Thankful for Wonder and Wonders

As you know I am a Wonders.  Daughter of Robert John Wonders, Mary Skotze Wonders, niece of Helen Wonders Chandler, Marion Wonders Wollum, Louise Wonders McKinnon, Lucy Wonders Doney, Virginia Wonders Rahoi, Joseph Wonders, and Harry Wonders.  And Granddaughter of Claire Lemieux  Wonders to whom I owe my middle name and my beloved Harry Wonders.  He was only in my life for my first six years but I simply adored him and I am not sure I will ever know why.  Why does a six year old love one human to the moon and back and not others?  I do not know but I do know it isn't because her smart brain took a tally, or came to value assessment or built a spread sheet to point her in the right direction.She simply loved who she loved for reasons unknown to her.  And that is what I want to write about today:The reasons unknown.  Why do we love this one and not that one?  Why do we get triggered by this one and not that one?  But this isn't just about humans.  Look through out your day.  You have clear preferences for all kinds of things, from your favorite kind of pasta, to your preferred coffee house, (today mine is Champion on Nassau Ave in Greenpoint (Brooklyn), a block from my daughter's apartment),  your route to the grocery store, etc.  What is your favorite time of day?  Mine: sunrise or sunset.  My favorite day of the week is Saturday, and I am not even Jewish.  My favorite season Autumn edges out spring, summer and winter by which also delights.  But when fall arrives, I am done.   I am at home.  Leaves turning, the transition between the uber fullness of summer and the quiet barren landscape of winter, the transformation of green leaves into the bare branches of the season is the one I savor most.  And luckily, living in Dallas TX, our autumn cycle is a slow circuitous path to the shortest of days.Do you ever wonder why you prefer one thing and not another, one man over all others, one woman?  A season?  A book?  A movie? Anything?  What is the preference making vehicle we all come factory loaded with?I wonder this a lot.  And not just for myself,  but for all of us.  I think our preferences, desires, longing, affiliations and affections are glimpses of our individual souls, if you believe in such.  If you don't then they are a peek into our essential self.  It is the nest of our distinctness, like a cuckoo clock popping out on the hour, we too reveal ourselves to ourselves and to each other through our affections.Isn't that the loveliest of thoughts?  Don't know who you are?  Wonder who you came here to be?  Just look to your affections and in due time all will be revealed.Yes, our preferences could also arise from longstanding, unconscious habits but even so, they were born out of either random chance or our particular resonance (the cuckoo popping out) to that particular thing.  And if our habits began out of a random choice, a preference, an affinity for that choice set in early and thus it became a habit.Why is that?  I think because our soul wants to be revealed, first and foremost to us, so we can follow it's code.  But also it wants to be let out to dance in the world.  I believe we each come with an "inner chooser" with dislikes and likes.  Affections and repulsions.  Longings and aversions.And why does this matter?  Because the inner chooser, (I will name her, Joy) is also our inner compass who can help us find our way home.  And by home I mean, to becoming our essential self, the person we came here to be, or who God made us to be.And why does that matter?  Because that my dear friends, is the miracle of life.  It is the wonder of life.So as we enter the season of wonder and awe that is initiated in Thanksgiving and ends in the positive resolve of a fresh new year, my favorite essayist comes to mind:  Anne Lamott.   I wish for us all a moment where "We start to get a hint of the power and sweetness and absurdity of life and to see it not as all fragile and harsh but as real, the really real.  We get buoyancy and, God knows, sometimes even effervescence.  Perspective doesn't reduce the gravitas, it increases reverence."Let's all raise our glasses and toast to wonder, reverence and effervescence.