Jonathan Matthew Smucker

From childhood I can remember experiencing rare moments of overwhelming wonder. I did not have words to describe what I felt, but it was as if everything in all of its complexity somehow made perfect sense and I was part of it, inseparable from it. In youth, when I learned about political injustices—racism, imperialism, global capitalism, war, and violence—I began to see the complexity behind every surface. In a spoonful of sugar I saw toil, sweat, blood, and struggle — and again, I was overwhelmed by a sense of connection. I felt overwhelmed by the evil which was inseparable from myself. But I was also overwhelmed, again, by the feeling of connection to an unfathomable complexity. It was as if in the realization of its unfathomableness there was somehow a small taste—a fleeting glimpse—of comprehension. Today, as I walked across campus, I felt a return of this overwhelming sense of oneness. I leaned into it. In every face I saw, every word I heard, every object I encountered, in nature and in human constructions, I felt as if I could know the whole of the history and evolution of the universe itself — the universal grasped in every precious particular.

How? How? How do I ever let a day go by without finding a moment to surrender to the wonder of it all?