I’m grateful for the Canadian poet, songwriter and storyteller Linnea Good.
At this time of year, her album Sometimes Christmas is always on my playlist, including a song called It’s a Wonder.
Yes, these are trying and troublesome times. But It’s a Wonder reminds me to not get so focused on the 2 meters of personal space around me that I neglect to notice the enormity and ‘wonder’ of something much larger – larger than me, than my circle of friends or family, larger than my neighbourhood, larger even than the planet where we all make our home.
When the moon unfolds its blanket and enwraps the earth with care
And the stars are shaken loose to fill the sky …
It’s a wonder that human eyes are anywhere but here
It’s a wonder, heaven so close and earth so small
When the song of all creation is a melody of love
It’s a wonder there is any fear at all.
No, it won’t make COVID disappear. Staring in awe at the moon may not cause war to cease – though it just might.
And cultivating and nurturing the awe we experience from time to time, cultivating and nurturing it in others, cultivating and nurturing it in children … might go a fair ways to changing what we understand about ourselves, our neighbours, our eco-systems, our relationships
If you give yourself to awe, it’s hard to be angry. If your world is expanded beyond the universe, it’s hard to get possessive or jealous or arrogant.
So, let’s take a few moments to experience wonder
Linnea Good’s song “It’s a Wonder” draws us beyond what can sometimes be the small circle of our thoughts and experience.
It’s also why we tell the story of the “First Christmas” – the scandalous story of an unwed, probably teenage mother, of a jealous ruler/king, of astronomers drawn to a new star, of peasant workers, smelling of their labours, leaving their jobs to follow the song of angels and discover a newborn baby. We are drawn into a story bigger than our own 2 meters of personal space. Wonder is awakened in us. We find ourselves part of a much larger and more mysterious epic. And we discover that we are not alone.
Not alone in the story.
Not alone in the universe.
Not alone in our 2 meters of personal space.
Thanks be to God – for story, for angels’ songs, for the moon that ‘unfolds it blanket to enwrap the earth with care’.
It’s a wonder
In the heartache of the moment
some will tell you life’s all pain
and that the days of angel company are gone.
But, let our eyes become adjusted to the diamonds in the dark.
You will know beyond a doubt that they are wrong.
It’s a wonder: we are loved
And love is all that life is for
It’s a wonder heaven so close and earth so tall
For the song of all creation is a melody of love
It’s a wonder and it’s living in us all.*
* from Linnea Good’s song, “It’s a Wonder” ©2005 Borealis Music
(Rev.) Teresa Moysey