Terry Hershey

The seven wonders of the world

“The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.”
Rabbi Abraham Heschel

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
Rumi

“If this isn't nice, what is.”
Kurt Vonnegut's Uncle

“Bono, who was born Paul Hewson, had more than enough unhappiness and loss growing up to give a sharp edge to that wail, but not too much to kill his sense of delight.”
From an article about U2's Bono

“There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as if everything is.”

The first grade class assignment: to name the seven wonders of the world. Each student compiles a list, and shares their list, aloud, with the class. There is ardent interaction as the students call out entries from their lists: the Pyramids, the Empire State Building, the Amazon River, Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon, the Taj Mahal and the list goes on. The teacher serves the role of cheer leader, “Class, these are great answers. Well done!”

One girl sits silent. She is asked about her list. She says, “I don't think I understand the assignment.”

“Why?”

“I don't have any of the right answers,” she tells the teacher.

“Well, why don't you tell us what you wrote on your paper, and we'll help you.” the teacher encourages her.

“Okay,” says the little girl, “I think the seven wonders of the world are. . .
to see,
to hear,
to touch,
to smell,
to feel,
to love,
to belong.”

Somewhere along the way, we have buried this little girl's wisdom.

Today, I heard a radio ad for some technological toy. I call it a toy. They call it a necessity.

The ad told me that I needed it.

The ad told me my life is not fulfilled because I don't own this product.

The ad told me that important and productive and superior and prestigious (and very good-looking) people use this product.

The ad asks me how I've lived this long without their product.

The ad asks, essentially, “How can you possibly live? What are you, Amish?”
Heard another ad today. It told me that God wants me rich. Really rich. Not only that, he wants me to get rich in a hurry. (Of course, I had to buy someone's product first. Evidently, God wants him rich first.)

Okay. They've made their point. Apparently, without their stuff I am unimportant, and my life is confined to the mundane.

But, then, I'm in luck. I heard another ad that promises to eliminate the mundane. What are the odds? Apparently, according to the ad, the mundane, is something to be feared, and we can easily eliminate it.

Which begs the question: What exactly are we afraid of here?

More so than we realize. Apparently. I was doing a conference where people were sharing their opinions about life. One woman stood and said, “Life is so. . .(she was struggling to find the right word) life is so. . .life is so. . .daily.”

There's the rub. Life is so. . .daily.

No wonder we're pitched and tempted with so many ways to avoid the daily.

But here is what I believe. . .

• In our rush to avoid the mundane, we miss the miracles of the ordinary.
• In our hurry to find the secret of a life not yet lived, we miss the power of the sacred in the life we have now.
• In our haste to be noticed, we fail to notice the gifts we carry with us and have not yet delighted in.
• In our eagerness to please and join the crowd, we trade the life we have, for the life we think we should have.

Days pass and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles. Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed. And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, “How filled with awe is this place and we did not know it.”

The spiritual life begins with this simple sentence, “I never noticed that before.” In other words, awareness. Presence.

Be here.
Here.
Now.

Like the child said to his mother, emphatically, “No. Listen to me, this time with your eyes.”

Some of us take hold of these lessons, but we treat them as if they are a prescription, a pill to take, a path to follow. We tell ourselves, “From this day forward we shall be aware. Just tell us where. When. And How.”

And we become (in the words of Robert Capon) like ill-taught piano students, so inculcated with the flub that will get us in dutch, we don't hear the music, we only play the right notes.

Did you see the movie Mr. Holland's Opus? It is a story about a high school music teacher (played by Richard Dryfus). The movie spans 25 years, following the teacher's career and his impact on his students, and the impact his students have on him. One student, a young woman, played clarinet. At a private lesson, she played a piece. The music (or at least the sound that came from the clarinet) was painful. Try as she might, even with furrowed brow and intense concentration, the young woman could not eliminate the screeches. Mr. Holland is exasperated. He doesn't know quite know what to do. What to say.
Finally, he stops her, and says, “You know, you have beautiful red hair.”
Taken aback, she says, “Thank you. My dad always said it reminded him of the sunset.”
“Okay,” says Mr. Holland gently. “Close you eyes. And, this time, play the sunset.”
She closes her eyes, and the music floats, and intoxicates, and fills the air with the fragrance of life.

She learns the difference between just playing the right notes, and hearing the music.

Not that notes are bad. I heard it said that Fred Astaire would put chalk down on the sidewalk and then he'd practice his moves. Chalk. The right notes.

However, and here's the secret. . .once the music started, he just danced.

Try this. Sometime today, stop what you're doing. And listen. I believe you can hear the voice of that little girl reminding you of the seven wonders of the world. And if the spirit moves you, dance. Just dance.

Do you have any stories of wonder to share?

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Soul Gardening Exercises

Blessings (In the Jewish Talmud the word is Brachot) are tools for transcendence. They are not transcendence itself. Like all meditations, they do not work by magic. A person who utters them casually will gain little. But when said with understanding and concentration, they become a daily source of transcendental amazement.

The blessings (bracha) allows us to walk through life in total amazement. We may not achieve that level of concentration all day long, but we can certainly reach it (at the very least) whenever we eat.

In general, brachot encourage us to step back and notice the beauty, majesty, and complexity of creation. They're tools for transcendence. We say blessings that we may be mindful of the sacred hidden within the ordinary. It is written in the Talmud that one who eats without first saying a blessing is stealing sacred property. Some even argue that our saying blessings causes God to send more goodness into the world.

Words to Live By

New Book

Sacred Necessities

Sacred Necessities:
Gifts for Living with Passion, Purpose, and Grace

It is a form of soul food. What is it that makes life worth living? What makes the everyday ordinary world extraordinary . . . even sacred? If we want to be truly alive, there are just a few things we really need, a few sacred necessities:

Amazement, Sanctuary, Grace, Stillness, Simplicity, Resilience, Friendship

We can't buy them. We can't make them in an instant. But if we are willing to accept rather than grasp at them, they are already there for us - serendipitous gifts waiting to be experienced. And then, practiced.

Sacred Necessities: Gifts for living with Passion, Purpose and Grace is a tonic for the heart, a restorative for our emotional well-being, and feast for our soul. MORE

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