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A ten year-old boy stands on the street corner in dappled shade. He wears a black bowler cap. "Want to see a magic trick?" he asks.
A white haired man pauses his afternoon walk to stoop over the child, hands clasped behind his back. He nods.
The boy flashes a red ball and then two in his left palm. He passes the balls to his right hand and closes both hands into fists. When he opens them wide, the red balls are gone.
The man stands upright in a flash. His mouth hangs open. He laughs aloud and claps the child on the back.
He looks wistful, transported to a time long ago when he believed in magic. When it seemed that the best kept secrets in life could be hidden and revealed in an instant, when one kept a sharp eye on the unknown for what might emerge.
He walks away feeling younger. Astonished. Grateful.
"What do you like most about sharing your magic tricks?" I ask my son later that night.
He thinks a moment. "The wonder," he says. "People remembering wonder."
My boy is now twenty-six. He finds and shares wonder in new ways as a hiking guide and entrepreneur. I feel wonder watching him create and explore. Watching him Become.
I imagine wonder is an element in our Becoming. It arrives in the moments we extract ourselves from the thick of things and take a second look. When we see the people and wilder beings around us more fully and feel suddenly alive in new ways beside them.
There is surprise in it. There's awe. And when we allow ourselves to be moved, there is a moment when we step across that great divide and become something new. We humbly make space for being wrong about the way we thought things were.
In that wonder, we touch grace. And we receive a promise of grace as we go on to uncover what we don't yet understand.
There is wonder in magic, and in discovery. And there's wonder in you and me.
Where are you finding wonder in your daily interactions? Could you open yourself to it more, allowing yourself to be moved?