The phrase in the Subject line, besides being the name of a pretty good Van Morrison album, defines for me the essence of the "spiritual life."
Some, like Van the Man, take the sense of wonder they feel about life and turn it into an appreciation for their personal notion of God. Others, like myself, stop at wonder. The sense of wonder, for us, is *enough*. As a representative of the latter predilection, one of the things I've never been able to understand about religionists and those who favor a more dogmatic view of spirituality is the sense of *certainty* they tend to impose on wonder, somehow feeling that it's either appropriate, or does justice to that which inspires wonder. Some people are so certain that they "know" how the universe works, that God exists, how good and bad are defined, what the mechanics of karma are, what "sin" is, etc. They actually seem to find solace and a sense of comfort in that certainty. They fight fuckin' *wars* over that certainty. Me, I'm not certain of much of anything. Every time I start to be, all I have to do is look around and jump- start my sense of wonder. All the sense of certainty flies out the window, to be replaced by the more (IMO) healthy sense of wonder. Others look around at the same things I'm looking at and find not wonder, but confirmation of the things they are so certain about. Go figure. Their call, and their right, and I wish them well with that approach. But will their certainty increase their joy and apprec- iation of life, or rob them of it by replacing wonder with stasis and complacency, because they already "know" how everything works? I wonder.
