On wonder

First seasonal newsletter of 2024

Over Christmas and the New Year, we went on holiday. Five marvellous weeks on the other side of the world, travelling around the UK with a week in Paris. And when asked about my trip I struggle to find the words. To encompass the breadth of the experience, the wonder, the joy, the togetherness.

Last year I started study again, a Masters in Spirituality, and when people ask how study is going, I find it hard to access the right words. To describe the how very deep this study is taking me, to really share the impact.

It’s hard for me to not be able to find words. To have experiences like these that seem so very precious and private. There has been a strange duality, the more I was present with an experience, the harder it was to share.

Last year my word for the year was space and I didn’t realise that as well as creating space for myself, my family, and my study. It was a year of space in my writing too. A pause of sorts. Not that I ever stopped writing. If I breathe, I write. But I was unable to write for an audience (unless you count my lecturers … academic writing is another thing!). So the space of 2023 led to a quietness here in this public space.

(If you want to hear more about this time of quiet in my writing I had a podcast conversation with Belinda, Alison, and Donita from Gracewriters about this topic, link here)

But this is a new year, yes, I know it’s February, but my year starts when the kids go back to school. And this new year feels like it needs a new rhythm.  I feel drawn to write again, not just for me, but for you too. I feel my fingers itching to type. I feel like some of the deep stuff I have been learning, and processing needs to be shared. Most of all I feel like it’s time, to pick up my pen again.

So how does that look? Well like I said, it is time for a new rhythm, so seasonal newsletters.

Seasons are funny things. When it is winter here, it is summer in the northern hemisphere. And even then, the seasons don’t change with the arbitrary dates we have assigned to them. Autumn does not arrive with the beginning of March. In fact, the Noongar people (the local Indigenous people) have six seasons. Here in Perth, we are currently in Bunuru which covers February and March and is the hottest part of the year.

It is the same with seasons of life, at one time you can be both in a season of letting go and in a season of growth. We are complicated. Things don’t fall neatly into categories. Not even seasons! That said, I will send a newsletter four times this year, sharing some of what I’m pondering.

My word for 2024 is wonder and being the word nerd that I am, I love that it has two meanings, that of amazement and that of curiosity. There is the sense of both being astounded by this world and also asking careful questions of it. Of being surprised by people and being interested in them. Living in a wonderful world and appreciating all of that while wondering about it (and possibly yes, wandering about too).

So, all that is a long introduction to say hello again, do you want to wonder with me this year?

Jodie

---

“Our society is much more interested in information than wonder, in noise rather than silence.”

Fred Rogers

Wonder as a noun, has the meaning of a feeling of amazement and admiration, caused by something beautiful, remarkable, or unfamiliar. Wonder as a verb, has the meaning of the desire to know something, feeling curiosity or even doubt.

There is a sense of the mysterious in the word wonder. That some things are beyond comprehension, like the expanse of the ocean, or the vastness of mountains, or even the intricacies of a flower.

I had a moment like this standing on the edge of Loch Lomond on New Year’s Eve, trying to comprehend the beauty, the fact that I was actually there, the peace of the place, and the significance of the date. Once more my words failed me and the only available response was to be silent and still, and try to take it all in.

And yet that doesn’t mean we can’t get curious, in fact I don’t believe we can help it. Asking questions about how and why things are the way they are is a good and important thing. Yet as the Fred Rogers quote above highlights there is a point where this search for information leads us to the mystery. Leads us to astonishment and awe. And there we fall silent and still.

I don’t know about you but I find it hard to be in that place of mystery and silence. To admit that I don’t have the words available to neatly tie up an experience in a pretty phrase.

And yet.

There is comfort there too. That I am not the one who has to know everything. That there is one bigger than me that holds it all together. To be reminded of my humanity. To stand at the edge of a loch in Scotland and just be.