For the Shiver

Today we went on a great adventure! I was in a car for five hours.
That’s not what I thought our adventure was going to be, let me tell you! But it was not time wasted. We spent alot of time driving through the country, and I got to just stare out the window and try to soak it all in. I’m reading a book, which I highly recommend, called Rapt, which is about how people pay attention and why, and what affects their attention-paying has on their lives and relationships. It’s very intriguing, and it has made me think alot about what things I pay attention to, and it has made me try harder to pay attention to what seems to be important. So here is the result of my attempts at paying attention:
As we drive, I see the wind chasing itself through the tall corn, the golden tips mixing with dark earth, yellow-green grass and the darker green of trees to highlight the sky. The blue above is brushed with the lightest feathers of white clouds, and if you closed your eyes and felt, rather than saw, your surroundings, I’m convinced you would understand what it means that the earth is round. Here and there is a farm, a rundown homestead, a modern marvel of farm technology. This is a very strange world to me, because I love my city and it’s constant motion. I think about what the book said: that every person’s reality is different, because your reality is composed of what you pay attention to, and everyone pays attention to different things. That’s when I realize very suddenly — that is how we know what the really real things are. If every one understands things, perceives them, differently, we can never know if what we’re seeing and understanding is real or not. But when something is beyond our understanding, we know we’re not skewing it to be the way we want — when we can’t comprehend it it means that others cannot understand either… the thing is too real to twist to fit our perceptions. When you think about it almost all things that are the most important: love, freedom, faith…we don’t understand any of them. We can’t explain or even communicate them very well sometimes. And those are the most real things that are. And that is when it came — the shiver of delight I associate with the presence of God.
What have you done, or seen, or heard, that has brought you a shiver of joy? When was the last time you paused simply out of delight? How can you change what you open your eyes to… what will you do for the shiver?