Spirituality and Wellness
Lloyd Den Boer
A Spirit of Inquiry
Decades have passed, but my memory of one particular moment is still vivid.
Rounding the corner of my father’s sheep barn in early evening darkness, I pulled
up short. A full moon, half hidden by the horizon, was climbing steadily, directly in
front of me. From my spot with the sheep barn on the left and a high stack of hay
on the right, the visible part of the fl aming disk fi lled the entire horizon at its base
and more and more of the sky as it rose. The huge rising moon took charge of me.
Thoughts about ordinary concerns fell silent. I stood and watched, lost, as we say,
in wonder.
Many of us have memories of
moments like this, moments
when the majesty, intricacy,
mystery, or even ferocity of nature
overwhelmed our perceptions.
Like the poet Wordsworth, we
often sense that these experiences
take us beyond everyday
understandings of ourselves
and our world. We discover that
the world around us is bigger
than we imagined, and our
worries, signifi cance, and powers
are smaller than we thought.
Surprisingly, although we
consider ourselves somehow less
and the world around us more,
usually these experiences are
exhilarating. Wonder transforms
us, at least for a particular
moment.
Children seem to have easy
access to wonder, as any adult
who has spent time in nature with
children knows well. Whatever
the activity — a walk through a
park, a view of the night sky in
the country, a bicycle ride down a
trail, a pause at a quiet bend while
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canoeing a river — children stand
amazed by many things. Moreover,
children pass easily from wonder
to wondering, from admiration
to curiosity. What adult hasn’t
fi elded barrages of “What is this?”
and “Why is that?” from young
children? On one hand, children
easily experience wonder; on the
other, they equally access curiosity
and a spirit of inquiry. In children,
wonder and inquiry seem like two
sides of one coin.
Curiosity is an endearing
characteristic in children, but do
we admire it in ourselves just as
much? After all, even children can
be told that “curiosity killed the
cat” when their questions become
too insistent. Perhaps persistent
questioning is even more
unsettling when it comes from
someone old enough to know
not to bother anyone by being
curious. Can the spirit of inquiry
that comes so easily to children be
good for us or those around us?
The story of William Budd and
typhoid fever shows the value of
inquiry. Budd was a nineteenth-
century English country doctor
who discovered how to contain
the spread of the gastroenteric
illness known as typhoid fever.
Budd’s experience with the
disease was direct. Over the
course of several decades he
observed outbreaks of typhoid
fever, treated patients, and nearly
lost his own life to the disease.
Curious to understand how
typhoid fever spread between
patients, Budd carefully observed
the connections between victims,
comparing the patterns of
contagion to the current medical
hypotheses. Eventually he was
able to show that access to clean
drinking water helped prevent
typhoid fever. While it would
be some time before the precise
cause of typhoid fever was
isolated, Budd’s curiosity and his
patient, methodical observations
benefi ted many people.
Perhaps pointing to the value
of inquiry in areas of life related
to science and technology is like