Wake Up to Wonder: 22 Invitations to Amazement in the Everyday

Get ready to meet a delightful assortment of fellow travelers from throughout the ages who will guide you through practical, purposeful steps toward a Jesus-centered, hope-filled life. This is a book you will go back to many times!

—The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church; author of Love Is the Way and Crazy Christians

What could be better than spending time with friends—including some spiritual masters—who give you insightful and enduring advice on how to live? Karen Wright Marsh’s beautiful new book introduces readers to some of the women and men who have guided her along life’s difficult but also delightful paths, helping her—and now us—find a way to wonder and joy.

—James Martin, SJ, author of The Jesuit Guide

"I was surprised by how much I needed the spiritual sustenance that Wake Up to Wonder offers. Marsh highlights the lives of familiar and new companions, ordinary people whose creativity and purpose radiate long after their earthly sojourn has come to an end. Then, she invites us to nurture our own wellsprings of wonder."

—Barbara A. Holmes, core faculty at the Center for Action and Contemplation; author of Joy Unspeakable, Race and the Cosmos, and Crisis Contemplation

Both in print and in person, Karen Wright Marsh has been a friend of mine for years. Her presence in both places has helped to root my soul in a deeper awareness of meaning and purpose.

—Jon Foreman, front man for Grammy Award–winning rock band Switchfoot

Karen Wright Marsh successfully combines the wisdom of spiritual masters with her own down-to-earth insights to provide an easily accessible toolkit for those who are seeking an antidote to the stress and chaos of the modern world. Her invitations to sing, breathe, walk, and so on give people simple ways to fill up the spiritual gas tank and face the challenges of life with renewed hope and strength.

—Sister Monica Clare, CSJB, TikTok influencer

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

Vintage Saints and Sinners: 25 Christians Who Transformed My Faith

© 2023 by Karen Wright Marsh

Published by Brazos Press

a division of Baker Publishing Group

Grand Rapids, Michigan

www.brazospress.com

Ebook edition created 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4934-4188-4

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations labeled CEB are from the Common English Bible. © Copyright 2011 by the Common English Bible. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations labeled GNT are from the Good News Translation in Today’s English Version-Second Edition. Copyright © 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations labeled The Message are from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Scripture quotations labeled RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

The opening epigraph is from Miracle Fair, in Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska. Translated by Joanna Trzeciak. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001.

The author is represented by C. Fletcher & Co.

The illustrations for this book were created by Annie Davidson and may not be reproduced without the artist’s permission.

Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and post-consumer waste whenever possible.

For Charles,

who amazes me

An additional miracle, as everything is additional:

the unthinkable

is thinkable.

