A Touch of Wonder

Psalm 139 Excerpt . . . You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all of my ways.  Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.  You hem me in behind and before, and  you lay your hand on me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from  your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guild me, your right hand will hold me fast.”

Prayer of a Writer
Arthur Gordon, Introduction to A Touch of Wonder (1974)

Lord of all things, whose wondrous gifts to man
Include the shining symbols known as words,
Grant that I may use their mighty power
Only for good. Help me to pass on
Small fragments of Your wisdom, truth, and love.
Teach me to touch the unseen, lonely heart
With laughter, or the quick release of tears.
Let me portray the courage that endures
Defiant in the face of pain or death;
The kindness and the gentleness of those
Who fight against the anger of the world;
The beauty hidden in the smallest things;
The mystery, the wonder of it all……..
Open my ears, my eyes; unlock my heart.
Speak through me, Lord, if it be Your will. Amen.

The Gift of Empathy

Where does it come from— this capacity to share another’s grief or feel another’s pain? I remember once asking a wise old minister about the most famous of all compassion stories: the Parable of The Good Samaritan. How did the Samaritan get that way, I wanted to know.

“I think,” the old clergyman replied, “there were three things that made him the way he was— qualities latent in all of us if only we’d work harder to develop and strengthen them. The first was empathy— the imaginative projection of one’s own consciousness into another being. When the Samaritan saw the bandits’ victim lying there, he didn’t merely observe him, he identified with him, he became a part of him. This identification was so strong that you might almost say that when he went to help the man, he was helping the compassionate part of himself.

“The second thing he had was courage, and he needed it because it takes courage to care— and to translate that caring into action. The ones who passed by on the other side were afraid, afraid of anything strange or challenging, afraid of getting involved, afraid the robbers might come back. The Samaritan had the courage to push those fears aside.”

“The third thing I’m sure he had was the habit of helping. Through the years he had trained himself to respond affirmatively to other people’s needs. How? In the same way that any of us can do it, not so much by drastic self-discipline or heroic sacrifice as by the endless repetition of small effort. By going the extra mile— occasionally. By giving someone in trouble a hand— if you can. By taking a fair share of civic responsibilities— when you can manage it. These things may not seem to add up to much. But one day you may look around and discover that to an astonishing degree self has been pushed off its lonely and arrogant throne and— almost without knowing it— you have become a Samaritan yourself.”

The Night the Stars Fell

One summer night in a seaside cottage, a small boy felt himself lifted from bed. Dazed with sleep, he heard his mother murmur about the lateness of the hour, heard his father laugh. Then he was borne in his father’s arms, with the swiftness of a dream, down the porch steps, out onto the beach.

Overhead the sky blazed with stars. “Watch!” his father said. And incredibly, as he spoke, one of the stars moved. In a streak of golden fire, it flashed across the astonished heavens. And before the wonder of this could fade, another star leaped from its place, and then another, plunging toward the restless sea. “What is it?” the child whispered. “Shooting stars,” his father said. “They come every year on certain nights in August. I thought you’d like to see the show.”

That was all: just an unexpected glimpse of something haunting and mysterious and beautiful. But, back in bed, the child stared for a long time into the dark, rapt with the knowledge that all around the quiet house the night was full of the silent music of the falling stars.

Decades have passed, but I remember that night still, because I was the fortunate seven-year-old whose father believed that a new experience was more important for a small boy than an unbroken night’s sleep. No doubt in my childhood I had the usual quota of playthings, but these are forgotten now. What I remember is the night the stars fell, the day we rode in a caboose, the time we tried to skin the alligator, the telegraph we made that really worked. I remember the trophy table in the hall where we children were encouraged to exhibit things we had found— snake skins, seashells, flowers, arrowheads— anything unusual or beautiful.

My father had, to a marvelous degree, the gift of opening doors for his children, of leading them into areas of splendid newness. This subtle art of adding dimensions to a child’s world doesn’t necessarily require a great deal of time. It simply involves doing things more often with our children instead of for them or to them.

Recently a neighbor of ours took his two small children to the mountains for a vacation. The very first morning the children woke him at daybreak, clamoring to go exploring. Stifling an impulse to send them back to bed, he struggled into his clothes and took them for a walk. At the edge of a pond they stopped to rest and while they were sitting there quietly a doe and her fawn came down to drink.

