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About SEA
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Barnett's Best
August 2022
WONDER
“Look at that,” I said to my son walking beside me, his curly hair reaching just above my knee. My much taller view revealed the awe-inspiring thin line between the sea and sky, but his perspective offered something else as we approached Sanibel Beach.
Hugo’s hand slipped from mine. A child-friendly communal shovel drew his attention. “Daddy! Hugo dig sand?” Flanked by cordgrass, the windswept path connecting our hotel to the beach offered all the vacation he needed—sand, shovel, and family.
The call of laughing gulls blended with the sound of crashing waves. I encouraged my unaware child to notice the mighty ocean ahead, “Let’s go see the beach! It’s like the biggest sandbox ever!”
My slow steps forward drew him along. Having imagined this moment hundreds of times, I picked up my little boy. “Wow! Look at this,” I said, sweeping my hand across the sprawl of the beach and ocean as far as our eyes could see.
He noticed the broken seashells crunching beneath our feet. “Put me down, Daddy,” he said. Oblivious to the ocean’s deep mysteries, his entire focus narrowed to a tiny hole in the sand. A fiddler crab had burrowed into its brackish home causing the hole to narrow, bubble, and widen.
“What’s that?” He asked. Then asked again, “Daddy! What’s that?” A disappointing thought churned in my mind--had I really spent two years longing to travel only to stoop over and stare into a hole?
A competing thought displaced my impatience. I recalled Rachel Carson’s observation on a child’s perception as an unparalleled and tender source of strength,
A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.
Carson goes on to wish that each child in the world be blessed with, “a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later years … the alienation from the sources of our strength.”
Big complexities in the adult world occupy a significant chunk of many people’s mental and emotional Real Estate these days. Hardened abstract perspectives alienate some people from each other, fracturing trust and stealing joy from their lived experience. Yet, even before the trauma of these past couple of years, I suspect grown-ups have often drawn strength by reconnecting with that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring.
My little boy’s question disrupted my adult fascination with the ocean’s expanse, reminding me of the unlimited power associated with finding beauty in small things.
As the 2022-2023 school year begins, I am reminded of our opportunity to perceive the world shoulder to shoulder with the children entrusted to our care. To see as they see with our hearts and eyes wide open to the present moment’s wonder far too often squeezed out by the endless stream of images and sound bites clamoring for our attention.
On that beach Hugo reminded me of something your children reaffirm for us at St. Edmund’s Academy every day. Our students realize St. Edmund’s Academy’s vision not through some grand triumphant gesture but through countless teachable moments sequenced and aligned to build their confidence, conscience, and intellect.
In the fullness of time, even our smallest students will achieve a much taller view. From those new heights they will observe the sea-level horizon long before they reach the beach. They will know the staggering power of big things—from the James Webb Telescope’s revelations to Toni Morrison’s staggering prose and so much in between. They will know those big things because the adults in their lives took time to gaze with them at small things.
On the beach that day, I narrowed my focus to that fiddler crab’s hole. Shortsightedly, I sensed that sharing my son’s sense of wonder was a gift to him. Today I realize that in reclaiming my attention from so many big things, by choosing to find awe in a fiddler crab’s hiding place, I reconnected with a source of tremendous strength. My son’s gift was nothing short of an invitation to rebuild my capacity for wonder.
I wish every member of the St. Edmund’s Academy community a year of many wonders.
Read all of Dr. Barnett's series on Wonder:
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Wonder
August 2022
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The Wonder of Humble Gifts
December 2022
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The Wonder of High Standards
June 2023
St. Edmund's Academy
Guided by our Core Values and commitment to high standards, St. Edmund’s Academy provides a diverse, inclusive, and nurturing learning community where students are known, valued, and challenged to achieve their potential.
