Finding Wonder in the Ordinary

The sacred arrives unannounced, without fanfare.

Yesterday, stirring lentils in the kitchen, I glanced up. A bird perched on a branch outside my window—nothing remarkable, just a silhouette against a pale, idle sky. Yet something in that stillness—the soft warmth, the hush, the creature’s delicate pause—unlocked a quiet wonder. A fleeting moment became a portal.

We move through a world brimming with unseen marvels. A roadside pebble, dull and ignored, holds secrets. Touch it, and you touch time itself—epochs of oceans, volcanic fury, relentless storms. Its silence is older than our stories. Step over it, and you miss a survivor of eons.

Water, too, is no mere substance. It flows through pipes, fills glasses, carves rivers—but it’s also stardust. It coursed through dinosaur lungs, pulsed in ancient sap, carried the breath of ancestors. Every drop in your body is part of an eternal exchange, a continuity that faiths strive to name and science seeks to trace.

And here we are, improbable creatures gifted with consciousness. We build telescopes to pierce the cosmos, craft songs that stir strangers’ hearts, and ache for lives we’ll never know. We fall in love, fret over bills, ponder death—all while spinning through space, bound by forces we scarcely grasp. Existence is a wild privilege, yet the grind of daily life—deadlines, traffic, routine—dulls its edge. We grow blind to the miracle of being.

But then, something pierces the haze. A child’s laugh ripples through the air. Jasmine blooms at midday, sharp and fleeting. A single note in a song snags your soul, stirring an ache you can’t name. In those moments, you’re not just enduring—you’re awake. You’re witnessing.

The sacred doesn’t demand grand gestures. It waits in the ordinary, in the quiet. It asks only that we pause, that we see.