Thankful Tuesday: Attending To The Wonder

What if we stood up and took notice when we say “wow”? Awe is an integral Christian “disposition of the soul,” [Herbert] Anderson* contends. It leads us into and disposes us toward faith. Luther himself said, “Wonder brings faith.” Such a disposition is what actually connects belief and practice. Without an outlook titled toward awe, belief becomes a hallow platitude and practice turns into empty habit. Builidng on Luther, Anderson emphasizes, “We will be more disposed toward moments of extraordianry awe if we have been attending all along to wonder and awe in the ordinary.”

-In the Midst of Chaos, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, (40-41)

*Quotes from Herbert Anderson’s “Practicing Theology in the Christian Life: Ordinary Awe” lecture manuscript

For little boys who play so hard (when their mama thinks they’re napping) that they fall asleep on the hard wood floor

For babies who are turning into little boys, wearing helmets while being pulled around the block on a scooter! For new words like “apple” yesterday, that only his Mama recognizes as anything but “ahp.”

Green beans from the garden! Okay, only like eleven. But they were fun to pick and eat for lunch.

Image courtesy TRACE/NASA

The miracle that we’ll be able to view the Venus Transit today, when another won’t occur again until 2117, when most likely no one we know today will still be alive. It’s amazing to live in a time when we can not only understand what’s happening in the sky, but know the next time it will happen again (and be reminded of our frailty and mere breath of a life).
Listening to my husband read a story to August on the couch
My new obsession (which you’re probably super annoyed by if you follow me on Twitter) with homemade espresso shakes. They are glorious.
For a Monday night frittata with red peppers and goat cheese
A multitude of books on the nightstand
The sweetness of teaching gymnastics twice a month to August’s little preschool class. We are spiders and butterflies and sometimes diggers and always bears.
Fresh peaches from the farmer’s stand
A Saturday graduation party with church community: little ones running around, delicious sausage, the high school graduate’s parents praying for him in the most sincere, non showy, true way. (This cynic keeps being blessed by the gift of people who have nothing to prove by their spirituality. It’s still a pleasant possibility that Chris and I can grow up into that kind of faith as well.)

Sweet reminders that these creatures in my care are growing fast and will only be Batman/Dragon Fighters for a few more moments in the great big swirl of the world around and around. Let me stop and breathe and sigh and listen this moment until my soul can’t help but offer Thank Yous to the one who keeps us spinning in the massive universe, the one who makes babies and makes them grow and holds out grace for their future grown up selves.