“I watched my youngsters’ faces,” he said, “and suddenly it was as if I were seeing and feeling everything for the first time: the hush of the woods, the mist over the water, the grace and gentleness of those lovely creatures, the kinship of all living things. It only lasted a few seconds, but the thought came to me that happiness isn’t something you have to strive and struggle for. It’s simply an awareness of the beauty and harmony of existence. And I said to myself: Remember this moment, put it away carefully in your mind— because you may need to draw strength and comfort from it someday.” Giving his children a new experience, that man also opened a door for himself.

The real purpose, then, of trying to open doors for children is not to divert them or amuse ourselves; it is to build eager, outgoing attitudes toward the demanding and complicated business of living. This, surely, is the most valuable legacy we can pass on to the next generation: not money, not houses or heirlooms, but a capacity for wonder and gratitude, a sense of aliveness and joy. Why don’t we work harder at it? Probably because, as Thoreau said, our lives are frittered away by detail. Because there are times when we don’t have the awareness or the selflessness or the energy.

And yet, for those of us who care what becomes of our children, the challenge is always there. None of us meets it fully, but the opportunities come again and again. Many years have passed since that night in my life when the stars fell, but the earth still turns, the sun still sets, night still sweeps over the changeless sea. And next year, when August comes with its shooting stars, my son will be seven.

The Day We Almost Didn’t Go

Almost— almost— we didn’t go. The afternoon was right for it: clear, not cold, a veil of sand blowing off the lion-colored dunes and whispering into the restless sea along our strip of Georgia coast. And all the three youngest children wanted was for me to take them across the river and through the winding tidal creeks to the deserted beaches farther south where they could look for shells or follow coon tracks or gather sea oats or watch for wild goats.

Simple, really: a fifteen-minute run in our little out-board skiff. But the tide was out, and the boat would be stranded, and getting it into the water would be a struggle. Besides, there was a televised football game that promised a degree of entertainment with much less effort. So I had said, “We’ll see,” in the vague tone that parents use. And the children knew from long experience that this means no.

But then I saw their forlorn faces, as they huddled in a disconsolate triangle. “All right,” I said, feeling noble and exasperated and self-sacrificing. “All right. We’ll go. But just for a little while.” Faces brightened. “Can we take Tony?” Tony is a Shetland sheep dog, unacquainted with sheep, who loves boats. “I guess so,” I said. And automatically, “Wear something warm.”

Down at the river, we dragged the boat to the water, getting muddy feet. The engine coughed morosely for a while, then picked up with a splendid roar and drove us through the chop so fast that spray soaked everyone, including the sheltie, who stood in the bow, ears pinned back by the wind, tongue waving with delight.

For three minutes the skiff pranced and bucked in the river. Then suddenly we were in the sheltered network of creeks, skimming around silver corners, flying down amber aisles of marsh grass where blackbirds flared in silent explosions, past dead trees pointing like witches, finally into a broad estuary where the engine bellowed happily at full throttle.

Ahead of us now I could see leaping tongues of surf above the strip of barrier beach, and far away on some high dunes to the southeast a handful of goats moving slowly with a kind of lordly assurance as if the realities we knew could never touch them. I pointed, wordless against the clamor of the engine. Everyone looked and nodded gravely. The world had not changed. The goats were still there.

The skiff eased into a quiet cove. I cut the engine, and at once the surf thundered in our ears. The dog sprang ashore and sank to his astonished chin in damp and porous sand. The children floundered after him, carrying the anchor as they had been taught. A fearsome crew, really. Kinzie, thirteen, was wearing blue jeans scissored off raggedly at the knee; on her head a once-white sailor hat with down-turned brim was pulled so low that she looked like a candle being snuffed. Dana, eleven, wore an old cashmere sweater of mine, full of holes, with sleeves so long that she seemed to have no hands at all, but her blue eyes were the color of seawater on a cloudy day, and her hair was a mermaid-meteor in the wind. Mac, eight, wore a sweatshirt with an improbable-looking bulldog stenciled on it. As always, he needed a haircut.

They raced away through the sea oats, so many things to find or do: fiddler crabs to catch and carry home to be harnessed with thread and coaxed to pull paper chariots; marsh swallows’ nests, sometimes with eggs; skeletons of rowboats resting their weary bones against the dunes; floats from seine nets, starfish and sand dollars, conchs’ eggs and horseshoe crabs, all flung carelessly by the lavish hand of the sea. I watched them go with tolerance and amusement.

I was tilting the engine to keep the propeller out of the sand when I heard the sheltie barking, hysterical high-pitched yelps coming fast downwind. A moment later Mac came rushing back, eyes dark with excitement. “Daddy, come quick….. a bird, a big one, maybe a goose…. he can’t fly… he’s hurt or something… hurry!”

