It took one of my children, back when he was no more than two or three years old, to teach me the profound truth in that famous line from “My Heart Leaps Up,” William Wordsworth’s poem celebrating the joys of nature:
“The Child is father of the Man.”
If you want to experience genuine awe, take a walk around your neighborhood with a young child and follow his or her lead. That’s what happened to me many years ago when I was strolling along the sidewalk with one of my children who was, back then, no more than three years old. Suddenly he stopped and bent down to stare at a dandelion.
“What?” I asked.
He pointed at the flower. “Look.”
And I did, bending down along side of him. To my surprise, I found myself staring in awe at that bright yellow flower. After all, by that time in my life I had walked past hundreds, or even thousands, of those weeds without taking notice, and had pulled up by the roots dozens more on my front lawn and tossed them into the trash can. But now, here I was staring down alongside my son and marveling at the intricate beauty of that flower.
As my young children taught me and my grandchildren now remind me, the marvels of nature are all around us in our neighborhoods. Take a walk with a young child and you will find yourself amazed at the intricate designs of the tree bark or the elegant pattern of black dots on the orange back of the ladybug walking on the fallen maple leaf (itself a dazzling array of veins and patterns) or the busy congregation of ants scurrying in and out of that anthill, with some of the arrivers carrying apparent supplies for the colony.
My latest experience of the awe of nature has been marveling at the engineering feats of a half dozen spiders who have adorned the bannisters of our back porch with intricately beautiful spider webs. I’ve learned that a quiet time on that porch studying those spiders’ remarkable and elaborate constructions is the best form of meditation.
So, as trite as it might at first sound, we should all heed the wisdom of that old adage: “Stop and smell the roses.”
