Wonder Years

“God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.” Kallistos Ware, English bishop and theologian of the Eastern Orthodox Church

In the late 1980s, I watched a TV show called "The Wonder Years," about a young teenage boy coming of age in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The unique aspect of the show was that it was narrated by the boy as an adult, who was reflecting on and reliving his early adolescence. The show reawakened in me the wonder and newness of life that I had experienced as a teenage boy in those years.

Wonder is a state of awe and acceptance of all we experience in life. Our capacity for wonder seems most heightened in our early stages of life. When I was an older teenager, my best friend and I called ourselves "perceivers." We thought we had a special awareness of the interconnected nature of the world and the beauty and wonder of life that many people missed or ignored. I think we were typical teenagers, presumptuous in our judgement that we knew more than just about anybody else. But despite our arrogance, we had a budding sense of the vitality of life, a gusto for living and experiencing all that was "out there." 

Now, 50 years later, I'm grateful that I've discovered something more, a "spiritual wonder," which is how Thomas Merton defined contemplation. Here, in my authentic "Wonder Years," I've realized what Jesus was offering when he said, "I came so that [you] can have real and eternal life, more and better life than [you] ever dreamed of" (John 10:10, MSG). Jesus promised an expanding fullness of life, a loving, experiential awareness of God -- "the really real." This is the fruit of mysticism, the embodiment of spiritual wonder.

In Western culture, we rely on an analytical approach to knowing; we are not as comfortable or experienced in using our intuitive capacities. Therefore, contemplative prayer can greatly benefit from some method of improving our capacity for interior silence. And that is what Centering Prayer is, a method for cultivating our intuitive perceptions, for going beyond our rational mind. 
In Centering Prayer, we let go of the mind's grasping for words that explain and simply let our eyes and mouth widen as we wordlessly exclaim our wonder. I like the way Shawn Ellison defines mystics: "A mystic is someone who is conscious of the divine in a way that goes beyond concepts."

My curiosity of the created universe led me to my vocation as a scientist, but always with the aim of knowing and gaining a sense of control and superiority in that knowing. Now, exploring the depths of contemplation, I am in the process of transformation in Christ, letting that ego-driven desire to know fall away and expose the core of my being, my true self, which simply rests in the divine and accepts unknowing. My "How?" is becoming my "Wow!"

As our Centering Prayer practices deepen, may wonder consume our questions of "Why?" and "How?" and emerge from our lips as a silent "Wow!"