On remaining astonished

Evening walks, rainy days and the soul’s need for thunder

The rain was no longer falling from the sky, but her waters had thoroughly blanketed the earth around us.

The red clay was now red mud. The grasses were dewy. The pavement was slick. The trees and shrubs encircling our little acre were pulsing with an electric, rich greenness.

The world comes alive after a fresh shower. I live for days like this.

“You wanna take a post-rain walk?” he asked with a sweet and kind knowing in his eyes.

“Sure,” I said. I was hesitant due to the constant to-do list running in my mind, but grateful for the invitation to slow down and be present, even if just for a post-rain stroll.

We harnessed up Bear and Isla, our dogs who were giddy with anticipation, and made our way through the dewy grass and red mud to the slick pavement just beyond our fenced-in yard.

The walk was typical in most ways: filled with the same houses, the same cattle herds, and the same cars and trucks of neighbors passing us by. But the walk was also remarkable in the ways nature seemed to call me home, both to myself and to the world, in ways I didn’t even realize I needed.

For weeks prior to this walk, I’d been contemplating my return to blogging. I’d been thinking about my purpose in writing here. Much has changed in my personal, professional, and spiritual life over the past six months or so, and being that I write from the overflow of my real life, I knew that returning to the page would mean showing up differently. I have also found a great deal of peace and delight in the simplicity of living my daily life offline, and I’d grown weary of being ever on the lookout for nature-metaphors to articulate the mysteries and gifts of the spiritual life.

I’m not who I was before. What does that mean for my craft? I’ve been growing and changing. How do I show up honestly, fully, and creatively in the midst of transformation?

These are some of the questions I’ve been living. Maybe you’ve lived these questions, or some version of them, too.

As Alex and I walked down our road with its typical sights and sounds, we came upon a familiar clearing, a break in the tree line overlooking a stunning field at twilight. Given the recent, passing rain, the sky itself was a pale-gray shade of faded blue. I marveled at its softness. And much closer in range was a grand cedar tree bursting with juniper berries, depicting the exact same pale-gray shade of blue as the sky.

I wish I’d taken a picture to share with you, but I intentionally left my phone at home for this walk. This description and my memory of it are all we have.

Imagine the scene as best you can: the scent of petrichor¹—the pleasant smell of earth just after it rains—fills your nostrils. A gentle, spring-warm breeze kisses your skin. In front you is a field of rolling and endless hills. The sun is already beneath the horizon, but its brightness is still illuminating the post-rain, pale, gray-blue sky. And just in front of you, within reach, is a thirty foot tall eastern red cedar tree full of pale, gray-blue juniper berries, as if Creator used the exact same paint to design the berries as they’d used to paint the twilight sky.

I can’t tell you why this image captured me, but as you can tell, it did. It was as if all the purpose of the created world rushed in, reminding me of our soul’s enduring need to be astonished.

Astonishment keeps us awake to the beauty of living. Astonishment reminds us of what’s worth fighting for. Astonishment feeds our inner lives with possibility and hope. Astonishment is necessary for without it, we become bored at best and utterly despondent at worst. We need amazement, awe, and wonder to be wholehearted in a world ever on the brink of chaos and destruction. We need evening strolls after rainfalls and to feel earth’s dew on our ankles. We need to linger over birds’ nests on porches and over a flower bud’s tenderness just moments before it blooms. We need invitations to move slowly enough to notice the rich intentionality of a well-ordered, beautifully designed creation. Our souls need to be astonished. To know and to learn from the created world is not a superfluous or shallow practice; to know and learn from creation is the privilege afforded to us by virtue of having the faculties to witness earth’s beauty.

Pausing to take in the cedar tree at twilight cracked me open. I felt the pressures of perfectionism fade and the purposefulness of writing rise up within me again. I was reminded that to be astonished, to notice, to share our observations and delights—these are no small tasks. They are necessary. We need ongoing and endless reminders of life, life, and more life.

It is not lost on me that this moment of astonishment came on the heels of a storm. With this knowing in mind, I was deeply satisfied to discover that within the etymology of the word “astonishment” is the root tonare which in Latin means “to thunder.”

Yes, to thunder.

Let that wash over you. What a gift.

Have you been astonished lately? If so, by what? If not, how might you make room to hear the thunder of goodness and beauty in the world within and around you?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments or via email. Let’s together practice the wisdom of our dear Mary Oliver as she gave us these instructions for living a life,

“Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.²”

With love,

Bethaney

1. Yes, this is so real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor

2. Mary Oliver poem titled: Sometimes