I was out walking with staff the other day and I kept interrupting them for two reasons:

One: I’m allowed to because I’m the boss and

Two: Nature was distracting me.

We have staff meeting at my place and I looked outside where the sun was shining and birds were chirping and said “I wish the boss would let us have the meeting outside! Wait I’M THE BOSS!”

There are rare moments where being the boss has its perks…

I said something like “Computers are on phones now, so why can’t we go outside?” This didn’t make as much sense to everyone as it did to me but they soon saw things my way, right around the time I put my shoes on and walked out the door.

Venue is moving our At The Movies series later into the Fall and it left me with a gap in July that I needed to fill. In a later planning meeting someone suggested “Why don’t you preach a series called WONDER? Remember that walk you made us go on?”

I actually added the “madeus go on” part just to include the possibility that it may or may not have been voted on, but what caught my attention was how the suggester was fascinated by the wonder I live my life in and how unusual it might be to most of the rest of us. I’ve never really thought about it now that I think about it, so maybe it’s the perfect thing to preach?

This is literally how I make decisions, so pray for the people who getto work with me:)

Someone on the walk was probably talking about a people issue that was important when I interrupted with a “Hey, why does THIS pine tree’s needles smell differently that THAT tree’s? And what if pine to you smells like pine, but to me it smells like chicken? Who decides that?”

Why are squirrels a little insane and why does the neighbourhood cat strut about in front of traffic and randomly allow himself to be adored by his subjects?

Erin and I were out walking and I made eye contact with a giant crow sitting and judging me on a fence, so I scooted over there and shooed him away. Why? Because A it was judgy and B I forgot in the moment why they call a herd of crows a “murder”.

Crows are evil.

I interrupting Erin praying and said “Maybe it’s time to pray we don’t get attacked by crows because I did that thing again?”

Erin is very patient. Multiple times I’ve smack light poles with my hands to get those cackling carrion eaters to shut the heck up. It’s predictable that they group text all their cousins to come and dive bomb me and whoever was liable by association in a very actionable law suit.

My brain just jumps from “pine needles smell nice” to “STUPID CROWS!” and back again in seconds, but it all fascinates me.

I walk around the pond by the tracks and Yankee, watching sparrows skip along the surface of the water and can’t help but think “Why do they do that?”. I observe red winged black birds and some other aerodynamic yellow bird that someone has already told me the name of that I’ve forgotten because it might dampen my next walk to actually have to place a label on everything I’m fascinated by.

Sometimes it’s just magic. And one can’t figure out magic or it loses its magic.

The very brain-forward person has a deep need to put everything in a box because it gives them a sense of authorship and control, but reading a book is not the same thing as writing it.

A skeptic is desperately trying to work out how everything works but I gave that up a long time ago. Knowing HOW it works is easy, wondering WHY is the thing under the thing.

I’ve returned to some childhood state of wonder and faith even though some days are filled with trouble and cynical adults reminding me of their rights. What good are rights and a good logical brain if they don’t lead you to the conclusion the goose standing on the neighbour’s roof already knows? (How did it get up there? What was it thinking?)

It knows it was fearfully and wonderfully made. At least it is fulfilling its purpose, though it understands it not in the way you and I are trying to.

The fat coyote loping through the snow around the same lake in winter is not denying its basic need like you and I do, is it that it’s less intelligent or perhaps more so?

The coyote knows it is not the God who made it and will never try to be. It feels no insecurity and despairs not because it controls neither its design, purpose or the weather.

It simply exists in the graces of the One who made it.

I interrupted Erin praying again the morning I wrote this walking around the same lake.

“Look, LOOK! What makes two ducks swoop and swerve at precisely the same time and land on the water? Who decides that?? How is it even possible???”

She was wise and innocent enough NOT to say what would take the wonder away with a “The wind, silly!”

I would have smiled uninfected and said “But WHO DECIDED THE WIND??” anyways.

I’d rather read than write the story. My stories just aren’t the same…