Be Amazed and Delighted!

What fascinates you? Captures your attention, fires your imagination, drives you to learn more, and creates in you a sense of mystery and wonder?

I was playing around in my photo editor this morning, working with a photo I'd snapped of a Gerbera Daisy in my garden after a rain shower a few days ago. I dropped out all the background and adjusted the colors for more or less pure primary hues - blue, yellow, and red.

While not exactly high art, the result made me smile. It reminded me of the fascination I had as a child learning the color wheel. The idea that all the beautiful colors in the world can be traced back to just three primary colors was extraordinary knowledge for me. I had the keys to the kingdom! I could make colors...glorious, unlimited, vibrant, rich, joyous colors...from just three little pots of paint! Oh, the messes I made with that little bit of knowledge!

My fascination with the properties of color never went away. While most of the other kids were worried about whether to sharpen their crayons or peel and color sideways, I was happily exploring opposites - green and red, blue and orange, purple and yellow - and finally figuring out the difference between red-violet and violet-red.

As I reminesced about my joy, I wondered: When did I last feel that way? As adults, we seem to lose much of the sense of wonder we had when we were children, and I don't know why. We certainly haven't learned everything! There's a world of knowledge, a universe full of miracles and wonders that, like the mystery of color, can capture and fire our imaginations. How do we let ourselves miss that?

So here's my wish for today: Let's be fascinated with something. Find a mystery and delve into it with enthusiasm and wonder. Let's close our eyes for a moment, and open them as the eyes of a child, amazed and delighted.

"Let the fascination come on and rain all over me..." - Melissa Etheridge

Photo by Linda Davenport 2009

Of Heaven and Earth

On the way to work a couple of days ago, I heard Brad Paisley and Dolly Parton on the radio singing, "When I Get Where I'm Going" (written by George Teren and Rivers Rutherford)...

Yeah when I get where I'm goin

There'll be only happy tears

I will shed the sins and struggles

I have carried all these years

And I'll leave my heart wide open

I will love and have no fear

Yeah when I get where I'm going

Don't cry for me down here.

It's a well-written song, beautifully performed by Paisley and Parton. But even while I was enjoying the music, I found myself thinking, "Why have I never felt that way?"

Even when I was trying to walk a Christian path, I was never focused on "where I'm going." I always felt like I was already there. Here. This is where I'm going, where I am.

As a child, I went to the Baptist church. I sang the Sunday School songs and colored the pictures of angels. Even then, the notion that this life is merely a trial to be endured on our way to our "real home" left me cold. Later, when my mother moved us from Baptist to Jehovah's Witness, the idea of a "new earth" made a little more sense, but not so much that I ever felt like I was just marking time, suffering and hoping to make the grade to get there.

Why is that? I am a southern American and our culture is saturated with Judeo-Christian (mostly fundamental Protestant Christian) references to streets of gold and mansions on the hills of our heavenly home. How is it that I never, not once, bought into that vision of our future or longed for the day when I would shed my earthly bonds and fly heavenward? I don't recall ever feeling burdened by sin and struggle, nor have I ever looked homeward toward angels.

Some will undoubtedly see my lack of heavenly focus as evidence that my heart is hardened and I'm lost to the sin and struggle. But I gotta tell you, my heart doesn't feel hard. My heart feels joy and pain. I feel bad when I do something that doesn't uphold my values. I hurt when I hurt others. I'm not evil. I'm not mean. I'm not cruel. No, I definitely don't buy the depraved sinner theory.

I don't know why I have always known that living this life is more important than focusing on some future state of supposed perfection. Maybe I've lived enough turns of the wheel to have figured that out. Maybe not. Whatever the reason, it's allowed me to find delicious joy and beauty every single day. When I'm in pain, when I'm struggling, the next beautiful thing is right here, right now, not something to hope for after I've suffered until I'm dead.

Regardless of why I've always believed this way, one thing that's crystal clear is my life is richer, fuller, more joyful, and more blessed because of it. Gratitude doesn't always require an explanation.

I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony...

...but it appears that someone beat me to it.

My beautiful friend Leslie sent a link to a great article, "How to Sing Like a Planet". Beautiful stuff...and the article is written just to my taste, too. Funny, intelligent, and with a sense of wonder. Thanks, Les!

I've got more to say about this (you knew that, didn't you?)...but not now...gotta pack and get out of this hotel room. Stay tuned...