Seeing and Believing

We are born with a mandate. We must strive to live in a perpetual state of surprise, experiencing the sensual world with wonderment. We achieve this variously. One way is to seek new places and experiences, which becomes a kind of drug for some people, a restless desire to abandon what is familiar.

I am less adventurous, perhaps, and more compelled by commitments to people and places -- so I tend to stay in one place for long periods. Therefore, another way to achieve constant awe is to look or listen or feel the familiar from unexpected positions -- as if it were possible to be born anew each morning, each moment.

Seeking out the unfamiliar experience in familiar surroundings requires a subtle discipline, rigorous in its way. Until this way of living becomes habitual, one must practice it. Do the unexpected, and see what happens. Make outrageous claims that even God could not support. Put your fingers in your ears and listen to your heart beat. Stand beneath a white pine while eating molasses-soaked grain and thinking of the first cigarette you ever smoked, the first dog you ever shot. Stop and observe the smallest details.

Once when I was up at Oxbow Lake, near Ludington, Michigan, where my extended family has owned property for generations, I watched a dragonfly free itself from its cocoon attached to the roots of a tall oak.

The creature was translucent at first, the color of milky tea, and its four, shriveled wings looked as if a child's hand had wrinkled them. It crawled up a blade of grass in a dapple of sunlight. I'm not sure how long I watched, but I witnessed its soft, pale skin harden and darken, and its wings unfurl into transparent iridescence.

Still, the dragonfly clung to the grass blade, and still I waited to see it take flight for the first time, which it did, finally and gloriously, launching toward the lake, its wings buzzing, and I was wondering how it viewed the world, and then a swallow swooped low and snatched it away.

What a miracle. What a gift to have witnessed such a small and perfect spectacle of creation and destruction -- and to have the honor of remembering it in words.