(“Field Notes” feels like a good way to characterize or capture what I learn in the moments when I’m out and about, nibbling at the edges of the Spirit’s revelations. Today’s notes assemble around sonder….)
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Chris and I took an Amtrak train to Minneapolis. While waiting to board for the return trip, we got into an enjoyable personal conversation with two other passengers from Chicago—two adult brothers. As our chat came to its end, they shared a word that Chris and I had never heard before: Sonder. Several times during the home-bound trip, they reminded me: “Look it up—sonder! That’s what just happened….”
Sonder is a neologism coined in 2012 by Minneapolis polymath John Koenig, whose ongoing project, 1The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, has introduced scores of newly minted words. In its current usage, sonder can be a noun or a verb, naming your realization that every person you encounter is 2“living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” That everyone has an intricate story—some of them also epics. Appreciation and civility are baked into this feeling, drawing you toward others for reasons that might be hard to name.
I accepted the brothers’ challenge, and found sonder very useful. Swirling among other emotion-labels —e.g., empathy, awe, rapture or transcendence—sonder is similar to 3absolute unitary being, the sense of being mystically united with God, humankind and creation. Sonder helps me understand moments when I imagine the intricacies of a total stranger’s self-talk. Those times when I experience the dignity others exhibit—and the respect that they deserve—because they are God’s beloved creatures. The playful curiosity that nudges me toward conversations with almost anyone. The gratitude that can come from knowing that I don’t need to be frightened about other people. Each one a sonder twinkling.
Perhaps most gratifying: I had been looking for an expression that would gather together the content of an upcoming blog. And there it was, in one word!
Sonder….
1The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (Words – The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows) is both a website and the name of Koenig’s book, showing a fascinating inventiveness that has yielded fresh expressions perfectly suited for those places in our inner lives that remain stubbornly ineffable.
2From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
3A term invented and described in Why God Won’t Go Away, one of the first and most authoritative explorations of neurotheology. (Andrew Newberg, Eugene D’Aquili and Vincent Rause) (https://www.andrewnewberg.com/).
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