A Sense of Wonder (Faculty Eucharist 2017)

Readings: Hosea 6:1-3; 1 Chronicles 16:28-34; Psalm 8; Romans 11:33-36; Luke 1:46-55

If you’ve heard the name Rachel Carson before, you most likely have done so in the context of her famous 1962 book, Silent Spring. Carson was a biologist and conservationist, and in this book she collected four years of research on the harmful effects of pesticide use, particularly of DDT, which was employed liberally to help control insect populations in the country. Carson is considered to be the founder of the modern environmental awareness movement and to have even spurred the creation of the EPA after her untimely death from breast cancer in 1964.

Carson was a biologist who had also wanted to major in English, the kind of student we would have welcomed and cultivated at ESA. Her love of science was animated by her deep sense of spirituality, a pervasive connectedness between all living beings and the world we inhabit. One of her lesser-known works is an essay published in 1956 entitled “Help Your Child to Wonder.” She reminisces in this essay about spending the summers on the Maine coast with her young nephew Roger, and the article is accompanied by endearing photographs of Roger exploring the woods, lakes, and creatures around him.

Carson moves on from her reveries, however, to make more deep and meaningful observations about the psychology and spirituality of wonder. As she writes:

A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from our sources of strength.

I thought that this idea was a natural one for us to consider, since the ages we teach at ESA cover the gamut of a child’s development, from the three- and four-year olds who do come to us with such an innate and incredible capacity for wonder, to the upper schoolers who sometimes manifest the cynicism, sarcasm, and detachment we typically associate with adolescence. The natural question to ask, then, is how do we maintain a sense of wonder across the curriculum, and why should we do so?

The short answer is that we already do, and we do so well, through our physical campuses themselves; through our trips, such as the fifth-grade trip to Wyoming and Globetrek; through the natural observation of bees in pre-K through dissections in the Upper School; in short, through our teachers’ natural passion for their subjects, for getting students to see what it is that we see that has led us to want to share it with them.

But why?

It’s certainly no secret that we at ESA are advocates of a holistic education for our students. It’s no secret that we eschew a model of education that sees students as mere passive recipients of factual knowledge. It’s no secret that we encourage cross-disciplinary modes of understanding, that we push students and faculty alike out of the idea that we inhabit “knowledge silos,” to use the current buzzword, that we, in short, want an education for our students that is life-changing, process-oriented, transformational.

But why?

Carson concludes her thoughts with this question, asking “what is the value of preserving and strengthening this sense of awe and wonder, this recognition of something beyond the boundaries of human existence?” One of her modern interpreters, Dr. Ruth Wilson, points to a possible answer in her 2010 article “Aesthetics and a Sense of Wonder.” In it, she notes that one of the most powerful reasons for keeping a child’s sense of wonder alive is that “while children gain inspiration and enjoyment from being in touch with beauty, their ‘sense of possibility’ can also be nurtured and strengthened. This sense of possibility enables children to see a future different from what currently exists, including the possibility of seeing beauty in places now filled with ugliness, and seeing peace and harmony in places now filled with anger and discord. Along with this sense of possibility is the motivation to encourage future beauty into existence.” It should come as no surprise, then, that as a Chaplain and a religious educator, I believe that our continual nourishment of our students’ sense of wonder and possibility has an integral relationship to our cultivation of their spirituality.

Please look back with me at the Scriptures that we’ve heard in our service so far. All of them speak to a sense of wonder, a recognition, as Carson writes, of something beyond the boundaries of human existence. The Chronicler in the first passage praises the benevolence of the Creator in giving to humankind both an appreciation for beauty and a beautiful creation that itself points humans back to the Creator’s benevolence, a cycle of praise and thanksgiving that produces wonder. And what is a human being, the Psalmist writes, that the Creator of the awe-inspiring world around us would seek him or her out for some kind of special love, blessing, recognition? In Romans, Paul reminds us that to even imagine a God is to imagine a being who is by definition beyond our reach, unsearchable, inscrutable, and therefore more fulfilling and gracious than humankind could ever imagine. And, finally, Jesus points out that the kingdom of God is reserved for those who maintain a child’s sense of wonder, hope, love, and trust in ultimate goodness.

The Kingdom of God, in fact, of which Jesus speaks so often, is precisely the idea of, as Wilson writes, “a future different from what currently exists.” It is possibility, potential, the grace-filled future in which all have a seat at the table, all are fed, and all work together for peace and justice. In short, to provide our students with wonder, at any age level, is to instill in them an imagination that can envision the Kingdom.

The Catholic monk and spiritual writer Thomas Merton wrote Rachel Carson a letter of appreciation upon the publication of Silent Spring. He saw in Carson’s critique of humanity’s presumption and overreach a kind of spiritual sickness that was a manifestation of the narrowing of educational vision. After all, if we keep students in knowledge silos, they will presume to know the whole picture when they only have a small fraction of it. To be educated in a way that can advance the moral and spiritual renewal of society is to be educated holistically. Merton writes “it is in thinking that [we see], in gaining power and technical know-how, that [we have] lost [our] wisdom and [our] cosmic perspective . . . [technical know-how] and wisdom are not by any means opposed. On the contrary, the duty of our age, the ‘vocation’ of modern [humanity] is to unite them in a supreme humility which will result in a totally self-forgetful creativity and service. Can we do this?”

Can we do this at ESA? To both desire and teach wisdom requires us to come to the kingdom, daily, as little children. It asks us to maintain a sense of wonder and awe that enables us and our students to imagine that other world, the one in which our incredible technical knowledge and educational strengths are placed in a spiritual context that pushes us to see the bigger picture, the transformation of lives for the sake of the world around us. May it always be so, with God’s help. Amen.