35: Wonder

I lost something important during my flight a month ago. I’ve been looking for it ever since. The very fact that I had the capacity to lose it is what worries me more than anything, but nonetheless, the desperate clawing through my carry-on and checked bags will lose none of its desperation until this key piece of me is back in its proper place.

It wasn’t a toothbrush, and it probably isn’t a favorite book

I’m not even sure if I know what it is, but this is my attempt to find out.  

Remembering back to the days of wide eyes and bowl cut heads is step number one in retracing my symbolic steps as to where I left this lost item. The trembling toes and tight grip on my mother’s fingers as we walk like astronauts down the fluorescence lit jetway echo down my spine as each shuffled step brings me closer to the metal tube preparing to launch me and all these other brave souls off into the sheer nothingness of the sky. The dangling of my legs off of the seat provides little comfort, as the only semblance of ground eludes my short stature and leaves me completely at the wiles of the imagined upcoming loop-de-loops and barrel rolls replaying over and over in my soft head, peaking over the brim of the window to find bits and pieces of buildings and structures sliding by as we taxi out onto the flat and empty runway which, for all I know, was the cape Canaveral of this rocket.

God himself pushes my head, gut, shoulders into the seat back with a gentle violence as the roar of an unknown fire grabs our metal and plastic world and hurls it forward toward the tops of the trees… and suddenly open white is the only thing that exists outside of our flimsy shell.

……

 Frustrated that the zipper on my slingbag won’t close after the security checkpoint, I yanked on the small leash 17 times in rapid and unsuccessful succession before nearly tearing the guide from its teeth and whipping it shut.

“Gah, finally!” growled my chest while I huffily strode through the crowded aftermath of TSA searches, dodging loose shoes and partially deconstructed suitcases. I cannot waste a second, because I have to get to my seat as soon as humanly possible so that I don’t have to do the awkward crab-shuffle across some strangers lap to get to my middle seat. Please, nobody touch even my shoulder with theirs.

Threw my travel case up into the already overcrowded overhead storage, most likely crushing some fragile item in the bag next to it. I threw myself in a similar fashion down into my middle seat, which is silently cursed and prepared to gripe about throughout the flight to myself and to my phone after I reached Seattle.

I was severely disappointed that the g-force change of the engine doesn’t rush enough blood away from my head to put me to sleep.

……….

…Don’t…. Move…..

My grimy hands are barely wide enough to gain purchase on the edges of the armrest, but the thumb and pinky of each are locked to the textured plastic as my bowl-cut hovers half an inch away from the seat back in a trembling state of fixation. My periphery is filled with gold, but I make the mistake of looking out of that shining window already into the chaotic tumble of heaven: Thick legs of clouds, pivoting and swaying, bouncing and refracting the molten heat of the late sun in the snow crystals thickening their lofty heads. A wrestling of the gods caught in the freeze frame outside the tiny metal tube I sat in, as if they were so surprised to see mankind above the mat of clouds that separates mortals from Olympians that they stop their games to watch us glide by.

A hand blankets mine, warming and squeezing it. I find my Mother’s smiling green eyes with my alarmed gaze, and the ice in my bones starts to thaw. Still holding her hand, I put my fingertips on the window sill and pull my nose up over its edge to press myself against the plastic partition between man and immortal and watch the immensity of the world sail past heaven’s feet. The clouds dismiss us as a fly, and I stare up at their games in unabashed awe born of terror, but the warm reminder of my mother’s love around my fingers shields me from danger. I look down through a hole in the white fields of Elysium and see the clay-red of cliffs and scrub brush of the American southwest, and I imagine falling through that hole, plummeting in the most glorious fashion , framed by the gentle fire of sunstruck clouds above the stark bluffs and rugged arches of the earth’s ribs; the most spectacular entrance into heavens gates my young head can create.

……………………..

For what had to be the third bathroom break for the prostate challenged gentleman in the window seat, I groaned up out of my slumberless stupor and shuffled out into the aisle, careful to knock my head into every possible extrusion on the underside of the ceiling. The aisle seat patron and I groggily waited with our butts in the faces of the unfortunate aisle dwellers of the opposite lane as the offending party slowly side stepped out of the cramped quarters of our transient home and murmured thanks to our sullen faces before hobbling down the length of the plane, bumping into every third shoulder on the way. I contemplated standing for the duration of his frustratingly short bathroom break, but caved to societal norm and flopped back down into a temporary relief.

