Living with Amazement

Mary Oliver was a poet especially beloved by Unitarian Universalists for her ability to bring a spiritual lens to the ordinary. In her poem Sometimes, she writes:
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
This past Sunday, I talked a little bit about the importance of “telling about it” when we do social justice. I think it’s also important to follow Mary Oliver’s advice here. There are so many things that if we looked around with fresh eyes, we would be astonished and delighted with.
Every year, one vicarious delight I get is when our member Mike Schultz shares all the freebies he gets during his birthday month. I asked him to “tell about it” and he graciously did so:
“That looks delicious.” This was a comment that I received years ago on a picture that I posted on Facebook of a dessert that I was about to eat at Mimi’s Cafe. Now, I don’t post a lot on social media. I usually find myself thinking “Is this interesting enough to post?” and then deciding “no”. So, this comment on my post actually came as a surprise to me. I was treating myself to a free birthday dessert at Mimi’s and it looked so nice that, for some reason, I took a picture of it and posted it on Facebook. Mere minutes later, someone replied “That looks delicious.” I don’t understand posting pictures of my food, because you can’t really enjoy the taste of a meal through a picture, there is something about a properly plated dessert that is a treat to see that is worth sharing.
Over the years, I have expanded on the practice and it has become an annual thing for me. I’m already a member of several Loyalty programs, and most of them have a free birthday gift. So, even though it is probably not the healthiest thing to do, each year around my birthday, I begin the quest to try and cash in as many rewards and capture the event for posterity with a picture posted to Facebook. Otherwise, the dessert is just empty calories. But doing this spreads the celebration of another lap around the Sun out over a month, and takes my friends along with me. Not everything is really worth taking a picture of. A cup of Starbucks coffee or a Freebird’s Burrito wrapped in aluminum foil is hard to turn into a good picture, but it’s an announcement that the quest to redeem them all is ongoing.
We live in a world where it is hard to celebrate the ordinary things in life, but life itself is anything but ordinary, and being alive for another year is something worth celebrating, and spreading that out for as long as possible and sharing it with as many of my friends as I can I think is just too much fun to miss.
So many times, I am invited to sign up for free birthday gifts like this, but I just never take the time to. But watching Mike share photos of his birthday month inspires me. What all am I just reflexively saying “No” to? And what might happen if I look with fresh eyes, as if I am new to this world. “What? You want to give me a free coffee, just because it’s my birthday? Well, okay then!”
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.