observing

One of the bloggers I follow created a month-by-month memory book full of seasonal activities and reflections to do with your child called Blue Yonder Book of Days. I decided to download the January installment and see if it would be interesting and age appropriate for Liam. So far, he loves it, as evidenced by the the Egg Experiment (which was basically to submerge an egg in white vinegar for 36 hours and observe what happens - simple but fascinating, even for mom and dad). I also have been impressed by the accompanying Parent Field Guide, which is full of good tips, a wonderful reading list and thoughtful ideas for making the most of every day.


Birds are a focus in January, with some wonderful picture book suggestions that we plan to pick up the library later this week. Lucky us, we had an actual bird sighting from inside our house when we saw a stunning flutter of scarlet out the kitchen window this morning. The cardinal was so lovely and unexpected, I knew it had to be a gift for heavy hearts and dreary days. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning penned, "Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God." Thankfully, today we happened to be looking.

wonder boys

One photo couldn't adequately capture this precious moment - three busy, active boys rendered completely rapt and still, while observing one of God's most bizarrely mundane creations, the inchworm. I doubt many adults would give an inchworm a passing glance, if they even saw it at all. Because to see an inchworm, you really have to be looking. The flexibility, the strength, the color, the endurance, the voracious appetite, the drive - for its mere inch, this wee wonder exhibits characteristics and traits a superhero would envy. But most of us would brush off or step on this garden pest without a second thought.

In the Spring 2002 issue of Orion (arguably the best magazine on earth), the feature consisted of twelve essays addressing the topic of "What the World Needs Now." I remember this because I loved this issue and saved it. One of the essays by Thomas Berry was on Wonder. He writes:

"The main difficulty in human affairs in these opening years of the twenty-first century seems to be the loss of our sense of wonder, our sense of the sacred, our sense of play and laughter, our inability to respond to the dawn or the sunset, the loss of our vision of the stars."

And, I would add, the loss of our view of the inchworm. Look at the photos. When was the last time you got this close? When did you last sit still and study a tiny green "bug" moving at a snail's pace, not because you were intellectually curious but because it truly delighted you? When was the last time you argued with your friends over who would get to scoop up the inchworm and what might be the best way to do this? When was the last time someone took ten photos of you over a five minute period and you were so in awe of your own subject you didn't even notice? On this gorgeous spring day Liam and his buddies showed me that nothing is more wonderful than seeing something for the first time, except maybe seeing a child see it. Thanks wonder boys.