The Boy Wonder

With our little boy, our infectiously happy little boy, everything is amazing. We call him the Boy Wonder, for this is who he is! The Boy Wonder is our incarnate reminder of the call to LOOK, SEE, WONDER, and WATCH.

This, I'm learning again, should be the attitude of all those made in the image of the King of Heaven. We should open up and say awe every morning to the Divine Splendors that envelop us like swaddling clothes. Everything is made by Him, and is therefore amazing! Have we forgotten?

Everything gets a WOW from our little guy - trees, grass, cows, cups, sausage, ceiling fans, and the singing of birds. "It's amazing!" he cries in that inarticulate speech of the toddler (the angels are the only ones who can translate that stuff). It's amazing and is therefore simultaneously to be seen as silly and serious. Let me explain...

Silly, because it doesn't need to exist. It is utterly superfluous. So he laughs at it. Why is the grass green, the sky blue, the water wet, the moon blue? Who cares?! It just IS... it's magic. And I think he is right, it is. And this is very silly, and should make us smile.... a lot.

Serious, because it does exist. It comes to me, impresses itself upon me like a great weight of glory, like a sacrament, like red and like gold, and like light. It flashes and breaks over me like a wave and bids me receive it like a gift.... this Everything. So I open up and take it in, and this is very serious. The picture above is Adam in the Garden of our Backyard; lost in the sea of green, captivated by it all, he feels at the same time the task of Adam to care for it, and to cultivate it. And this brings joy, which, as C.S. Lewis once said, "is the serious business of Heaven."

I find myself itching to get him out into the wild. To show him more of the Everything; leaves and bugs and wind moving trees, birds and squirrels and everything that lives and that breathes and that has its being. I find myself looking forward to walks with him through light-speckled woods and up rocky paths. I can't wait to toss him into a massive pile of leaves, throw some froggie boots on and get muddy. Breathe the air, walk the earth, run, rummage, romp through this world that is our playground, classroom, Holy Temple, and our home. Funny how daddies look to the future (8 years old with an itch for exploration) and mommies look to the past (8 months old cradled in the arms). But every age is the perfect age.

And I pray this wonder is also the perpetual present.