What Amazes You?

So we closed off our vacation in NY last week with Holy Mass and the traditional Byrons Family Blowout Breakfast at Benny's Mexican-American Diner (you can have salsa with pancakes). I love Byrons Family Blowout Breakfasts (hereafter named BFBBs). Basically, they involve the peaceful takeover of small eateries by the Byrons boys, girls, babies, big and tall uncles and wonderfully affirmative aunts.... and Grandma and Grandpa B. You need (and we often exceed) at least a dozen souls for an official BFBB. Tables are pieced together like Tetris blocks, wait staff quail, menus get flipped and decorated with classy drawings, and the cooks run out of eggs real quick. This Sunday, Taylor Man (my 13 year old nephew with a rapier wit) was perusing the comics section in between his pancakes and Pepsi when I noticed the "Zits" column. I took it home with me and here it is above, thanks to the power of our HP scanner. If you click on the image it will become muy grande (which is Benny's for really big). (The other image in this post is Trogdor, The Burninator, who needs no introduction, expertly drawn and labeled on the back of a placemat by SB and TG, respectively). If you're a consistent reader of this blog, you can see why the above comic caught my attention. A teenager is dragged across the globe and shown some of the great wonders of the world, and he simply sighs, moans, groans, or slumps through it all. It takes a trip to the cell phone boutique kiosk thing at the local mall to rekindle his sense of wonder. As they say at Benny's.... "aye ya yai!" * Now I get tantalized by technology and geeked out by gigabytes myself, as you may well know. And my daily walk can be a slippery slope into "technolatry" if I'm not careful. These days, it's become hard to imagine life without Mr. Google, or cell phones, or the 150 billion e-mails we "MUST READ AND NOT DELETE!" that zip out every day across the planet (and that is an accurate number)... but the question remains, what truly amazes us? Takes our breath away? Reminds us of our place in the Great Chain of Being? What wows you? And let's keep our examples unplugged. Here are a few of mine: - the iridescent shine on the backs of Japanese Beetles - feeling the rush of wind and not knowing exactly how it forms and how it found me - getting caught in heavy rain when hiking up north through balsam firs and pine trees. Rain splattering, dripping, dropping all around us, and the scent of the wet woods was intoxicating - incense hanging in a church and how it can conjure up so many things and so many feelings. It's a SMELL! - a baby's fingernails - reciprocated love "Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude." - Pope John Paul II ___________________________________________ * I'm not sure if they ever really say that at Benny's.