Hope - Wednesday

Finding hope through choosing to seek awe, wonder, and transcendence

This week, the emails from Center for Action and Contemplation (Richard Rohr’s organization) have been focusing on wonder and awe.  Each day has been filled with such richness and depth.   I could just copy and paste each day’s reflection here but I’ll go with a few pieces from Fr. Rohr’s Sunday and Monday reflections:

Healthy religion gives us a foundational sense of awe. It re-enchants an otherwise empty universe. It gives people a universal reverence toward all things. Only with such reverence do we find confidence and coherence. Only then does the world become a safe home. Then we can see the reflection of the divine image in the human, in the animal, in the entire natural world—which has now become inherently “supernatural.”¹

How we see will largely determine what we see and whether it can give us joy or make us pull back with an emotionally stingy and resistant response. Without denying an objective outer reality, what we are able to see and are predisposed to see in the outer world is a mirror reflection of our own inner world and state of consciousness at that time.²

So my “Wednesday hope” is this morning’s walk with Scout.  Oh this morning’s walk.  There was a window of about 10 minutes in the middle of our walk that was just full of awe and wonder.  I’ve walked this path and shared photographs from this place so many times but I am always grateful to see new things so often along the way.  As I walked along this path near the water, it was almost dizzying as it felt like I was looking down into the infinite sky.

As I reached the end of this part along the water, there were these rocks that looked as if they were floating in the sky as well.

It was transcendent.  Simply transcendent.  The stillness of the water so perfectly reflecting the morning sky.  Again...transcendent.

This morning was a needed time for me - over the last few days, we’ve had had some frustrating and unexpected things in our family life and also serving with my fourteenth funeral in my congregation this year.  The preceding few days, there was a lot of frustration, angst, annoyance, and pain felt and expressed.   It has been a lot.  These moments don’t necessarily go away with a morning like this, but a time like this helps us move through these times in life.  Paraphrasing my friend MaryAnn Dana from Hope: A User’s Manual, hope doesn’t make these times easier, but hope makes us stronger.

As Fr. Rohr shared, how we see will largely determine what we see.  If we choose to  seek awe, wonder, and transcendence, I believe we will find them.

That sounds like choosing and living hope to me.   

PS - My sermon on Sunday centered on this as well with the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah from Luke 1 if you wanted to take a listen/view.

1. https://cac.org/daily-meditations/willing-to-be-amazed/

2. https://cac.org/daily-meditations/we-are-what-we-see/