Through the soft sand, heavy-footed, into the dune grasses, up over the shallow rise, and there on the beach, shadows against the sun dazzle, the two girls and the sheltie surrounding a strange, penguin-like silhouette that lurched and flopped awkwardly, long neck and javelin bill lunging defiantly at the dog. I came close and saw the webbed feet set too far back for walking, the sleek head, and the angry eyes. It was a loon, feathers matted into a hopeless, tarry mass. Looking at it, I felt something wince inside me: The worst that can happen to any creature is to be made incapable of doing the thing it was created to do.

“What’s wrong with him?” cried Dana, not far from tears. “He got too close to civilization,” I said slowly. And I told them how sometimes a ship discharges fuel oil that makes a heavy slick on the ocean, and how a diving loon might come up under this deadly film and have its plumage so saturated that it could not fly. “Will he be all right?” Mac asked fearfully. “What will happen to him?”

I knew that after sundown a roving raccoon would answer these questions, and that nature’s solution would be better than slow death by starvation, but I could not bring myself to say so.

“There’s a towel in the boat,” said Kinzie, the practical one. “Maybe we can wipe him off.” “He’ll bite us!” cried Mac with delight and terror. “Not very hard,” I said. “Get the towel. We’ll give it a try.” But even when I held the proud head so that the dagger bill could not strike, and pinioned the strong but useless wings, the towel made little impression.

“We need something to dissolve the oil,” I said finally. “Mineral spirits, maybe.” “There’s some at home,” both girls said at once. “Let’s take him home!” shouted their brother, deliriously. “We’ll clean him up and put him in the bathtub and feed him some dog food and make him a pet!” “He’s a wild bird,” I said, some obscure parental resistance rising up in me. “He doesn’t want to live in a bathtub and be a pet. Besides, I’m not sure we can get this stuff off.” “But we found him,” Kinzie said a little desperately. “We can’t just leave him here to die.”

We found him, that was true— or perhaps he found us. Either way, out of all the millions of possible space-time curves, something had caused his and ours to intersect in this unlikely place.

“Who’ll hold him?” I asked a bit grumpily. “I can’t run a boat with one hand and hang onto a wild loon with the other.” “I’ll hold him,” all three of them said instantly. And they did (or at least the older girl did, the others close on either side), the bird wrapped firmly with a corner of the towel over its head (which seemed to quiet it), and the sheltie crouched, disapproving and dejected, at my feet.

“We’ve got a loon!” Mac shrieked to his unsuspecting mother as we entered the house. “An oily one! We’re going to wash him in the bathtub!” He hesitated, his masculine radar picking up dubious vibrations. “But then,” he added more quietly, “we’re going to let him go.”

The next hour was chaotic. Preparations were immense: sponges, cotton pads, warm water, cool water, soaps, elixirs and combinations of elixirs. Theories were advanced and demolished. Advice was endless. The loon, unappreciative, bit everyone at least twice. And traces of oil clung grimly. But finally, when the last rinse disappeared from the stained tub, the dark feathers were parallel and distinguishable, and most of the weighted clumsiness was gone.

We took him, wrapped in a clean towel, through the living room, down the porch steps, across the dusky beach to the ocean’s edge. When we put him in the water, he bobbed uncertainly for a moment. He turned his head and raked his back feathers swiftly with his bill, as if to align them properly. Then he started swimming strongly out to sea, toward the distant sandbar where shorebirds were settling for the night.

“Why doesn’t he fly?” Dana asked worriedly. “I think his feathers are too wet,” I said. “When the sun dries them tomorrow, he may be all right.” The sheltie, spirits revived, went bounding off, and the girls followed him. The boy and I turned back toward the house, crouching in the dunes, its roof line sharp against the western sky. The sand squeaked as he scuffed his feet.

“He would have died, wouldn’t he, Daddy?” “Yes, he would.” He shook his head slowly. “And we almost didn’t go, remember?” “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’ll try to remember.”

Epilogue

There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of one small candle…. This inscription was found on a small, new gravestone after a devastating air raid on Britain in World War II. Some thought it must be a famous quotation, but it wasn’t. The words were written by a lonely old lady whose pet had been killed by a Nazi bomb. I have always remembered those words, not so much for their poetry and imagery as for the truth they contain. In moments of discouragement, defeat or even despair, there are always certain things to cling to. Little things, usually: remembered laughter, the face of a sleeping child, a tree in the wind— in fact, any reminder of something deeply felt or dearly loved. No man is so poor as not to have many of these small candles. When they are lighted, darkness goes away… and a touch of wonder remains.