Faith and wonder are siblings. They begin in a curiosity, a fascination with something beyond us that we can’t fully comprehend, but we want more. Maybe they are intertwined, spinning around each other like a spiral shell.
Some people may feel like they outgrow either or both faith and wonder–they fill their minds only with facts that fit inside what can be understood and categorized. And there is little time for things that don’t fit.
In his book, “Simply Christian,” N.T. Wright works with the metaphor of hidden, living springs. He says to imagine those springs paved over with concrete so thick the springs couldn’t penetrate it, and that a complex system of pipes was built to use the water, chemicals added, and the water was controlled and brought to people, so that they didn’t have to do anything to get it. Useful, regulated, controlled, right to your door with no work. No thought. Wright posits that an explosion, something between a volcano and an earthquake taking place, that none of the water regulators could explain. The water, he says, is “‘spirituality,’ the hidden spring that bubbles up within human hearts and human societies.”
I started reading Wright to get to know the man behind Bible study guides that we will be using for classes on the Gospel according to Matthew and Paul’s Letter to the Romans this fall at Christ Church Easton. It has felt pretty quickly like I may have found another member of my tribe of writers–Thomas Merton, Frederick Buechner, Henri Nouwen, John Eldredge, Anne Lamott–who look at the world through a lens of faith.
The other book in my beach reading stack this week is Victoria Erickson‘s “Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being.” I’ve written about it a lot, think about it even more, and try to live and spark it when I can, but I often feel like wildness, passion, wonder, is the thing we (I) have the hardest time keeping in sight when daily work and life can keep us (me) so focused on what needs to be done–all good stuff, but all demanding time and attention.
Erickson gets us back to the wonder within us. “Are there equal parts magic, contentment and quiet beauty when you’re just being simple? If not, then wait for it.” She writes about walking, something I see also in running:
When I walk,
I can no longer feel
fear or weight
or worry or pressure,
as they vanish
beneath the rise
of movement,
breath and creative fire.
To me, walking is
recharging my life.
This morning I ran barefoot along the beach in Ocean City. This dance of spirituality (Wright’s water), faith, and wonder spiraling in my head; my head which wasn’t clearing itself as it was directed.
I passed a stretch of beach where people were learning to surf, kids and adults. I stopped and watched for a bit, and smiled. In a world where there are a million options for things to do and demands on our time, people are learning to surf.
If I want to play Wright’s metaphor into the physical world, where water is spirituality, that’s a response that makes me happy. Be in it, be a part of it, learn to ride it. We know the ocean is bigger than we can see, we know it is beyond us, and so, we learn to surf.
Faith and wonder both start from within us. They are a part of us, our response to something bigger than our minds, which we want to know more about.