Radical amazement
Wonder isn't something that happens to us. It's a way of moving through the world.
When I was pregnant with Nico, I took a prenatal swim class at the YMCA. During one of our sharing circles, I discovered that another woman in the class shared my birthday. Not just the same date, but the same year. We had been born within hours of each other! And now our babies were due around the same time, too.
Since we were born under the same stars, we asked each other about our work in the world.
I told her I was an artist and a life coach. She told me she was a rabbi.
“Oh my goodness,” I said. “Whenever I imagine an alternate life path, I always say I would have become a rabbi.”
She laughed. “And I always say I would have wanted to be an artist and a coach.”
I’ve been thinking about that conversation this week because I just spent several days in Los Angeles with Laurie. We co-led a Wild Writing and SoulCollage workshop at her mother’s temple for twenty incredible women in their eighties and nineties.
We weren’t quite sure what to expect. Would they be interested in the writing? Would they embrace collage? Would they be willing to share their work aloud?
Then they began arriving.
They flowed into the room with their walkers and their fabulous outfits, their caregivers and their bright smiles. They were completely game. They wrote and shared, cut and pasted with kid scissors and glue sticks, and generally reminded us how it’s done.
The morning began with the temple’s young rabbi reading a Torah portion. He shared this beautiful quote from Abraham Joshua Heschel:
“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ... Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
From there, we talked about wonder.
We talked about how living this way doesn’t depend on our circumstances being easy or joyful. Wonder doesn’t require a perfect life. It can exist right alongside grief, uncertainty, aging, illness, and loss.
It’s a way of seeing. A way of moving through the world.
Laurie’s mom Suzy has got that. Those wonder eyes. She is easily delighted. Full of gratitude. Still curious.
She will be 90 this year.
And as we said goodbye to head back to the Bay, she waved to us from the curb, waiting for her ride to go play pickleball.
Yep, showing us the way.