Keeping one’s sense of wonder can be a challenge. Discovering wonder in the middle of stressful situations can be hard too. Yet, just as we are uplifted by cherishing beauty, so too are we renewed by dwelling in moments of wonder.

Such a challenge arose for me last week when a tight schedule came into play. In the center of a long-planned series of talks here in Dallas came an invitation to make an appearance on a panel at the National Classical Education Symposium in Phoenix.

This excellent inaugural symposium ran for three days (25^–27 February), but I could fly out only for the final day. Still, it was terrific, particularly due to the pleasure of presenting alongside of David Bobb (Bill of Rights Institute) and John Balsbaugh (Trinity Schools).

I will admit, though, it was surreal suddenly finding myself there. The night before, I had been romping in our magnificent Meyerson Symphony Center, reveling in the works of four dynamic American composers—William Bolcolm, Ron Nelson, Omar Thomas, and David Maslanka. In the preceding weeks, there was a wondrous opportunity to conduct interviews with two of those composers: the esteemed Mr. Bolcom (with Grammy and Pulitzer Prize pedigrees and endless accolades as a revivalist of the ragtime tradition and the Great American Song Book) and Mr. Thomas, a super-hip, ultra-talented young composer fluent in every style of music, particularly jazz.

I used the word “wondrous” in describing those interviews. How else can you describe technology (Skype) that allows one to sit in North Carolina and laugh and speak easily with fabulous folks up in Michigan and Maryland? And then, to transfer those files to the Dallas Winds’ technical staff so that they can tailor them a bit and stream them out to the world? While this type of technology is employed thousands, no, tens of thousands of times a day, isn’t it still a wonder?

You can take a peek at the results here (Thomas) and here (Bolcom). In addition, you will find an interview I conducted with the esteemed Joseph Alessi, long the principal trombonist for the New York Philharmonic and hero of trombonists across the globe. I’m guessing that close to 150 Texas high-school trombonists thronged the hall that night to hear him play a world premiere of Bolcom’s Concerto for Trombone, eager for every virtuosic note he sounds.

So, yes, it had been a superb night. Yet, few hours later, I was waiting to board a flight to Phoenix. With four hours sleep between Tuesday night’s festivities and the pre-dawn drive to the airport, I had two choices. I could whine about being tired (I was) and fret anxiously about the time crunch. Here I stood in a Texas airport at 6:30 a.m. needing to fulfill a commitment to speak in Arizona at 10:00 a.m. (admittedly with a one-hour time change in my favor). That’s enough to make a person anxious, right?

Anxiety nets us very little, truth be told. And it definitely blocks a sense of wonder. So I tried, instead, to concentrate on the wonder of it all, starting with the fact that I am granted such opportunities.

Marvelously, it all did work. Landing in sunlit Phoenix, I had fifty minutes to get to the site of the conference, the Beus Center for Law and Society. The session went well. My colleagues on the two-hour panel presented passionate papers, one proposing tremendous ideas for helping high-schoolers understand the metaphors of poetry, and the other discussing the powerful oratory of Frederick Douglass. In the middle of their presentations, I held forth about the how the Fine Arts illuminate every aspect of learning.

Then it was lunchtime. (Sometimes that alone can be wondrous, right?).  So where was lunch? I’d had enough trouble just finding the right door into this glistening complex of ultramodern buildings. Furthermore, folks seemed to be just standing around. I was hungry.

Someone pushed away the podium. Dusky shades on the back wall began to roll up and revealed, to my surprise, a wall of glass. Wow, I thought.

Then, wonder of wonders, the glass wall rose.  It folded up into sections and rose into the sky. Not all the way into the sky, of course. But it seemed so.

I’d never seen such a thing. I nearly shrieked. The disappearing wall opened up full access to a lovely plaza where a delicious hot lunch awaited us. The sun was brilliant. Little café-style tables were surrounded by flower boxes in full bloom. It wasn’t quite the shift from Kansas to the Land of Oz, but it was close.

I tried to take pictures to show how the lecture hall now melted seamlessly into the plaza, but the pictures didn’t convey the magic. I stopped uttering how “amazing it was” when a fellow said, “Right. We saw it Monday and Tuesday.” Perhaps such things are wondrous only the first time. Someone else pointed out that disappearing walls are “very Arizonian.”

I didn’t want to leave sunny Phoenix. But the next morning, I boarded another plane that lifted its thousands of pounds up into the air. Three hours later, we were back in Dallas where it was, yes, 30 degrees! Not ideal weather for raising walls.

That evening, back in the Meyerson (where the walls stay in place although the massive acoustic shell does not), I opened a four-concert series of talks for a Dallas Symphony program featuring Beethoven’s Coriolan overture, William Walton’s First Symphony, and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. I wish you could see the Meyerson hall. Designed by I. M. Pei, the Meyerson remains, to me, the most extraordinary architectural space I have ever worked in. Despite 30 years since its inauguration, it thrills me each time I enter it.

As always, in life, we leave a week’s experiences behind and start a new week that brings its own challenges, time-crunches, worries, frustrations, concerns, anxieties, . . . wait, this is going in the wrong direction, isn’t it?

Let me back up. As always, in life, we are blessed by the opportunity to have a new week. One where we can, amidst challenges, try to remember wonder. Wonder that airplanes fly and car motors spin; wonder that technology works most of the time; wonder that microwaves heat, faucets pour forth hot water, refrigerators keep my Brown-Cow vanilla yogurt cold, and, most importantly, electric kettles cause the tea water to boil.

Beyond that, tiny bees have made the honey filling my spoon as it plunges into the hot tea. Someone we’ll never meet has grown and picked the lettuce for our salads, and each peppercorn in the shaker has taken a complex journey across half the globe.

May moments of wonder show themselves to you today, and each day. And may that wonder help soften the hard things in each of our lives.