"Only an admission of ignorance can open us to fresh knowing. Wonder is the experience of that admission: wonder is unknowing, experienced as pleasure. Wonder is a period at the end of a statment we've long taken for granted, suddenly looking and seeing the sinuous curve of a tall black hat on its head, and realizing it was a question mark all along. " - David James Duncan

I remember my dear and oldest friend Andrea telling me that when she was in elementry school her biggest dream was to be in the newspaper. She became a suprise cross country star in the 9th grade. She was in the paper all the time after that. She said she barely noticed it now.

And as she was telling me that story, I saw myself as a little girl on the playground. No one to play with. I remember zipping my coat up and down and praying to God that he would someday give me friends. That was my dream. Now I am surrounded by some of the most beautiful, wise, loving people that I could imagine. They love me. I call them my friends. And I barely even notice them now.

I think about my life. I could have been on the streets. Alone. I could be caught in a relationship filled with the violence and hurt I saw as a child. But God rescued me from that life and placed me in this one. I travel the world. I have family everywhere I go. I get to do what I love. And I barely even notice it. Sometimes, I barely notice the One who gave it all to me.

These staments I've long taken for granted. And I need to look up. See the question mark. Recognize eternity in my friend's laughter and the sacred in someone giving me a hug.

It's true in my life: it seems to be true of our world. In our fight to build the tower that will reach to the heavens we explain away what makes a rainbow and how big the universe is and how the world was made. We place our theology boxes around our God and do everything we can to demystify and neuter all that is beautiful and sacred.

And we wonder where our wonder went.

I want the mystery. No matter how frightening it might be at times to admit I don't know everything. I want to rediscover the wonder of what I thought was common. The people in my life are more mysterious in their journeys and their passion and their thoughts than all of the secrets of the galaxies. My life is a wellspring of wonder, a story that's pages turn every day. And my God. My God. There are no words for the unfathomable depths of beauty and love and passion in my God. It will take eternity to discover them all. And then there will be another eternity to discover the rest of them. And another.

The boxes may be safe. But they are brown and boring and lifeless. Give me the wilderness. Give me the uncharted territories of a Love that is so powerful that it tears me apart and mystifies me and frightens me and makes me alive. I want to wonder so that I can know wonder.

I had to add this quote from Albert Einstien:

"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science.

He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle."