Sarah’s slice of life: Look Ye Also
Every summer, two boys rode the train across the countryside.
When they were younger, the boys would press their faces against the glass of the window and marvel at the world racing past by the tracks. They pointed to the rolling green hills, the sudden bursts of colors when flowers came into view and how the sun glittered across the grass.
When the train entered a city, the boys would crane their necks up to find the ends of skyscrapers. On days when it rained, they noticed how the beads of water scattered across the windows. At night, when the world was quiet, they could see the stars if they rested their heads back on the seats.
For years, the two boys watched the world outside the train with equal amounts of excitement. Each time, something new and wonderful appeared on their ride, and they continued to discover bits and pieces of the world every time the train left the station.
However, when the boys grew older, they no longer pressed their faces to the glass just to get closer to the hills outside. When the sunset splattered orange and gold across the sky, they no longer looked or marveled.
Everything seemed the same now, they thought. They had seen every color, shade, light and shape before, so they didn’t need to look anymore. Eventually, the two boys stopped looking altogether, even as the world passed them by.
As adults, the two boys slouched in their seats, scrolling on their phones or hiding their faces in the hoods of their sweatshirts. There was nothing to see, so why bother looking at all?
When I first began to write this column about ordinary life, this depiction of two boys watching the world through a train’s window guided my approach to each issue. I wanted to spotlight simple, everyday things in hopes of forming an overall perspective about life itself.
Something changed with the boys on the train as they grew older, but it wasn’t the world or its beauty. It was how they saw the world and their own lives.
Their perspective at first highlights what I hope this column has conveyed. Put simply, I call this perspective living in the orientation of wonder. May we never grow weary of being in wonder — that’s what it means. This forms how we see things or how we don’t, how we breathe every day and how we live life by the act of actually living.
Every sunrise, every laugh, every blue sky, swooping bird, star-pelted flower and rainy night — noticing the whole of it can actually be a kind of prayer, leading us to see the world and its ordinary things as a kind of sanctuary.
Ultimately, I think this perspective can be expressed in the few words that were found on an old tombstone in Cumberland, England.
“The wonder of the world, the beauty and the power, the shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades — these I saw,” it reads. “Look ye also while life lasts.”
While life lasts, may we never become accustomed to wonder.
The gifts have already been given, but we must be brave enough to see them, take them into our hands and wonder over them. Doing so, however, entirely depends on our chosen perspective. Just like those two boys on the train, we first must see the world as it actually is — bruised but still beautiful, broken but still lovely.
All around us, God gives us the beauty of things, the simplicity of things, the enrichment of things. Seeing them — noticing them – may even change your very life.
May we always be in the orientation of wonder. May we always be grateful for the things we have and see every day. May we always know that the world is still full of beautiful things.
Most importantly, may we understand what a serious thing it is to wonder. God often speaks through the ordinary, and there, if our eyes are turned correctly and our hearts are postured to receive, we may even catch a glimpse of the infinite.
Tate is the editor-in-chief for the Liberty Champion. Follow her on Twitter