Keeping A Sense of Wonder

We will recover our sense of wonder and our sense of the sacred only if we appreciate the universe beyond ourselves as a revelatory experience of that numinous presence whence all things come into being.

Indeed, the universe is the primary sacred reality. We become sacred by our participation in this more sublime dimension of the world about us.

Thomas Berry

Cited in Christian Mystics

Matthew Fox gives us some further thoughts and considerations in these words:

“Berry reminds us that we can recover our sense of wonder and the sacred. Thus, by implication, he says we have pretty much lost it! Do you agree? Have our sense of wonder and our sense of the sacred been diminished?

Can a new relationship with the universe, with that which is the “primary sacred relationship with reality” bring this sense alive again? How might recover our sense of wonder and the sacred lead to greater wisdom, for example, and to celebration and gratitude and even reverence for everything that is?”

Maybe the more true and deeper theme of Advent and the hidden purpose held within the Christmas story being celebrated each year is, at it root and essence, a story of recovery.

Each time Christmas comes to us as a holiday and as a holy day, each time we set out our expectations, our anticipation, and to call deeply to the inward most intentions, through the time of Advent; it is to genuinely prepare for a renewal, a re-awakening, or a recovery of the sacred dimension of our lives.

The Incarnation story is told to us symbolically in the birth story of Jesus, but it is also truly promised to us universally in the teachings of an Incarnational theology.

Whenever we can realize or recover that abiding truth that it is our human birthright as a child of God to be born to this higher and deeper realization of our identity and purpose. It is then that we rediscover or it is the time when we can recover, that sacred dimension of reality that lives soulfully within us.

Then Christmas truly arrives in our hearts and fills our being with grace and understanding.