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The first grade class assignment: to name the seven wonders of the world. Each student compiles a list, and shares their list, aloud, with the class. There is ardent interaction as the students call out entries from their lists: the Pyramids, the Empire State Building, the Amazon River, Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon, the Taj Mahal and the list goes on. The teacher serves the role of cheer leader, "Class, these are great answers. Well done!"
One girl sits silent. She is asked about her list. She says, "I don't think I understand the assignment."
"Why?"
"I don't have any of the right answers," she tells the teacher.
"Well, why don't you tell us what you wrote on your paper, and we'll help you." the teacher encourages her.
"Okay," says the little girl, "I think the seven wonders of the world are. . .
to see,
to hear,
to touch,
to smell,
to feel,
to love,
to belong."
Somewhere along the way, we have buried this little girl's wisdom.
Today, I heard a radio ad for some technological toy. I call it a toy. They call it a necessity.
The ad told me that I needed it.
The ad told me my life is not fulfilled because I don't own this product.
The ad told me that important and productive and superior and prestigious (and very good-looking) people use this product.
The ad asks me how I've lived this long without their product.
The ad asks, essentially, "How can you possibly live? What are you, Amish?"
Heard another ad today. It told me that God wants me rich. Really rich. Not only that, he wants me to get rich in a hurry. (Of course, I had to buy someone's product first. Evidently, God wants him rich first.)
Okay. They've made their point. Apparently, without their stuff I am unimportant, and my life is confined to the mundane.
But, then, I'm in luck. I heard another ad that promises to eliminate the mundane. What are the odds? Apparently, according to the ad, the mundane, is something to be feared, and we can easily eliminate it.
Which begs the question: What exactly are we afraid of here?
More so than we realize. Apparently. I was doing a conference where people were sharing their opinions about life. One woman stood and said, "Life is so. . .(she was struggling to find the right word) life is so. . .life is so. . .daily."
There's the rub. Life is so. . .daily.
No wonder we're pitched and tempted with so many ways to avoid the daily.
But here is what I believe. . .
- In our rush to avoid the mundane, we miss the miracles of the ordinary.
- In our hurry to find the secret of a life not yet lived, we miss the power of the sacred in the life we have now.
- In our haste to be noticed, we fail to notice the gifts we carry with us and have not yet delighted in.
- In our eagerness to please and join the crowd, we trade the life we have, for the life we think we should have.
Days pass and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles. Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed. And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, "How filled with awe is this place and we did not know it." Rabbi Abraham Heschel
The spiritual life begins with this simple sentence, "I never noticed that before."
In other words, awareness.
Be here.
Here.
Now.
Full awareness of the unnoteworthy immediate moment is the grandest and hardest of all spiritual exercise. Peter Matthieson
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