Watch & Wonder

 This week I picked up a new book I had been waiting for, called Watch and Wonder: Birding as a Spiritual Practice, by Ragan Sutterfield. I’ve just barely started reading, but there were a few excerpts I shared in our worship gathering: 

• Spiritual practices, at their best, are activities that help us become the kinds of people the world needs right now. (ix)
  
• One of the formative realities of birding is the way it helps us to inhabit time. Paying attention to birds puts us in contact with the seasons in a world where so much of our life is disconnected from natural rhythms. (x)
  
• Birding is a way to enter the rhythm at the heart of the world. (20) 
• Learning to listen is an essential practice in a birder's life. It is a form of radical attention. When we pay attention to birds, we are not just listening to pleasant sounds. We are encountering an act of communication. Learning to understand, at least at some level, teaches us about the world around us, and leads to connection. (77)

Take time to wander and wonder, to pay attention and listen -- to birds if you can, or to plants, animals or fish -- and see what you hear. Listen as a prayerful act, as a means of connection. Listen for a theophany -- a sounding of God here in this place, on this day.