Wonder as Acolyte
O Lover,
Through the window of my second floor man cave I gaze again at the tapestry of trees, the remnants of the uncut forest into which our development was grafted. Above the snow blanketing neighbors’ roofs most of the trees are stripped of their leaves with those remaining reduced to fifty shades of gray or brown. In the words of the comprehensive panoply of the “Preacher,” it is “a time to die” (Eccles 3:2).
I have been intermittently looking into this vista several days now, having become aware last weekend of something else. Just beyond the roofs of two neighbor’s homes I thought I saw a faint blurred smudge of red segueing toward wine-colored. Squinting as I sought to identify what I was looking at, words like “apparitional,” “haunting,” and “ghost-like” came to mind but were then set aside. Perhaps I needed but to clean my eyeglasses. Back in the present moment, the smudge continues to elicit within me a tug for which I have no adequate words.
Now yet later, I have palmed from my neighbor’s tree a twig and four leaves: flawless in form, deep crimson, burning bright beneath the season’s first snow. I have ascertained that it is a species of Japanese Maple, perfectly prepped for this moment by an inimitable autumn. From my perch I intuit that the modest tree, specter-like, continues to sing “Look at me!” And look I do, its ephemerality and mortality notwithstanding. And the draw, inexplicable and mysterious, persists.
And so once again I am experiencing wonder, however fleetingly, to be one of Your chief acolytes, one of the midwives birthing in me fresh awareness of You. I muse on how many other such moments I have looked at but not really seen in this autumn of our malcontent, how many kairotic glimpses were simply swallowed up by my self-absorptions. Is not the entire cosmos, from subatomic quark to yet undetected galaxy, a force field alive with potential moments and venues of wonder? Is not that the meaning of “Heaven and earth are full of Your glory” in the Sanctus (from Is 6:3)?
Now at the end of the week the formerly festooned twig remains here on my desk, shriveling and in its dutiful decline. Whatever the splendor of its seasonal cargo, temporality drives a hard bargain. But this burning bush (Ex 3:1-15) out over the roofs will never not have been, for my eyes have indeed seen it, the eyes of my heart which see beyond sense or analysis. This time I really took notice, approached, and then waited receptively. Having been snagged by yonder’s enigmatic smudge and then escorted by Your handmaiden wonder, the desiccation at my innermost is being both whetted and wetted by Your ever so damp kiss.
