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A Challenge

In this difficult time, we invite you to create a way of reflecting to yourself and others, something of the meaning or essence of “a sense of wonder."

This might be a photograph, creating a two or three dimensional piece of art, writing a poem, a letter or an essay, recounting an experience etc etc. Your submissions may be long, short, serious or humorous - your creativity may know no bounds!  Some video instruction HERE

When you have completed your creation, send it or a photograph of it to communitylife@christchurchcathedral.bc.ca

(Watch for the next challenge – at the beginning of May)

Below are several quotations on the theme of wonder that might inspire you . . .

 

Julian of Norwich. Chapter 5. Revelations of Divine Love

I saw that [our Lord] is to us everything which is good and comforting for our help. He is our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces us and shelters us, surrounds us for his love, which is so tender that he may never desert us. And so in this sight I saw that he is everything which is good, as I understand.

And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand….

In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God preserves it. But what did I see in it? It is that God is the creator and protector and the lover. For until I am substantially united to him, I can never have perfect rest or true happiness, until, that is, I am

so attached to him that there can be no created thing between my God and me.

 

John V. Taylor

I believe there is nothing more needed by humanity today . . . than the recovery of a sense of “beyond-ness” in the whole of life to revive the springs of wonder and adoration”

T.S. Eliot

We had the experience but missed the meaning

 

Ludwig Wittgenstein

To be religious is to know that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter

 

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Love all God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things

 

Philip Toynbee

The basic command of religion is not “do this!” or “do not do that!” but simply, “look!”

 

Willian Blake

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower.

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour . . .

 

St Augustine

Men go abroad to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering

 

Isaac Newton

In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s presence

 

Rainier Maria Rilke

Most people simply don’t know how beautiful the world is and how much splendor is revealed in the smallest things, in a common flower, in a stone, in the bark of a tree or the leaf of a birch. Grown-up people, who have occupations and cares and who worry themselves about mere trifles, gradually lose the eye for these riches, while children, if they are observant and good, quickly notice and love with their whole heart.

Picasso

The great artistic problem is how to get something of the absolute into the frog pond

Goethe

I was born for seeing

I am employed to watch

I am bound by my oath to this tower,

And I love the world.

I look into the distance

And see, as from nearby,

The moon and the stars,

The forest and the deer;

And in all of them I see

The eternal adornment:

And as the world delights me,

So I delight myself

Oh happy eyes,

Whatever you have seen

Let it be as it may be

It has been so beautiful

 

GK Chesterton

At the back of our brains, so to speak, there is a forgotten burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder

Michael Mayne

This sunrise of wonder – Letters for the Journey.

If I could have waved a fairy grandfather wand at your birth and wished you just one gift, it would not have been beauty or riches or a long life; it would have been the gift of wonder.

Frederick Bueckner

You are alive. That’s all that matters, and the sheer wonder and grace of it are staggering. The sense of life as a gift, and the sense of the pricelessness of each moment – even the most humdrum.