Annus Mirabilis... the Year of Wonder

I just learned a new Latin phrase that often plays on repeat in my internal observer monologue: annus mirabilis. Year of wonder. Newton coined the phrase in 1666, the year he sketched out gravity, optics, and calculus while Cambridge was shut down for the plague. Quarantined in a farmhouse with nothing but his imagination and curiosity, Newton looked up at an apple tree and asked, “Why?”

I love that the greatest scientific leap of the seventeenth century started with a man who was simply bored with quarantine and paid attention to a seemingly simple thing… apples falling from a tree.

And honestly, I get it. I couldn’t say that 20 years ago, exhausted with a corporate job that had me traveling often, working late often, trying to maximize my day planner to create more time for church services, housekeeping, recreation, social activities, volunteer work, and then collapsing on Sunday afternoons just to rest before starting dinner, starting the laundry, and starting the cycle all over again.

No, paying attention came to me with a quieter, gentler life. One that left room to breathe and time to take walks and to paint in nature and to study subjects that are truly fascinating and to ask questions. Now if I lose sleep, it’s because I wake up at 4am asking myself silly or mundane questions like, “Are birds mammals?”

Time in nature was the key that opened the annus mirabilis door. To paint en plein air or even simply to watercolor journal before a tree, or waterfall, or mountain vista, or any sublime view opened the door wider. The observation became contemplation became meditation.  And then odd questions arose. Many times, the answer was available with a short Google search. Other times, the questions turned into long discussions with friends. And still other times, the only response you could conclude was, “Hum, I wonder.”

So, here's my invitation: join me and let's make this your annus mirabilis, too. Not because anything extraordinary is supposed to happen, but because when we decide to notice, something extraordinary always does.

To open the annus mirabilis door :

• Look up. Literally. The sky does something different every single evening, and most of us haven't glanced at it in days. Download the Sky View Lite app or better yet attend a Star Party at Vanderbilt’s Dyer observatory or MTSU’s Wiser-Patton Science Hall. They are so much fun!

• Ask "why" like a five-year-old. Not rhetorically, actually chase the answer. Wonder is curiosity that refuses to behave.

• Seek the sublime on purpose. A mountain view, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, a well-turned sentence, the things that are too big to fully hold. Let them be too big. Let them fill you with their gratuitous beauty. My go-to subjects for the curious and sublime are astronomy, works by the Romantic poets, the Smoky Mountains, quotes by the Transcendentalists, holy scripture, Impressionist paintings, Oxford University, America’s founding, listening to birds in the mornings, especially during migration season.  Download the Merlin app

  to record bird songs that will help you identify each species.

• Allow ordinary things to surprise you. Hummingbirds fighting over the feeder that has enough nectar for everyone. The cerulean blue of a late afternoon sky changing to warm, multi-colors at dusk. A child's unfiltered observation.

  
  

Newton could have easily labeled 1666, During Plague. Instead, it was his Annus Mirabilis.