Monday is named after the moon. This past Monday that little celestial rock stole the show.
I’ll get to that. But first let us consider the lilies of the field—or, in this instance, bluebells—as we take my six-month-old puppy for a walk.
Monday morning, just as day breaks, I hook a leash to Thelma’s collar. She bangs her tail against my leg.
(Oh boy, we’re going for a walk. My favorite thing.)
We walk across the yard. I open the gate onto the trail that winds through the woods. We step into a sea of dewy bluebells covering the entire path. I’m impressed. Thelma’s not.
She tugs on the leash nosing her way through waves of bluebells, sniffing out our usual route. Bees buzz. Thelma whacks one, steps on it, whines, and noses on.
The sun rises. Birds chirp, breezes waft, bluebells radiate, trees foliate, worms squirm, Thelma romps. The earth is alive. Back in the house I set down a bowl of food for her. She wags her tail wildly.
(Oh boy, my favorite thing.)
And I think to myself, What a wonderful world.
That afternoon I and millions of other people observe our tiny moon eclipse our enormous sun. It’s awesome. And to think that descendants of apes on the third rock from the sun foresaw it and invented eye-shields to safely see it. Humankind is awesome.
And I think to myself, What a wonderful world.
Bluebells, breezes, bees, trees, a puppy, and a solar eclipse all in one day. Indeed, what a wonderful world. It’s astonishing. It’s astounding.
And I think to myself, All this can’t be by chance.
Well, yes, it can. I know the science. I believe in the Big Bang, physics, chemistry, and evolution. But, somehow, it’s not enough.
No, I can’t believe what Creationists believe. I can’t take Genesis literally. I can’t ignore facts. But I can believe in a creator as artist, singer, dancer, and lover. Most people do. It’s just too looney for most people to think this wondrous world and vast universe appeared by chance.
Yes, I know, some do. Some hard-core rationalists and secularists have unwittingly drained the poetry out of the world. But we can’t live on prose alone. We need poetry, prayer, and praise.
All things bright and beautiful,
all things wise and wonderful,
all creatures great and small,
the Lord God made them all.
* * *
Love the bluebells – remember them scattered among the trees along the river banks outside Charles Town and Shannondale. Lovely memory. Sadly, our clouds eclipsed all the shenanigans on Monday with the exception of the darkness encroaching rapidly from West to East. It was quite the show. As we joke – upstate NY has eclipses all the time. The day prior and the day following were crystal clear not so Monday. It is a good thing to simply sit and take IT all in as often as one can.
Driving to and from Annapolis in the past few days, we were awed by the rollout of spring. Some say spring’s first green is gold. Rich indeed. Thanks for reminding us of the beauty that’s ours to behold.
IT WAS A WONDERFUL DAY AND I THANK GOD FOR ALL MY BLESSINGS. I’M THANKFUL FOR BEING ABLE TO ENJOY IT ALONG WITH SO MANY OTHERS IN THE WORLD. BUT PRAY FOR THE LESS FORTUNATE. GREAT PICTURE BUT COULDN’T SEE THELMA.
Well before I read this, I went to church. The choir and the congregation were filled with song and the worshipers were entranced. This church was not of brick and mortar, but rather of trees, grass (and yes, some weeds); neither the choir nor the congregation were limited to only two legs, but were free to soar from tree to tree, as birds do, singing wonderful songs of life; And the worshipers were an aging man and his dog Charlie. This kind of worship is fairly new to Charlie and she (yes, she–a rescued adorable and loving Shih Tzu) sits, almost motionless in the middle of the lawn, only her eyes following the movement of the birds, and only her ears twitching as she hears the music. As we left worship this morning to go back into the house (after all, it is breakfast time), the words of a song came into my mind. What was it?
All things bright and beautiful,all things wise and wonderful,all creatures great and small,the Lord God made them all.
Maybe this is a song that we just can’t sing enough!