But then I saw my chance.

The obnoxiously bright golden blaze that had been disturbing my precious circadian rhythms lay just to my left, and the guardian of the window was currently occupied in emptying his uncooperative bladder. With a sly hand, I slid the shutter to heaven closed in an attempt to get some sleep.

2 minutes later, a tap on the shoulder kicks off the awkward dance all over.

…

Sometimes, the clarity I need to address an internally roiling issue can only come through putting it on paper. Some of you may read this and scrounge a chuckle or a childhood flashback out of it, but I have to admit that this entry is selfishly motivated. You see, I am attempting in the best way that I know how to regain my sense of wonder at the world around me. And the only way I could think to do so was to write, and to write through the eyes of a child. And in this last chunk of time spent pushing buttons and listening to the “deep focus” playlist on Spotify, I have started to see the edges and define the lines of what caused me to forget one of the most important aspects of living and more importantly, believing.

My best guess is that there are several strands that wind this rope of wonder, and I can distinguish three at this point.

First, I stopped fearing. More precisely, I stopped knowing that I should fear. I am beginning to suspect that fear is slightly more than a simple physiological response to an imminent threat to life and limb, but is meant to be a striking and undeniable reminder of our own fragility and smallness in the world. Nothing can really shake you out of a sluggish state of apathy like a crate full of rattlesnakes being dumped on your lap. Most people start to question a few things at that point, not least of these being “What if I had been bit?” and “What if I died?” It’s easy to forget one’s place in the universe when engrossed in a procedural cop show. It’s less easy when you’re being chased through the brush by a bear or when sitting on a hospital bed about to start Chemotherapy.

We need fear like we need pain in our toes. A stubbed toe hurts, but to a leper, a stubbed toe serves as no warning, and he continues to damage his feet against every rock and coffee table corner until they become necrotic and poison his blood. Ignorance is not always bliss, and fear is not always bad.

Secondly, and strangely not as in conflict as the first as one might think, is beauty and the active pursuit of acknowledging it. This should never be a passive aspect of a person, and the pursuit does not necessarily mean a physical location change (The “wanderlust” craze isn’t necessarily bad, but if you can’t find beauty in your own backyard, then your travels to far off lands will never fill that anomalous gap in your soul, no matter how many Instagram brags you post) as much as a perspective change. A child constructing an imaginary world from sticks and mud, the slight squeeze that your loved ones give your hands to let you know that they savor every second shared, the aching of the belly and the rolling on the ground from laughing so fervently at something truly funny, watching the wind roll through linen sheets hung to dry. There aren’t enough pages to hold all of the examples.

We need beauty to remind ourselves of the echo of heaven ringing in our hearts. A lost connection to a perfect time and state that peeks through at us, wanting to be seen but ignored and distracted from or masked as pure and unbased emotional drivel. We need fear to remind us that we don’t belong, and we need beauty to remind us of a place where we do.

The third and final strand in this woven cord is the bridge between the two, and that is faith. I don’t know what you believe, and frankly, I don’t mind much at this point. This is an exposition on an internal frustration and attempt to rectify it based on what I believe God is teaching me through his word and world. The push of fear from something and the pull of beauty towards something must be given outlet, and the faith that there is a way to resolve that existential tension is the only real way to merge these three concepts into the overarching state of wonder. Faith that there is a way to return to the source of the echoes of beauty, faith that gives hope as an alternative to absolute black despair for those who fear, faith that there is an order and a reason beneath the crust of everything that we as finite and mortal beings are able to touch, that is the binding cord that winds the rope of wonder and tethers us to God.

Airplanes are trivial in the larger scale, but the discrepancy that is outlined between what an experience of sitting in a flying chair should be and what I have made it into as an adult gave me a kick in the spleen that woke me up to a much more disconcerting pathology than a simple sore back from a small seat. This is my first step to recovering what I lost. Every moment that I can remember to dedicate to reclaiming the sense of wonder that I felt as a child, I will clap my hands around and be mindful of its terrifying, beautiful secret and the faith that it instills in me.