I wonder … about wonder

She would have been about three years old, feet dangling off the edge of the train seat like they were waving at the floor.

She stared out of the window – “What’s that, mummy?” as we passed a station, then some street art, then a café, a shipping container and a billboard advertising an adult shop.

Mum answered patiently, putting her phone away whilst caught up in all this wondering.

“Why is that lady in a wheel chair, mummy? Look, he’s got a beard like unca Dave. Those boys are holding hands like you and Daddy do. Are those people going to the airport? That tree has no leaves – it’s like it has no clothes on (giggles).”

I realised again (probably for the nth time this week) that my adult brain had stopped noticing all these things. The very things that are the most wonder-ful in our world, the things that the three year old sees, I’ve forgotten to notice and wonder about.

In a world that is so busy, I can commute for 30 minutes with my head over a book/committee paper/Facebook and not lift my head to see the wonder around me.

I need that three-year-old (all the three-year-olds around me) to notice that leaf, the yellow car, the young man with the ‘funny hat’.

So I pause … I wonder why he chose that hat today; how they made the face of William Barack in the metal on outside of the towering building; what Jesus might say to the tired looking woman in the wheelchair (and what I might say if I got the chance).

Someone suggested that we might give attention rather than pay attention. Others suggest that this is called mindfulness. Today it’s simply the world through the eyes of a three year old with feet waving at the floor and a mum who joins her in her wondering.