imagination is bad and quote the likes of Eze 8:12 but I say it is the precursor to creation. How can one be creative without first holding the thing in one's imagination?

Children's literature abounds in wonder. A good example is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's  The Little Prince. Long before the internet we used to take books out of the library to read to our children and so we chanced upon this book. Immediately I knew this was no ordinary children's book and I loved it, loved the pictures, loved the little prince himself. The joy is that so much is left out of the story to wonder at.

Fading light at Crackington Haven

Here is a picture I took long ago on my Agfamatic 200 of Crackington Haven that has a bit of wonder in it. One of those golden moments captured in film.

And here are a couple of pictures of below of wonder embodied.  The first is my nephew having discovered a drum set. The second is my grandson with his beloved dinosaurs. I might add that both of them are much older now. What were they thinking?

The term "wonder" can also mean "in awe", but it is really the same thing. We stand in awe because we do not fully understand something.  And who completely understands anything? We all totter through life with an amazing lack of understanding of who we are, where we came from, what is the point of it all and, most of all, of what will happen tomorrow. To quote "It's a wonderful world"!

Anxiety is another emotion fueled by lack of knowledge of the future. Anxiety ties knots in my stomach. Of course I know in theory that I should "have no anxiety about anything but with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let my requests be known to God" but you try telling my stomach that.

In contrast, the wonder of "wonder" is that it is based in security. Rather than worrying that we do know what will happen we rather revel in it, we joyfully allow our mind to explore all the possibilities. This we are very used to doing when reading a good novel or watching a movie knowing that the good guy will come out tops. It is not so easy in reality simply because we have not yet been fully convinced that we are safe.


O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in hell, you are there!  If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.