Wonder and Awe - Stephen Jenkinson

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It's dark.  You are standing in a field...  This the midnight sky
of your younger, wilder days.  It is ablaze, aching with stars.
It is the vault of heaven, indigo sea of time pierced by light
from the other side.  The horizons are gone, and the Bridge of
Sighs, the one they say the dead walk to leave this world,
dazzles you.  Dew settles on your shoulders and you're
atremble, no longer full with comprehension and certainties.
Every idea you have seems too small for the world.  You
lived long enough to see a night such as this, you're stilled by
it.  There are unlikely companions in the field with you,
everyone quiet.  Someone looks up into the night sky and says:
"You see that star right there?  Could be it isn't there anymore."
Some things in life are too hard to see by yourself because they
happen every day, unwinding above your busyness, or because
you thought you knew them already.

Wonder takes a willingness to be uncertain, to be thrown.  We
have a lot of information these days, and few are enamored of
imprecision or subtlety.  But starlight traveling a bewildering
distance for so long that there is every chance that it doesn't
even exist anymore, and all of that having already happened,
and you standing there, your face blazed in the dark by a
starlight gone, seeing it all, what is and what isn't there: that
is a marvel, and surely that is how awe is born...

Stephen Jenkinson
From - Die Wise