—Wisława Szymborska

Contents

COVER

ENDORSEMENTS    1

HALF TITLE PAGE    3

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR    4

TITLE PAGE    5

COPYRIGHT PAGE    6

DEDICATION    7

EPIGRAPH    8

INVITATION TO WONDER    11

WAKE UP    15

1. PUT PEN TO PAPER • HENRI J. M. NOUWEN    17

2. SING OUT LOUD • MARTIN LUTHER    24

3. FOLLOW YOUR BREATH • THOMAS MERTON    31

4. FUEL UP • HILDEGARD VON BINGEN    38

5. KEEP ON WALKING • MARGERY KEMPE    46

REACH OUT    53

6. PLANT A TREE • WANGARI MAATHAI    55

7. SAY THANK YOU • CAEDMON    62

8. PRAY YOUR ANYTHING • AMANDA BERRY SMITH    69

9. ASK BETTER QUESTIONS • AUGUSTINE    78

10. LOOK TO SEE • LILIAS TROTTER    85

11. RAISE YOUR VOICE • FANNIE LOU HAMER    92

GO DEEP    99

12. EMBRACE ALONE • PATRICK OF IRELAND    101

13. REVIEW THE NEWS • HANS SCHOLL AND SOPHIE SCHOLL    108

14. TAKE A PAUSE • HOWARD THURMAN    115

15. WANDER THROUGH SCRIPTURE • PANDITA RAMABAI    123

16. SURROUND YOURSELF WITH BEAUTY • EPHREM THE SYRIAN    131

17. REPLAY THE DAY • IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA    140

DWELL    149

18. DESIGN A LIFE • BENEDICT AND SCHOLASTICA    151

19. CHOOSE YOUR INTENTION • BROTHER LAWRENCE    158

20. DO THE UNEXPECTED • FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND CLARE OF ASSISI    166

21. ESCAPE TO THE BEACH • DOROTHY DAY    173

22. TAKE THE LEAD • MABEL PING-HUA LEE    181

LIFE GOES ON    189

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS    191

NOTES    205

ABOUT THE AUTHOR    194

BACK COVER    206

Invitation to Wonder

Once upon a time, I aspired to a successful, worthy life through spiritual regimens, diligent labors, good choices—all powered by a stubborn confidence in the future I presumed God had mapped out for me. Somewhere (Sunday school?) I’d gotten the idea that right belief, right intentions, and right discipline would deliver personal achievement, an adoring family, robust health, wealth, and the added bonus of inner equanimity. And so I sailed forth.

My oh my, have I ever been humbled.

Ambitious systems? Lofty goals? Assurances of a dogged faith have not held up as expected. I’ve been chastened by garden-variety heartbreak, the wear and tear of ordinary life, the messiness of trying to love actual people. Recent global events have brought me face-to-face with my human precarity and often drive me to fear and loneliness. Forces that are beyond my control—climate, politics, technology, economics, science, culture—overwhelm comprehension.

Still, I haven’t given up on the spiritual life; in fact, I need a steady inner grounding more than ever. In my questing, I’ve come around to unexpected answers.

At some point, I had a revelation. It was nothing profound, really, but it caused a lasting change in me. I realized this: I do not need to find and follow the perfect plan. (What a relief!) What I truly need is people I can follow—older sisters, brothers, mentors, spiritual friends who have been this way before.

In my search for people over plans, I’ve found my way to faithful Christian women and men from across centuries and cultures, each with challenges all their own yet very much like mine. Their varied stories are thrilling, heartening, extreme, bizarre, even unremarkable. For all their flaws and eccentricities, they discover, or in some cases blunder into, a spirituality of amazement and encounter God’s presence shimmering everywhere.

Afflicted by deep melancholy, the reformer Martin Luther found relief in singing. Cast out as an accursed Brahmin widow, India’s Pandita Ramabai discovered dignity and purpose in the pages of the Bible. As a boy, Patrick of Ireland, that saint now celebrated with green beer and shamrocks, endured enslavement by a savage warlord yet returned to the place of his suffering out of compassion for the Irish people. Civil rights pastor-philosopher Howard Thurman suffered racism at the hands of white American Christians yet found deep rest in the liberating, loving religion of Jesus. The lifelong activist Dorothy Day cherished her escapes to the beach.

I’ve become a collector of stories and a curator of historical Christian practices reframed for the everyday, inspired by the host of ancient wisdom figures who mentor me in the ways of wholeness. In a world where religion is associated with burdensome dogma, judgmental attitudes, and blind faith, these persistent believers disarm with a spirituality of discovery, attention, even freedom.

You and I are in a fragile, unsettled moment, aren’t we? You may have experienced inherited doctrine and a presumed religiosity that have failed to reach your tenderest places. Can we dare to imagine a new way of living now—to navigate the world with an empathy, kindness, and hope we’ve never known before?

This is what I long to share: the infusions of meaning, purpose, grace, attention, and amazement granted by the sinner-saints of the Christian faith whose enduring wisdom and words ground me every day.

I invite you to come along as I tell stories of the guides who show me the way, or rather, the multiplicity of ways, to live a centered, abundant life of prayer and action, insights and habits. They just may intrigue you too simply by being who they were and doing what they did.

I hope you’ll dip into the personal practices and spiritual disciplines I offer as invitations. The invitations are borrowed from research reported by scientists, ancient habits and devotional traditions, methods advanced by mindfulness and wellness experts, beauty from poets, and plain old common sense from folks who live life well.