Beautiful. Thank you. The divine is all around us and within us. The blinding beauty of spring reminds us of the glory of creation. Thelma with her intense puppiness is a gift just as our world is. We don’t have to debate the nature of the Creator to enjoy, love and be grateful for all the gifts of creation. .
🙏🏼, Randy. This is a first for me: a favorite poem as a heartfelt response, which tells me that your beautiful post inspired the Creative in me. Deep gratitude.
“POEM”
Every morning I forget how it is.
I watch the smoke mount
In great strides above the city.
I belong to no one.
Then I remember my shoes.
How I have to put them on,
How bending over to tie them up
I will look into the earth.
Charles Simic is the poet who wrote “Poem” (apologies for the omission!). –Susan
Our Monday was so enchanting… “the birds, and bees, and the flowers, and the trees, and the moon up above, and a thing called love…” and our star in the sky shrank slowly from view as WE watched… with glasses made for the occasion, we gazed, and listened, and felt the cool and the wonder of it all, from our little piece of heaven. My son, my daughter-in-love and my grandson watched from a park in Ohio… planned for months, this family sojourn found totality AMAZING!!!!
A friend in Maine watched from her front porch steps, with the UPS guy…hearing your story and others’ connects us in a deep, rich and powerful dance of the cosmos… grateful – moment by moment, yes! What a wonderful world!!
Thank you for sharing – I can see the bluebells, the path, Thelma, and you… full of wonder!!
In reading this marvelous blog, I am reminded that the mountains don’t ask me for my political affiliation. The oceans don’t inquire about my beliefs. The trees, indeed the bluebells, don’t interrogate me about my opinions. Nature just “is” and invites me to a sense of wonder, stillness and gratitude.
As Sufi pioneer Hazrat Inayat Khan remarked, “There is One Holy Book, the sacred manuscript of nature, the only scripture which can enlighten the reader…It is when the eye of the soul is opened and the sight is keen that the Sufi can read the divine law in the manuscript of nature.”
Likewise, Eckhart Tolle writes, “We depend on nature not only for our physical survival. We also need nature to show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds.” Thank you for illuminating this sacred manuscript and showing us the way home!
This is truly the essence of the intellectual agnostic. And James Herriot’s books pay a lovely homage to that poem, speaking of strolls with the pooch. Terrific as always, Rev.
OH yeah!! Sigh. Thanks Randy and puppy, and bluebells and dew.
Amen.
I am so delighted to have kept your writing for today. Today was A WONDERFUL DAY! And to read the joy you have found walking Thelma made my heart sing even louder. (Heaven knows I cannot sing … except alone in my car.) It was a day out with Joe. He drove his blue beauty of a car, which makes HIM smile. We attended a volunteer recognition Brunch & Brag then to the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley. A favorite museum in Winchester, with changing exhibits and the gardens are opened. Home to unexpectedly help a friend.
A Wonderful World … oh, yes, yes it is …
Randy you ask me if I’ve read your posts and in doing so I’m pressed to chime in when I would refrain. I had read your post. I think others may prefer I do not comment because of my integration of negative with the positive, a wholistic perspective. Too serious.
Such morning walks are transcendent and it is a loss to anyone who lacks them. They are necessary. But I quibble with you. The
world-as-a-whole described as being wonderful is too angelic for my experience and awareness. The world I experience contains wonder as well as tragedy. To address one and not the other requires a mind split, dissociated in this case from negative aspects of our world. “Till human voices wake us, and we drown” to befriend Eliot for a moment. The trick is to hold both, work for justice, and still transcend as I know we all try to do. A happy warrior who fights by action, in deed. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, every character who expresses “wonder” changes for the better. Those who do not express wonder as some of them say “O Wonder” remain two dimensional, static, flat. What’s wonderful to my mind is you, that you experience wonder, and you are a fond friend. It’s wonderful that you are one of those who transcend.
The world is beautiful and tragic. But having wonder in it is a life saver and we could say sort of like with Einstein’s reverence for mystery, that wonder, transcendence, delight, and joy is our savior.