Guess what? Invitations are not rules; they are not systems! They are prompts, overtures, welcomes. So take all the freedom you want as you flip through this book. Read a story here, try out a prompt there, scribble a note, make a sketch, then take a nap. Read deeply if you like—or skip ahead and come back later.

As you make your way through, you’re sure to meet generous, wise teachers who have glimpsed the transcendent. They notice the tiny quotidian miracles hidden right underfoot. They teach that life is a creative work in progress, a long-term project in which patience is required. They are saints of amazement who hold out fragments of the Life that is life. They beckon you too to taste and see that the LORD is good (Psalm 34:8).

This is life. Fragile. Surprising. Blessed. And you’re invited.

When I found I had crossed that line [to freedom], I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.

—Harriet Tubman (1822–1913), Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman

You and I inhabit a universe of extra-ordinary marvels both massive and miniature. So why the sense that I live life dimly and with a divided heart, passing by, unaware, the commonplace gifts that appear along the path? Why am I too distracted or fearful to experience the nourishment, the salvation, to be found in the crumbs of life?

Presence is what we are all hungering for, aren’t we? Real presence! Could it be that you and I have simply never learned to be present with quality to God, to others, to ourselves, and to all created things?1 To bring our attention to unfolding moments?

In the first portion of this book, you will meet five spiritual guides who, each in their own way, call us to wake up. Wake up, wake up! Tiny miracles are to be found everywhere, they say: in a bite of sun-ripened peach, the languorous stretch after a nap, the buzz of a melody, a deep cleansing breath, the self-revelation that emerges when a pen is put to paper. Look within and without and you just may encounter God, beside you in the world, in the glory over everything.

Pay attention. You stand on holy ground.

Invitation 1

Put Pen to Paper

HENRI J. M. NOUWEN (1932–1996)

It was an early September Saturday, the first day of Henri Nouwen’s sabbatical. He sat down in the little apartment that would be his temporary home and cracked open a brand-new journal. Upon his arrival in Ontario that day, his hosts had invited Henri to just relax at the beginning of this empty year. Just sleep, eat, and do what you want to do, Hans and Margaret had said before leaving him to himself.1

Relax? That had never been Henri’s style. Over his sixty-two years, Henri had been ordained as a Catholic priest; earned academic degrees; taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard; written more than forty books; traveled and preached; lived among the poor in South America; and served in communities of care where he lived alongside people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Henri’s close friends had long worried over the frenetic, emotionally intense eighteen-hour workdays that pushed him into episodes of nervous exhaustion and collapse. This time around they’d written him a no-nonsense letter, a sabbatical mandate ordering him to say no to all work except writing.

Now faced with an empty journal page, Henri admitted to a flood of feelings. I am excited and anxious, hopeful and fearful, tired and full of desire to do a thousand things, his first journal entry reads. I feel strange! Very happy and very scared at the same time. I have always dreamt about a whole year without appointments, meetings, lectures, travels, letters and phone calls, a year completely open to let something radically new happen. But can I do it? he asks himself. Can I let go of all the things that make me feel useful and significant? I realize that I am quite addicted to being busy and am experiencing a bit of withdrawal anxiety.2

Henri Nouwen followed a lifelong practice of personal writing. He made some volumes public: his accounts of months at a Trappist monastery, a sojourn through Bolivia and Peru, his participation in the L’Arche community. He kept a secret journal through a particularly dark, despairing, and lonely time. Thanks to his willingness to put his feelings on the page and his generosity in sharing them, we’ve received a rich legacy of recorded human experience. Nouwen’s journal from this final sabbatical period is a gift to workaholics everywhere: one restless man’s honest reckoning with his varied emotions. We read along as he rejoices in his new freedom yet has to nail himself to his chair whenever wild impulses drive him to get busy—busy with anything at all. We hear him admit that he is left without excuses and resigned to embark on a new journey and to trust that all will be well.3 Alone in his secluded room, Henri determines to fight with the angel of God and ask for a new blessing.4

Henri J. M. Nouwen was and is beloved around the world.